[sect. 6]
Lesbia.
[16]
16. But whenever these poems were written, they spring from experiences
that did not touch deeply the soul of the writer. A passing fancy, a
moment's passion, an evanescent humor brought them forth. But at Rome,
and not long after he arrived at Rome, Catullus met the mastering
passion of his his life, and beside the verses to which it gave birth
the melodious chamber ditties of Horace and the elaborated passions of
the elegiasts are but as tinkling cymbals. To the woman who exercised
this wonderful power over him he gives the name of Lesbia. But more
often he is not content with a name, and the familiar terms of
endearment flow from his lips with a newer and deeper meaning; for he
delights to feel that though his experience is on the outside like
that of other men, his mistress is peerless in virtues and his love
for her a love passing that of women. On his side the passion was
sudden and intense. He adopts the words of Sappho, and tells Lesbia
(c. 51) of the deadly faintness that seizes upon him even
while he feels himself a' god, and more than a god, in sharing her
smile and her voice. And with the swift passion comes the mad desire
to win her love. Lesbia is a married woman (c. 83.1), but
that consideration demands only additional care and diplomacy on his
part, and is no bar to his efforts. He lays siege to her heart. His
importunate persistence, youth as he is, commands her attention even
amid a throng of lovers, but apparently only irritates her. What does
this youngster, lately come to Rome, hope for amid so many of his
betters? He sees that victory must be won over this brilliant woman of
the world by proving himself no mere moon-calf. Therefore he curbs his
sentiment, and matches wit with wit. Even her own display of petulance
is turned against her in neat retort (cc. 83,
92). And
meanwhile Catullus was winning his way in the Roman world. The unknown
young man was becoming well known, and the haughty beauty finally
surrendered, doubtless influenced by vanity rather than by passion.
[17]
17. Yet Catullus had no haunting fears concerning the genuineness of
her love for him. He was so completely mastered by his own passion
that he could not doubt hers. Their meetings, necessarily secret for
the most part, on account of the lady's position, took place at the
house of a friend (c. 68.68). But not even the
possibility of discovery restrained the ardor of the poet's soul. He
poured forth his feelings most simply and unrestrainedly in a series
of charming trifles. Mere childlike delight in multitudinous kisses
(cc. 5, 7),
daintiest pretence of lover's jealousy at the favors accorded
Lesbia's sparrow (c. 2), gentle,
half-smiling sympathy with her over the untimely death of her pet
(c. 3), flow from his pen with a perfect freedom of
movement and yet with an exquisite grace and perfection in every
part. And the mere thought that any proud damsel could once claim
comparison with his Lesbia rouses him to hot scorn (cc. 43,
86).
[18]
18. The sight of this young poet at her feet may have been attractive
to Lesbia, but it could not take the place of all other
attractions. The exclusive demand his love made upon her grew
irksome. He might be so wholly swallowed up in love for her as to
disregard everything else, but she was not so in love with him. It
flattered her vanity to hold him thus in thrall, but was tiresome if
she also must have her freedom limited by the same shackles. And so
she gradually turned away from him toward other pleasures. He finally
met her coldness by an attempt to assert his own independence
(c. 8). But even in his self-exhortation to firmness in
meeting indifference with indifference, he cannot forbear to dwell
upon the happy days of the past, nor can he conceal his own hope for a
reconciliation. Strangely enough, he seems not even to suspect
infidelity on Lesbia's part with other lovers. Though he himself had
made her unfaithful to her husband, he is troubled by no fear that she
may be entering upon fresh fields of conquest. Though he cannot
explain her present action, he is so utterly blinded by his own
passion, that he even warns her to consider the desolate lot that
awaits her, if she persists in breaking with him (c. 8.14
ff.).
[19]
19. However misplaced was the confidence of Catullus in the force of
his appeal to Lesbia, his independence of bearing was persevered in
till it conquered, - at least to a certain extent. Lesbia saw that she
had carried her coldness too far, and was likely to lose forever a
lover whose talents and devotion were such that to be given up by him
was a serious wound to her vanity. And with a shrewd calculation of
the effect of such a course upon his wounded heart, she made her
unexpected way into his presence, and prayed for reconciliation. As
might be expected, the unsuspicious lover received her with a burst of
rapture (c. 107).
[20]
20. But the relations of the two lovers never could be restored to
their old footing. Neither of them felt precisely as before. Lesbia
had no intention of confining herself to Catullus alone, but only of
numbering him as still one of her slaves. Catullus, too, had won
knowledge in a hard school, and the trustful confidence he had felt in
Lesbia's full reciprocation of his love was gone. He does reproduce
his former tone of joyous mirth in one poem celebrating the
reconciliation (c. 36), but when Lesbia appeals to the
gods to bear witness to her pledge of eternal fidelity
(c. 109), though he joins in her prayer, it is clearly
not with hearty faith, but only with a somewhat reserved desire. And
with more experience, his heart is becoming a little hardened. However
jesting the tone may be interpreted in which he answers Lesbia's
protestations (c. 70), a strain of cynicism begins to
make itself heard that is foreign to his former songs, though it has
not yet become settled bitterness. But Catullus is fast learning to
write epigram.
[21]
21. It was useless to suppose that he could long remain ignorant of the
fact that Lesbia's favors were not confined to him. No one but himself
had ever been ignorant of the true state of the case. Rumor now began
to penetrate even his fast-closed ears, and that which he perhaps had
already begun to fear came with no less a shock when presenting itself
in the garb of fact. The emotions it aroused apparently varied from
time to time. At one moment his old passion is strong within him, and
in dwelling upon the happiness of the past he deter-mines, with a
pretence of philosophic carelessness that is supported by the broken
staff of mythological precedent, to overlook the frailties of a
mistress whose lapses from fidelity he believed were yet but
occasional (c. 68.135 ff.). At another moment he appeals in
remonstrance and grief to the friends who have become his rivals
(cc. 73, 77,
90).
[22]
22. And his perturbed soul was still further wrenched by another
heavy blow that fell upon him at about the same time with these
disclosures. His dearly loved brother was dead, and, to heighten the
anguish of the moment, dead far away in the Troad, without a single
relative near him to close his eyes, utter the last formal farewell,
and place upon his tomb the customary funeral offerings. The news
either reached Catullus when on a visit to his father's house at
Verona, or summoned him suddenly thither from Rome. For a time this
emotion dulled his sensibility to every other. He could think of
nothing else. He foreswore the Muses forever, save to express the
burden of his woe (cc. 68.19; 65.12). To the request of the influential
orator Hortensius for verses, he could send only a translation from
Callimachus, and the story of his tears. He must even deny (c. 68a) an appeal from his friend Manlius for
consolation on the death of his wife, - perhaps the same Manlius for
whose happy bridal he had but a short time before written an exquisite
marriage-song (c. 61). And even when
Manlius sought to recall him to Rome by hints concerning the scandal
aroused by Lesbia's misdoings, the only answer was a sigh(c. 68.30).
[23]
23. Possibly other news also reached him concerning his faithless
mistress. At all events when, shortly afterward, he did return to the
capital, his eyes were fully opened. Not that he now ceased to love
Lesbia, for that was beyond his power, and therein lay his extremest
torture. He had lost all faith in her, he knew her now to be but an
abandoned prostitute, and yet he could not break the chain of his old
regard. 'I hate and love,' he cries, 'I know not how, but I feel the
anguish of it' (c. 85).
[24]
24. Though he was condemned still to love Lesbia, the former connection
with her was now broken off, never to be renewed. Yet he has for her
words of sorrow rather than of scorn. Even now, as formerly
(c. 104), he cannot malign her, although she has sunk so
deep in degradation. In a simple, manly way he declares the fidelity
of his love for her (c. 87), and the condition to which
he has now been brought by her fault and not his own
(c. 75). However difficult it be to associate the idea of
pure affection with a passion like his, there is, nevertheless, an
appeal of truth in his solemn asseveration at this moment of bitterest
grief that his love for Lesbia was not merely the passion of any
common man for his paid mistress, but was as the love of a father for
his son (c. 72). Not wholly evil, a heart that could
feel such an impulse, even toward a mistaken object.
[25]
25. But however gentle his treatment of Lesbia, the rivals of
Catullus found now no mercy at his hands. For them lie had but bitter
scorn and anger, since he mistakenly regarded them, and not Lesbia
herself, as responsible for her downfall. Egnatius and his set of
companions (cc. 37, 39), Gellius (cc. 74,
80, 88,
89, 90,
116), perhaps also Aemilius
(c. 97), Victius (c. 98),
and Cominius (c. 108), and other unnamed
lovers (cc. 71, 78b) suffer
on this account from the stinging lash of his satire. Even Caelius
Rufus, like Quintius an early friend of the poet
(c. 100), and like Quintius the subject of
remonstrance a short time before (cc. 77,
82), now finds no such gentle treatment
(cc. 69, 71 ?).
Possibly, also, the apparent fling at Hortensius in
c. 95.3, who was most kindly addressed
in c. 65, may have been prompted by personal rather
than by professional jealousy. Most significant, too
(cf. 28), is the bolt aimed at a certain
Lesbius (c. 79).
[26]
26. The delights of vengeance were perhaps sweet, but they did not
bring Catullus peace. The torment of his passion was still raging
within him, and from that he longed to find freedom, not again in the
arms of his mistress, but in victory over himself. For this he prayed
most earnestly (c. 76), and this he finally attained,
aided partly, no doubt, by absence from the country (cf. 29), but more by the persistency with
which he kept up the struggle within himself. It may well be, however,
that in these months of mental anguish are to be found the beginnings
of that disease that caused his untimely death. But the conviction
evidently grew upon him that Lesbia had not been led astray by his
false friends, but had always been deceitful above all things, and
with the clearer insight came not only a gentler feeling toward the
men he had judged traitors to friendship (cf. e.g. c. 58 to Caelius Rufus), but a
horror and contempt, now unmixed with pity, for Lesbia herself. And
when she tried once more, in the day of his reconciliation with
Caesar, and the hope of budding fortune (cf.
41), to win him back to her, his reply was one of bitter scorn
for her, though joined with a touch of sorrowful reminiscence of
departed joys.
[27]
27. As part of the history of Catullus after the break with Lesbia has
thus been anticipated in order to indicate the course of his struggle
with himself, it may be well to pause here a few moments longer to ask
who this Lesbia was. That we have in the poems of Catullus a real and
not an imaginative sketch of a love-episode cannot be once doubted by
him who reads. Lesbia is not a lay figure, a mere peg on which to hang
fancies, like the shadowy heroines of Horace. That she was no libertina, but a woman of education and of social
position, is equially clear from the passages already cited. The name
Lesbia, therefore, is immediately suggestive of a pseudonym; and not
only the fashions of poetry, but the position of the lady herself,
appear at once to justify this expedient on the part of her
poet-lover. To this antecedent probability is added the direct
testimony of Ovid, who says (Trist. II.427),
sic sua lascivo cantata est saepe Catullo
femina cui falsum Lesbia nomen erat. Apuleius carries
us a step further, saying (Apol. 10),
eadem igitur opera accusent C. Catullum quod Lesbiam pro Clodia
nominarit. The name Lesbia is the proper metrical
equivalent for Clodia, as the pseudonym of a mistress should be on the
lips of a Roman lover (cf. Bentley on Hor. Carm. II.12.13;
Acro on Hor. Sat. I.2.64).
<--! Cicero's letters, passim? - what's the n for that? -->
[28]
28. It was reserved, however, for the Italian scholars of the
sixteenth century to identify this Clodia with the sister of
P. Clodius Pulcher, Cicero's foe, wife of Q. Caecilius Metellus Celer,
who was praetor B.C. 63, then governor of Cisalpine Gaul, consul for
the year 60 B.C., and died in 59, not without suspicion that his wife
poisoned him (cf. Cic. Cael. 24.60;
Quint. VIII. 6.53). Among almost
all Catullian scholars of the present century this view has found
acceptance, in spite of the express dissent of a few. The general
character and course of life of this Clodia 'Quadrantaria' (cf. Cic. Cael. and Epp. passim; Drumann II. p.376 ff.)
coincide with those of Lesbia, and many minor details of reference in
the poems of Catullus are thus explicable. Especially it may be noted
that M. Caelius Rufus (cf. cc. 100, 77, 69, 58) was a lover of this Clodia (cf. Cic. Cael. passim) about the year 58 B.C., and
within two years became her bitter enemy. There was all the more
likelihood, then, of the reconciliation between him and Catullus
marked by c. 58. And if Lesbia be this
Clodia, then the Lesbius of c. 79 is her
infamous brother, P. Clodius Pulcher, and the epigram becomes clear in
the light of historic fact (cf. Commentary).
