10 es impudicus et vorax et aleo. parum expatravit an parum helluatus est? eone nomine urbis opulentissime socer generque, perdidistis omnia? But before I begin to examine more minutely the poem itself, I must from love of Caesar and indeed of Catullus himself endeavour to shew that in their days, and indeed long before and after, the most offensive and indecent personalities meant something very different from what they would mean in the present day. Had it not been so, civilised society could hardly have gone on in ancient Greece and Rome during their most brilliant and energetic times, or in the Middle Ages down indeed to a quite recent period. Just think, to take two conspicuous and widely distant examples, of the appalling personalities of Aristophanes and Dante! Public opinion craved for and found such vents for the relief of its pent up feelings towards the great ones of the earth, whether demagogues, popes or kings. Coupled with this love of personality there was a tendency, which to us seems strange and almost incomprehensible, towards outrageous indecency and buffoonery. There was more in this than can be explained on any ordinary principles of human conduct. When in old Greece the majestic beauty of epic poetry came into being together with the erotic licence of lyric, elegiac and iambic poetry; when side by side with the august solemnity of tragedy was seen the old comedy rioting in a liberty which turned into ridicule gods and men alike, the belief clearly was that gods and men alike dreaded Nemesis and wished by such sacrifices of dignity to appease that awful power. We must give a similar interpretation to the scenes witnessed in the cathedrals of Christendom during those ages when men had faith, if they ever had it, and yet at stated seasons of the year parodies went on, the most blasphemous and obscene, of all that was held most sacred. Apparently from long use and wont this curious love of indecency continued till quite recent times to infest the light literature of jest books and the embittered polemics of angry adversaries. In the middle of last century Voltaire's calumnies upon Frederick of Prussia are quite as revolting to our sense as those of Catullus against Caesar, or Calvus and Clodius against Pompey, and they were meant too more in earnest. Nay to come even nearer to our days, Prof. Sedgwick has told me that in 1815 he was present at a public dinner in Derby, presided over by a D.D. of local importance and dignity who had grown up sons at the table. After dinner this worthy gave out toasts which excited surprise then and now would be inconceivable, but which from the nature of the case must have been looked upon as provocatives of festive enjoyment when he himself had formed his social habits. In ancient Italy the union of indecency with bitter personality was very rife, the latter being fostered as in Greece by the fierce struggles of party in the free communities, the former by curious religious superstition. As in Greece and throughout the East, so in Italy the evil eye, the fascinum, was believed to have an extraordinary influence, and this influence it was thought could best be averted by obscene symbols and obscene verses thus 'fascinum' became a synonyme for 'veretrum'. The evil eye was most efficacious where human happiness appeared to be greatest: in three cases therefore it was especially guarded against, in the case of children, of a marriage, and of a triumph when man was supposed to stand on the highest pinnacle of glory and felicity. Therefore, as Varro tells us in the de ling. Lat. VII 97, 'puerulis turpicula res in collo quaedam suspenditur, ne quid obsit'; and there is a striking passage in Pliny XXVIII 4 § 39 'quamquam illos [infantes] religione tutatur et fascinus, imperatorum quoque, non solum infantium custos, qui deus inter sacra Romana a Vestalibus colitur et currus triumphantium, sub his pendens, defendit medicus invidiae, iubetque eosdem respicere similis medicina linguae, ut sit exorata a tergo Fortuna gloriae carnifex'. A similar protection against Fortune, the executioner of glory and happiness, was afforded from the earliest times by the Fescennine songs, connected in meaning and origin with this fascinum: the indecent ridicule thrown thereby on the great or the fortunate was believed to turn aside the evil eye. While patrimi and matrimi were addressing the gods in pure and lofty strains, with regard to other religious solemnities we have Ovid in the fasti III 675 saying 'Nunc mihi cur cantent superest obscena puellae Dicere: nam coeunt certaque probra canunt'; and 695 'Inde ioci veteres obscenaque dicta canuntur, Et iuvat hanc magno verba dedisse deo'. In marriage as might be expected the evil eye was greatly dreaded; and therefore the fescennine verses were a vital part of the ceremony, as important as the invocation of Hymen Hymenaeus. Look at the long episode of the fescennina iocatio' which comes in the midst of the epithalamium, and mars so rudely to our feeling the exquisite grace and delicacy of Catullus' 61st poem. It is strange but true that this address to the 'concubinus' was meant as a compliment to the beautiful Aurunculeia and the highborn and accomplished Torquatus: it was not meant to be taken seriously, but was only a sacrifice to Fortune the carnifex. If this be doubted, I would appeal to the toasts of our Derby D.D. and to Seneca's Medea 107 foll. where the chorus, celebrating Iason's marriage with Creusa, says Concesso, iuvenes, ludite iurgio.... Rara est in dominos iusta licentia....Festa dicax fundat convitia fescenninus: Solvat turba iocos. tacitis eat illa tenebris, Siqua peregrino nubit fugitiva marito': meaner mortals like the runaway Medea may marry in quiet; but a Creusa or an Aurunculeia has a claim to be honoured in being thus degraded by the fescennine licence. When Cato and Marcia married for the second time amid the gloom of civil war, after the death of Hortensius to whom she had been made over, Lucan mentions among the signs of mourning that 'Non soliti lusere sales, nec more Sabino Excepit tristis convitia festa maritus'. But on their first marriage doubtless the fescennina iocatio had sounded as loudly as Hymen Hymenaee in honour of the then youthful Cato. The car of the conqueror could not escape, and we know from Livy and others that on every triumph the victorious commander was followed by his legions singing ridiculous fescennine verses. The greater he was and the more adored by his soldiers, the greater would be the sacrifice demanded by Fortuna and the more ribald the fun in honour of their muchloved general. Caesar, as we shall see, has suffered grievously by this; he has suffered also as well as his successor in another way. During their reigns the licence of invective was quite unrestrained, as we may learn from the well-known speech of Cremutius Cordus in Tacitus: sed ipse divus Iulius, ipse divus Augustus et tulere ista et reliquere': but the consequence he draws was hardly true in the case of Julius. Tiberius however in old age, wearied with the burden of redressing the world and driven wild by the treachery of his most trusted friends, resolved to put a stop to this limitless 'scandalum magnatum'. Though its open display was thus checked, it went on in secret with more rancour than ever. He himself has bitterly paid for this; and so has Julius, as in the days of Suetonius and Dion Cassius people had forgotten that in his time the abuse meant little or nothing; and these two writers have taken literally, what soldiers said in boisterous good-humour, or Catullus and the like from temporary pique or some equally frivolous motive. But with the cessation of virulent personalities the custom of writing light licentious verses did not come to an end: Catullus had said in thorough good faith 'Nam castum esse decet pium poetam Ipsum, versiculos nihil necesse est, Qui tum denique habent salem ac leporem, Si sunt molliculi ac parum pudici'. These lines the younger Pliny, a man of sterling worth and indefatigable industry, repeats with approbation; and in another place, epist. v 3, he reckons the writing such poems among 'innoxiae remissionis genera', for which Homo sum' is all the defence needed; and he draws up a formidable list of predecessors who have indulged in this pardonable recreation among others Tully, Calvus, Pollio, Messala, Hortensius, M. Brutus, Sulla, Catulus, Scaevola, Varro, the Torquati, Gaius Memmius, Lentulus Gaetulicus, Seneca; divus Julius, divus Augustus, divus Nerva, Titus: a Nero could not degrade this noble art which had been practised by Virgil and Nepos, and before them by Ennius and Accius. Apuleius quotes the same words of Catullus, and to Pliny's list adds the name of divus Hadrianus who composed many such trifles and wrote for a friend this epitaph Lascivus versu, mente pudicus eras'. Catullus therefore had once a goodly band of brothers to keep him in countenance, though he is now almost the sole representative of them left. At last I turn to our special poem, which is certainly one of the most powerful and brilliant of our author's satirical pieces. For fully understanding the allusions, it is of importance to know the time when it was written, and this is not difficult to determine. Some of the older editors, Scaliger among them, have gone absurdly wrong, referring for instance the 'praeda Pontica' and 'Hibera' to Caesar's latest conquests, after the death of Pompey; though the poem (see vss. 13, 21-24) plainly speaks of the latter joining with Caesar in pampering their unworthy favourite Mamurra. It was written after Caesar's invasion of Britain, as the poem itself plainly declares, probably therefore at the end of 55 or beginning of 54, when Caesar was in Cisalpine Gaul, having returned from his first invasion late in the preceding summer; hardly after the second invasion which took place in the summer and autumn of 54, as the poet, we saw, appears to have died by the end of that year. In the latter case there would scarcely have been room for the events which must have occurred afterwards, Catullus too, as Jerome informs us, having died in Rome. Clearly therefore our poem, together perhaps with the less important, though more offensive 57th, is what Suetonius alludes to in the well-known passage, Iulius 73 Valerium Catullum, a quo sibi versiculis de Mamurra perpetua stigmata imposita non dissimulaverat, satisfacientem eadem die adhibuit cenae hospitioque patris, sicut consuerat, uti perseveravit'. At Verona therefore where Catullus' father resided Caesar must have asked the poet |