1. Wiseman 1985, 242. [BACK]

2. Whigham 1966. [BACK]

3. Curran 1975 complains, with some justification, that Quinn's commentary of 1970 is still coy and squeamish on sexual matters, although it avoids "Fordyce's crude emasculation of the Catullan corpus." For complaints of unneccessarily indecent interpretations, see Jocelyn 1980 and Witke 1980. [BACK]

4. Both poems quoted in Gillespie 1988, 86. [BACK]

5. Typical is the passage from Granarolo, quoted approvingly by Quinn 1959, 106:

To sum up, the smutty is not something to which Catullus is committed in itself. . . . It is rather a manifestation which we may regret, but which we must describe as such, of his ebullient dynamism, of his rather swaggering and very touchy combativeness, of his overflowing vitality. Extreme in all matters . . . we will seem him bring the same flame to his emotional fevours and to his aesthetic aspirations. [BACK]

6. Whigham 1966 is rather free with Campesani's poem (attached to the manuscripts G and R) describing the reemergence of Catullus' manuscript; Campesani says that the manuscript was found "sub modio" (under a bushel). [BACK]

7. Lateiner 1977, 29, takes Catullus' obscenity as, among other things, a response to an obscene age. See the passages quoted on pages 32-33. [BACK]

8. See Richardson 1974, 214-16, for comparative material from other cultures on this use of obscenity. [BACK]

9. "Fortuna gloriae carnifex." Pliny, N.H. 28.39. For the ritual and apotropaic uses of obscenity at Rome, see Adams 1982, 4-6. [BACK]

10. The word fascinum , meaning "evil spell," came to be a common word for penis because of the efficacy of representations of this part of the body against jealous emanations. Marcadé 1968, 20-26, is a good treatment of the power of obscenity and humor to avert the magic influence of the jealous. [BACK]

11. Cc.32 and 56 are the only examples in Catullus of obscenity that is not used in invective. [BACK]

12. Richlin 1992a, 2-13, is an excellent treatment of literary apologiae . [BACK]

13. Martial I, Praef . The etymology of obscenus , also written obscaenus , is disputed, but one of the candidates is scaena , the others being caenum and scaevus ; see Thierfelder 1956, which argues for scaevus . [BACK]

14. Valerius Maximus 2.10.8. Note that prostitutes took the place of mimae : "Praeter verborum licentiam, quibus obscenitas omnis effunditur." Lactantius, Inst. 1.20.10. [BACK]

15. Cicero, Pro Caelio 38. [BACK]

16. Adams 1982, 11, and Opelt 1965, 154-57. Skinner 1982 contains interesting material about Roman political invective as it relates to c.79. [BACK]

17. Veyne 1983, 10. This "folk justice" is described at greater length by Usener 1901. [BACK]

18. For repetitions, see cc. 23, 24, 29, 36, 57, 103; for graffiti in c. 59 and elsewhere, see Cèbe 1965; for folk custom, c. 17. [BACK]

19. A point made by Veyne 1983. [BACK]

20. Saint Denis 1965, Chapter 3. [BACK]

21. Henderson 1991, 2, who gives a good definition of obscenity: "By obscenity we mean verbal reference to areas of human activity or parts of the body that are protected by certain taboos agreed upon by prevailing social custom and subject to emotional aversion or inhibition. These are in fact the sexual and excremental areas. In order to be obscene, such a reference must be made by an explicit expression that is itself subject to the same inhibitions as the thing it describes." Cicero, De Off. 1.35.127, distinguishes between word and thing: "Quodque facere non turpe est, modo occulte, id dicere obscenum est." [BACK]

22. The locus classicus is Cicero, ad Fam. 9.22, but see also Celsus 6.18.1. Expressions like "latine loqui" (to speak in Latin), simplicitas (candor), and "verborum veritas" (truth of expression), all used by Martial in his preface to refer to what we would call obscene language, prove that it was possible to present this kind of language in a positive light. Both Propertius (2.34.87) and Ovid ( Tristia 2.427) call Catullus lascivus , which the OLD classes under the meaning "free from restraint in sexual matters." The word lascivus suggests playfulness rather than effrontery or dirtiness; Martial calls Propertius lascivus (8.73.5), and clearly this cannot mean "obscene" in our sense; however, Martial excuses what he calls his ''playful directness of expression" (lascivam verborum veritatem) by citing the precedent of Catullus and other writers who are read from cover to cover (1, Praef. ). On words used to characterize ''obscene" language, see Jocelyn 1985, 10-11. [BACK]

23. Cèbe 1965, 228, takes obscenity to be one aspect of the revolt of Catullus and his circle against conformity, literary and social, a revolt that involves scandalizing the bourgeois. The most sophisticated and valuable psychological study of Catullan obscenity is Skinner 1991, who argues that in the polymetric love poems Catullus turns obscene language against himself, measuring "the extent of his folly in hoping to possess what he was never intended to have" (10). [BACK]

24. Richlin 1992a, 27-30, 69, 150; Skinner 1982, 198-200; Krenkel 1981. [BACK]

25. For discussions of obscenity in Catullus, see Richlin 1992a, 144-56; Lateiner 1977; Skinner 1979b, 1982, 1991. I have written about the figurative use of obscene material, particularly with reference to impotence, in Horace's Epodes in Fitzgerald 1988. [BACK]

26. Catullus, frag. 1, seems to come from a hymn to Priapus. On the Roman cult of Priapus, see Grimal 1984, 46-49; on the literary tradition, see Parker 1988. [BACK]

27. Cicero, Pro Caelio 71. For further references to this kind of vengeance, see Jocelyn 1985, 21, note 62. [BACK]

28. The verb irrumare occurs six times: 16.1,14, 21.13, 28.10, 37.8, 74.5. In addition, irrumator occurs in 10.12 and irrumatio in 21.8. [BACK]

29. Adams 1982, 125-30, who cites some possibly neutral uses of the word on page 127, including that of a scholiast on Juvenal 6.51: " Quia et irrumantur mulieres." [BACK]

30. Richlin 1981, disagreeing with Housman 1931, 407-9, argues that irrumare never has a weakened sense (for instance, "cheat") in Catullus and Martial. Though I agree that it is neither here nor there whether the use of this verb implies that a particular sexual act actually took place or really is being threatened (see also Curran 1975, 313), I do not agree that the weaker meaning is never relevant in these authors. In some poems (e.g., Martial 2.83, Catullus 74), there is a play on both weaker and literal senses, and it would be as detrimental to the point of the poem to deny the relevance of the weaker sense as it would be to translate the word as "cheat." [BACK]

31. Richlin 1992a, 148, points out that, because irrumation forces the victim to be silent, it is a particularly appropriate threat against Catullus' critics in c.16. [BACK]

32. Konstan 1979 argues that the poem connects hunger and lust, though I cannot agree with him that it distinguishes Aurelius' passionate appetites from Catullus' real love. [BACK]

33. See OLD s.v. sedeo 1, "awaiting hire," and Adams 1982, 165, for the meaning "ride," referring to intercourse with the woman, or effeminate, on top, a position regarded as slightly abnormal and conceded by the woman as a special favor (but see the interesting remarks on changing attitudes to the "equus eroticus" in Veyne 1978, 53). As Syndikus 1984, 1: 210-11, observes, the inmates of the tavern would not be sitting but reclining; he concludes that the word here has the sense "hanging around'' and cites parallels in page 211, note 6. [BACK]

34. Compare the analogous situation in the graffito quoted on page 50, where the reader who fills his mouth with the words of another is cast as the irrumatus . Having uttered one self-destructive wish (ursi me comedant), the reader has filled his own mouth with the agressive intentions of another so that the second humiliating wish (et ego verpa[m] qui lego) is in fact a description of what has already happened. Adams 1982 quotes this graffito as an example of the weakening of the sense of irrumatio that results from its being widely threatened but never carried out(!). So the reader here "would surely have treated the imprecation as equivalent to 'I have been fooled'" (129). But the situation is more specific than that, for being fooled here takes a form that is metaphorically related to the literal sense of irrumatio . On this text, see Housman 1931, 406-7; CIL 4.8230 is a less elaborate version of the same topos. [BACK]

35. Harpocrates is the graecized form of one of the names of Horus, son of Isis and Serapis. He crops up again in c.102, and may have been a proverbial figure for silence in the Roman world; see Otto 1890, 160. [BACK]

36. Adams 1982, 129. [BACK]

37. On this poem, and particularly Catullus' play on inanis , see Skinner 1979a, 137-40. [BACK]

38. Priapea 51, 64; Martial 3.81.33. [BACK]

39. Skinner 1979a, 139-40. [BACK]

40. Foucault 1978 argues that the importance given to the examination of sexual thoughts and actions in the Catholic confessional was a means of extending the workings of power into the most private recesses of the mind. Before this could happen, sex had to be constituted as something secret. [BACK]

41. Adams 1982, 127. [BACK]

42. Wlosok 1980 contains some interesting remarks on the role of the censor, stressing the importance of shame in Roman culture. [BACK]

43. Curran 1966 draws attention to the literary theme of the lover's pallor, a telltale sign that usually elicits questions about the identity of the beloved. Catullus takes the poem in very different directions after leading us to expect the traditional inquiry. [BACK]

44. Emulgere (milk), serum (whey), and labra ("tub," as well as "lips") reduce Victor to an animal; see Curran 1966, 2.6. [BACK]

45. See the remarks on poetry's nondialogic nature in Bakhtin 1981, 285-58. [BACK]

46. As do Arkins 1982, 16-17, Skinner 1979b, 112, Scott 1971, 23, and Commager 1965, 103. Arkins (12) is on firmer ground when he cites the invective against Aufillena (cc.110, 111) to argue that Catullus has constructed a sexual ethic of his own, for those poems do adopt a rather moralistic tone. [BACK]

47. Victius has been identified by some with the informer Vettius (see Skinner 1982, 204, and note 21). lf he is to be so identified, then his filthy mouth is clearly related to his trade. Skinner cites an epigram of Martial that presents us with a slanderer who was formerly a fellator; his mouth was purer when he fellated (2.61). [BACK]

48. Gaisser 1982. [BACK]

49. On the importance of the conception of purity for early humanism, see Jed 1989. Jed (45, note 26) cites an interesting passage from Poliziano's Miscellanea: "'Oarion' synceriter esse apud Catullum (66,94) quod 'Aorion' isti legunt qui bonos violant libros." [BACK]

50. "Ex hara productos, non schola, vocabula nuda, nomina cassa, et nihili voces." Poliziano is adapting Cicero's words on Piso, the Epicurean ( Pis. 16.3). [BACK]

51. "Nos de graeco instrumento, quasi de cella proma, non despicabilis, nec abrogandae fidei proferemus autoritates, quibus et lectio praestruatur incolumis, et interpretamenti nubilum discutiatur." Quoted by Gaisser 1982, 97. [BACK]

52. See Baehrens 1885, 584. [BACK]

53. The intemperate review of Richlin's Gardens of Priapus by Jocelyn 1985 is an interesting but reprehensible example of modern philological polemic. Jocelyn ends his review, "Students of Greek and Latin literature have always talked to each other about passages relating to sexuality. . . . The only new development is that attempts are now being made to talk to ill-prepared undergraduates and even to persons totally ignorant of the classical languages. This is not a development to be welcomed." What this says about classical scholarship is not encouraging, and it seems to cast Richlin as the thief who has broken into the private preserve of Classics and on whom the guardian of the preserve descends with all his philological rigor. Jocelyn avoids Richlin's frank translation of obscenities, wary of modern associations, and speaks, for instance, of "the expulsion of fecal gas" where Richlin speaks of "tarts"; this comes from someone who professes to find Richlin's "contemporary academic jargon'' (such as ''cuing" and "metacommunication") amusing! In the name of preserving the purity of his own academic jargon, Jocelyn resorts liberally to the language of insult ("foolish," "grossly perverse," "nonsense," "absurdity," "grossly misunderstood," etc.). [BACK]

54. Quoted by Gaisser 1982, 97. [BACK]

55. Fordyce 1961 recognizes that this is an obscenity ("ugly" and "offensive" are the words he uses), but he does not enter the controversy about its meaning. Presumably, the reason he does not omit this poem is that it is a crucial document in the Lesbia story. [BACK]

56. For "masturbates," see Lenz 1963, Jocelyn 1979, Arkins 1979, Penella 1976; for "has intercourse with," Skutsch 1980; for "fellates," Randall 1979; for "strips (of clothes and cash)," Quinn 1970, 260; for "retracts the foreskin," Kroll 1929, 103. As sexual but deliberately ambiguous, Adams 1982, 168. [BACK]

57. Randall 1979, 30, argues that "the shaping of the mouth to pronounce it, which resembles the shaping of the mouth for fellatio , suggests what Catullus has in mind." Lateiner 1977, 17, claims that the word was chosen for its obscene sound. [BACK]

58. Lenz 1963, 63. Skutsch 1980, 21, maintains that the exclamatory outrage of the poem precludes glubit from meaning "masturbates": "'My own Lesbia, making herself available to anybody, anywhere!' That is the point, and it would be intolerably weakened if not intercourse but a more specific action were meant." But Lenz (64) and Arkins 1979, 86, proponents of "masturbates," both castigate Lesbia for not making herself fully available to her men and for robbing them of their semen without giving herself in return! [BACK]

59. Curiosity about Lesbia's sexual charms finds its way into the scholarship every now and then. Zarker 1972, 108, introduces his research into this subject with the words: "In spite of the eloquent testimony to her literary interests, the amica omnium could not have attracted such a devoted following as a result of her intellectual talents alone. Let us see what we can learn about the physical charms of Lesbia." Whigham 1966 examines the word glubit in his introduction, and prefaces this section with the words: "Finally, the question has to be faced as to whether [Clodia] did in fact become a public prostitute" (20-21). Whigham spends several pages speculating on this matter. [BACK]

60. Most recently by Skinner 1991, 8, who has some interesting remarks on the role of social status in the scenario of Catullus' love for Lesbia. [BACK]

61. Ellis 1889 and Quinn 1972 have the boy "banging" his girl, as does Cerri 1989; the latter cites some parallels for this kind of threesome, and argues that the point of the poem is that the boy is trying to adopt an adult role prematurely and Catullus reminds him of his passive status. Scott 1969 also takes the scenario to be a threesome but understands puellae as a genitive and identifies the pupulus as Clodius. Kroll 1929 ad loc, Housman 1931, 402, and Adams 1982, 145-46, have the boy of Catullus' girl masturbating. [BACK]

62. Quinn 1972, 245, describes this poem and c.97 as "calculated provocations of those who let themselves be scandalized. The object is to achieve what Cicero in the De Officiis was to hold unforgivable—talking about the unmentionable in so many words (si rerum turpitudini adhibetur verborum obscoenitas)—and to get away with it by sheer exuberance (an irrepressible sense of fun), or elegance of form, or both." [BACK]

63. Ellis 1889, 197-98, argues for M.Porcius, as do Buchheit 1961 and Scott 1969. [BACK]

64. "Pro telo" is the reading of manuscript G and is printed by Quinn 1970 and Merrill 1893 in their editions. Scott 1969 supports this reading, though his argument depends on a very indirect allusion to the Iliad . Whatever the original text, a pun was surely intended. It would be thoroughly appropriate that Catullus should describe his reaction with a word ( protelo , "in tandem") that Lucretius uses for the chain reactions in matter itself (2.531, 4.190); elsewhere, I have argued that c.5 has affinities with Lucretius' discussion of love in Book 4 (Fitzgerald 1984, 77, note 4). [BACK]

65. As in the case of c.56, so here we cannot be sure of the identity of the addressee; if it is M.Caelius Rufus, erstwhile lover and later enemy of Clodia, who gave her the name "quadrantaria Clytemnestra" sometime before 56 B.C.E. , then Catullus and his addressee share a similar experience of Lesbia. On the trial of Caelius, at which he was defended by Cicero and prosecuted with the help of Lesbia, see Wiseman 1985, 54-91. A certain Rufus is addressed by Catullus in cc.69 and 77, and some have identified him, too, with Clodia's lover. Austin 1960, 148-49, discusses the identification of the addressees of cc.58, 69, and 77; he denies that the addressee of c.58 is M.Caelius Rufus, arguing that it is the Veronese Caelius addressed in c.100. Syndikus 1984, 279-80, and Lenz 1963, 65, agree with him, but Quinn 1970, 258-59, accepts the identification with M. Caelius Rufus. [BACK]

66. The word impurus almost always implies contamination by oral-genital contact. In Roman invective, people with foul breath were suspected of fellatio, and assimilation of the mouth to other orifices was a common form of insult; Catullus, for instance, refers to mouths contaminated by urine in cc.39, 78b, 97, and 99. Of the three consecutive poems about the "os impurum" introduced by c.97, the second is the attack on the foulmouthed Victius discussed above; the third turns the tables and has Catullus the victim of an implicit accusation of "os impurum" when the beloved Iuventius wipes his mouth after Catullus has stolen a kiss from him. On the relation between the three poems, see Forsyth 1979. [BACK]

67. Anth. Pal. 11: 241, 242, 415. [BACK]

68. Rankin 1976 speculates that the allusions to incest in Catullus' poetry have to do with his jealousy of Clodia's (alleged) relation with her brother. [BACK]

69. Ellis 1889, 115, documents the frequency of theft at the baths. Petronius, Sat. 92, reminds us that sexual pickups were another feature of this establishment. [BACK]

70. Martial 2. 51.6 has an interesting version of the "culus vorax," which in this case belongs to a certain Hyllus who spends his last denarius on satisfying that part of his body while his unfortunate belly looks on in hunger. Here again one body part has usurped the prerogative of another. [BACK]

71. Richlin 1988, 358-59, is an interesting treatment of this poem in the context of Catullus' system of food imagery. [BACK]

72. "Quid ut noverca me intueris ant uti . . . belua?" (Horace, Epod. 5.9). The proverbial expression "apud novercam querere" (i.e., to deaf ears) says it all (compare Plautus, Pseud. 314). [BACK]

73. Kroll 1929, 44. [BACK]

74. Clearly, Catullus is mocking the traditional Roman ideal of the simple life, which is supposed to bring true happiness; see Syndikus 1984, 160-62. Horace's mention of the shiny ancestral saltcellar at c.2.16.13-14 sounds proverbial for the simple life. [BACK]

76. Cicero's sarcastic representation of the Epicurean god, who is paradoxically incapable of pleasure, gives us a good sense of the smug self-satisfaction that this phrase may convey: "Propone ante oculos deum nihil aliud in omni aeternitate nisi mihi pulcre est et ego beatus sum cogitantem" ( N.D. 1.41.114). [BACK]

77. Skinner 1979a, 143, points out that, though Mamurra is identified as the pathicus in line 2, the position of the word associates it also with Caesar. The sexual reversibility of this duo indicates that the proper chain of command has broken down. [BACK]

78. Catullus' poetry is full of pairs: Furius and Aurelius (cc.11, 16); Veranius and Fabullus (cc.12, 28, 47); Porcius and Socration (c.47); Lesbius and Lesbia (c.79); Caesar and Mamurra (c.57); Aufillenus and Aufillena (pursued by Caelius and Quintius, c.100); Cato and Catullus (c.56); Acme and Septimius (c.45); Rufa and Rufulus (c.59); Castor and his twin (c.4). Often this pairing implies a certain smugness on the part of the couple, but the obsessive doubling in the language of poems like c.31 (which climaxes with "hoc est quod unum est," 11) suggests that it is a stylistic idiom of Catullus. [BACK]

79. Ellis 1889, 203, sees a financial metaphor in socii (partners in. Cicero, Rosc. Amer. 40.117); with respect to the puellulae , "Mamurra and Caesar had not only equal shares, but each the shares of the other; what was proprium to one was shared by him with the other, and the totum thus belonged to both and neither." [BACK]

80. Schmidt 1976 documents this meaning of the word, which is used of creatures, such as centaurs, that are composite in body. He argues that the word here refers to the sexual reversibility of the pair of which each can take either position. Lebek 1982 supports Schmidt's interpretation with a possible parallel from the Anthologia Latina . [BACK]

81. Iul. 52.3. Compare Cicero on Clodius: "Contra fas et inter viros saepe mulier et inter mulieres vir" ( Dom. 54.139). [BACK]

82. Skinner 1979a is an excellent treatment of Catullus' use of the standard language of political pamphleteering to reflect his own ambiguous attitude to the political scene. [BACK]