Catullan invective has much in common with the practices of oratory. The poems complain of pretensions (e. g., poems 22, 37.14, 49) and moral hypocrisy (e. g., poems 29, 51, 74), they register disgust when distinguished names fail to sustain their families’ reputations for genuine excellence (e. g., poems 12, 28, 41, 58a), and they mock low and provincial origins (e. g., poems 37, 39, 41, 43, 57, 59, 84, 103). That a newcomer to the Roman scene like Catullus should adduce this reality as a fault in others is unremarkable: the new man Cicero, himself the object of senatorial abuse for that very cause, is perfectly capable of employing this commonplace in his invective oratory (Cic. Pis. 14, 24; cf. Caecin. 28; Har. resp. 5; Phil. 11.14). Lapses in speech and style (poems 14a, 22, 36, 44, 84, 95, 105) and objectionable physical attributes (e. g., poems 39, 41, 42, 43, 47, 52, 54, 57, 69, 71, 79, 81, 86, 97, 98) attract their share of obloquy. Catullus disapprobates theft, in registers varying from light-hearted (but not unserious) drollery over the removal of napkins (poem 12) to shocking obscenities (e. g., poems 25, 33) to vaporizing outrage over the wholesale plundering of the northern provinces by Caesar and his associates (poem 29). Prodigality and financial embarrassment - serious and unsentimental matters in Rome - are alleged, and, not unnaturally in Roman invective, they are connected to unrestrained physical appetites (e. g., poems 21, 23, 24, 26, 29, 33, 41, 43, 47, 59, 103, 114).
The bulk of Catullus’ invective, by any method of quantification, is reserved for sexual misconduct: effeminate perversions, incest, and adultery are pervasive allegations (e. g., poems 15,17, 21, 23,25, 28, 29, 33, 37, 39,40,41,42,47, 54, 57, 58a, 59, 67, 74, 78a, 78b, 79, 80, 88, 89, 90, 91, 94, 97, 98, 106, 108, 111, 112, 113), all very interesting from the pen of a self-confessed adulterer (poem 83). Unfaithfulness in sexual matters looms large in Catullus’ indictments. For instance, the poet openly detests the treachery of false and violated friendship (e. g., poems 12, 30, 72, 73, 76, 77, 91, 108), a transgression also regularly pilloried in oratory: in Catullus, however, false friendship is commonly (and remarkably) a means of configuring sexual betrayal. Catullus sometimes threatens his enemies with the perils of his shaming verses (e. g., poems 40, 54, 78b, 116), and in poem 42 he stages a flagitatio, an old-fashioned public heckling that employed disgrace in order to achieve justice, a literary gesture that underscores the poet’s association with the traditional purposes and values inherent in Roman invective (though it is worth observing that Catullus’ flagitatio is a failure which he abandons for flattery: 42.21-2).
It was not Roman instinct alone that led Catullus to social commentary in the shape of vituperation. He was also inspired by the traditions of Greek poetry. Catullan invective, though coarsest in his epigrams, iambics, and hendecasyllables - meters which, in Catullus’ handling of them, display recognizable affinities in register, diction, and style (Jocelyn 1999) - finds a more restrained but nonetheless unmistakable manner in lyrics like poem 11 and poem 30. Abuse and obscenities were conventional in the ‘‘blame poetry’’ (psogos) of Greek lyric and elegiac, a fashion of poetry often referred to as iambos and prominently associated with Archilochus (West 1974: 22-39; Gentili 1988: 107-14). The fragments of Archilochus provide glimpses of a poet who, by adopting a range of literary postures (many of them disreputable), interrogated and exposed the pretensions and vices of his own society - not least by means of invective aimed at treachery and personal immorality. The vices they pillory were real enough, but their objects were often fictionalized, perhaps stock, characters, introduced in order to be reviled. Iambic poetry, though modified in important ways, continued popular in Hellenistic literature - Callimachus and Herodas are only two familiar practitioners - and Hellenistic epigram was adept at ridicule and abuse. Archilochus remained central to the reception of Greek iambic verse, and he was recommended reading for pupils in rhetoric (Men. Rhet. 2.393). His work appealed to Romans in the late Republic: even the strait-laced Cato, when once cheated of his betrothed by Metellus Scipio, resorted to composing invective verse along the lines of Archilochus (Plut. Cat. Mi. 7.2).
The voice of Catullan invective, like its Archilochean antecedent (Arist. Rhet. 3.1418b.23-33), is not evenly continuous throughout the collection: an adulterer decries adultery; the masterful moralizer is sometimes reduced to comic ineptitude (e. g., poem 8) or even to complete disgrace (e. g., poem 28), poses that seem to invite devaluation as stultitia from the viewpoint of practices of oratory (cf. Quint. Inst. 6.3.8, cited above; cf. Richlin 1992: 145; Skinner 1991: 2-3). In sum, the Catullan ‘‘I’’ can be very difficult to stabilize, which contrasts significantly with the expectations attending the auditor of invective delivered in forensic oratory or senatorial debate. The importance of Archilochus to Catullus’ literary program - his style of abuse is more biting and personal than Callimachean iambic poetry (Fantuzzi and Hunter 2004: 8-13; cf. L. C. Watson 2003: 4-19, on the Roman reception of Greek iambic literature) - has rightly been stressed (Heyworth 2001; Wray 2001: 185). Even Catullus’ elegiac poetry reflects the thematics and habits of archaic iambic (Heyworth 2001: 137-9). All of which offers a salutary reminder that the social commentary of ‘‘our man in Rome’’ comes refracted not only by the patterns of invective characteristic of late Republican public discourse but also by the literary conventions and traditions of Greek iambic poetry.
World History
