There are two incontrovertible facts about Catullus’ relation to the elegists. First, the elegists clearly recognized that they were writing in a genre of which he was among the most esteemed of pioneers. Second, the nature of that genre, and how it derives from the multifaceted corpus that is the Catullan collection (polymetrics, carmina maiora, epigrams; Lesbia poems, political poems, comedies of manners, translations, epyllia), is anything but clear. Indeed, while modern scholarship has widely, though not universally (Fantham 1996: 106; Veyne 1988: 12, 34-6), agreed with the Roman elegists’ claim to be Catullus’ heirs, there is no firm consensus on the nature of that kinship.1 This chapter will examine under a variety of rubrics the forms of affiliation that unite them and will answer the following questions: what are the formal similarities between Catullus and the elegists; what are the thematic similarities; what are the generic similarities; and what is the relation between poem 68 and subsequent elegiac practice? Before turning to these questions, however, let us examine what the elegists themselves say.
Elegiac Testimonia
While Catullus is alluded to in both Tibullus’ and Propertius’ first books of elegiac poetry, the first fully explicit acknowledgment of their kinship is found in the final lines of Propertius 2.34. This is the last poem in Book 2 and a text with clear programmatic intent. In this poem, Propertius traces his poetic genealogy and contrasts his aesthetic project with that of Vergil, who was in the process of composing the Aeneid:.
Varro also when he had finished Jason, yes Varro, played in verse the great passion of his Leucadia; the writings of wanton Catullus (lasciui... Catulli) sang (cantarunt) these matters too,
And thus Lesbia is better known than Helen herself; even the pages of learned Calvus confessed these things, when he sang of the death of poor Quintilia; on account of beautiful Lycoris how many things did Gallus sing just now, who dead washes his wounds in the infernal waters!
Cynthia indeed shall live on praised, in the verse of Propertius - if Fame wishes to place me among the likes of these.
(2.34.85-94)2
On the immediate thematic level, Propertius seems to say nothing more than that he, like Catullus and a number of other poets, chooses to sing of love rather than war, which is the matter of the epic poets like Vergil. A closer reading of the passage, however, tells a story of generic evolution that goes beyond the bounds of simple thematic resemblance.
The first poet mentioned, Varro of Atax, is known to have translated Apollonius’ Argonautica before turning his hand to erotic verse. Nothing of the Leucadia survives, so we cannot judge for sure either its content or its meter, but the name Leucadia refers to an island sacred to Apollo on which Sappho was said to have thrown herself from a cliff for the love of Phaon. If we assume that Varro’s beloved was given the name Leucadia in his collection of erotic verse, or that the name at least refers to her indirectly, then we have here an anticipation of Catullus’ Lesbia, also named for an island associated with Sappho. Moreover, Varro’s case is important because he effects a progression that is the opposite of Vergil’s. Where the latter began with the erotic verse of the Eclogues and then moved through the didactic poetry of the Georgies to elegy’s declared generic antagonist, epic, Varro moved from epic to erotic verse and hence to a prefiguration of Catullus’ own beloved.
This same movement between opposed genres is continued in the next couplet, with the emphasis now firmly on the pre-eminence of Catullan proto-elegy. As lines 87-8 tell us, Lesbia became better known than Helen herself, and thus in Catullus we have the triumph of erotic verse over epic and hence the consummation of Varro’s trajectory (Stahl 1985: 185). Calvus, who comes next in 2.34, was most famous for an elegy he wrote on the death of his beloved, Quintilia. Not only was he a good friend of Catullus (see Catullus 50, 53), but the elegy on Quintilia is specifically mentioned in Catullus’ own elegiac epigrams in poem 96.3
If anything pleasant or acceptable is able to come from our grief to the speechless dead, Calvus, through which longing we renew old loves and weep for friendships formerly abandoned, then certainly her premature death will not cause Quintilia to grieve so much as she will rejoice in your love.
Not only, then, is Catullus a historical personage but his position in the poem also serves a clear structural function. He is the first poet on the list depicted as only writing erotic verse about a single beloved, Lesbia, and thus striking the pose typical of the Roman elegist (although in fact he practiced other types of poetry). He also is depicted as besting epic with his erotic verse and thereby establishing elegy’s supremacy: ‘‘Lesbia is better known than Helen herself.’’ Catullus in Propertius 2.34
Introduces elegy both directly through the evocation of Lesbia and indirectly through the figure of Calvus’ poem on Quintilia. We close with Gallus, who is considered the founder of erotic elegy proper, inasmuch as he wrote only elegy and was best known for his verses on Lycoris. He is the last poet to be named before Propertius. Catullus in the poetic genealogy Propertius uses to draw Book 2 to a close occupies a central position in the thematic and formal evolution of the genre. With him, the shift from epic to elegy becomes definitive and the list of erotic elegists begins.
Ovid in many ways echoes Propertius. In Tristia 2, the apology to Augustus, he explains from exile in Tomis why the Ars Amatoria was not ‘‘an incitement to adultery.’’ In it, he includes a mocking literary history that aims to show that poets have always written about love. Elegy, therefore, which takes the erotic as its domain, is the true master genre and the telos of this genealogical narrative. After a survey of Greek poets from Anacreon to Sophocles, Ovid turns to the Roman tradition. There, Catullus, paired once more with Calvus, is cited as his first real predecessor in Roman literature:
Thus often his woman, whose pseudonym was Lesbia,
Was sung (cantata est) by wanton Catullus (lasciuo... Catullo);
And not content with her, he publicized many loves in which he confessed his adultery.
Equal and similar was the license of slender Calvus, who unraveled his infidelities in a variety of meters.
(Tr. 2.427-32)
The pairing of the adjective lasciuus with the verb canto is clearly meant to recall Propertius 2.34.87. Ovid’s catalogue is, as is his manner, longer and more inclusive than Propertius’, but in it two predecessors hold pride of place as the only ones to receive more than a single couplet, Catullus and Tibullus. The latter, like Ovid a member of the poetic circle gathered around Messalla Corvinus, received a full nine couplets and clearly held a special place in Ovid’s poetic imagination, but Gallus and Propertius only receive one apiece, whereas Catullus, who heads the list of Latin erotic poets, receives a pair.
Ovid and Propertius thus saw themselves as writing in a tradition of Latin poetry in large part founded by Catullus. Tibullus, who makes no significant explicit programmatic statements in his poetry, alludes to Catullus on several occasions (see 1.2.39-40, 1.4.21-4, 1.5.7-8, inter alia), while Ovid in his funeral poem on Tibullus pictures him being greeted in the underworld by Catullus, Calvus, and Gallus (Am. 3.9.61-4). Catullus is by universal account the undisputed ancestor of Roman love elegy.
World History
