With poem 68, considered by many ‘‘the most extraordinary poem in Latin’’ (Lyne 1980: 52; Feeney 1992: 33), Catullus completely changes the terms in which Lesbia is conceived. Poems 61-7 are all variations on the theme of marriage; in poem 68, Catullus and Lesbia enter into a pseudo-marriage that will set the tone for their relationship in the epigrams to follow.
The poem poses as a thank-offering to a friend of Catullus who provided his home as a trysting spot:
He with a broad path laid open a closed field, he, he gave his home to me and to my mistress, a place for us to exercise our mutual love.
(68.67-9)
The word ‘‘mistress’’ hardly seems worth a second glance; centuries of adultery in literature and life have caused it to mean a ‘‘woman who has a continuing sexual relationship with a man to whom she is not married’’ (American Heritage Dictionary, ‘‘mistress’’ 6). Yet the Latin word domina had not - yet - acquired that meaning for the Romans: it refers solely to a woman in control of slaves. With this line, Catullus plants the seed for a theme to blossom fully only in his poetic successors, the servitium amoris or ‘‘slavery of love,’’ which portrays the poet as the ‘‘slave’’ of a ‘‘mistress’’ in control of his heart. As he inverts gender relationships by casting himself as a deflowered maiden in poem 11, so here he inverts power relationships by casting himself as Lesbia’s slave.
A moment after introducing the slavery theme, Catullus endows his lover with two other provocative images absent from the polymetrics:
70
There with supple foot my radiant divinity entered, and resting her gleaming sole on the smooth-worn threshold she halted, with her sandal singing shrill, just as Laodamia once, burning with love,
Arrived at the home of Protesilaus, her husband, a home commenced in vain....
(68.70-5)
Lesbia's arrival is at once the epiphany of a goddess - another metaphor to bear its fruit only in later poets - and the ceremonial entrance of a bride into her husband's house. The tradition of carrying the bride over the threshold arose precisely to prevent such an ill-omened stumble or (as here) squeak of the shoe. With this image, Catullus recasts their relationship as a marriage - and an unlucky one, like that of Laodamia, the passionate bride of the first man to die in the Trojan War. After the most bizarre concatenation of similes to appear anywhere in Latin poetry (examined, fortunately, elsewhere in this volume by Theodorakopoulos, pp. 323-6), Catullus returns to the comparison of Lesbia with the unfortunate Laodamia:
My Light, then, who didn’t fall short of her at all - or only a little - came into my lap;
Cupid flitting all around her, now here, now there, gleamed in his saffron tunic radiantly.
(68.131-4)
His ‘‘radiant divinity'' has now become his ‘‘Light,'' and Cupid, wearing a tunic the color of wedding garments, appears to bless the ‘‘marriage.’’ Yet the epiphany, the wedding, and the comparison with the mythically amorous heroine are subverted by another dissonant note, another squeak of the sandal. The understated phrase ‘‘or only a little'' reminds us that Lesbia is really neither divinity nor bride nor heroine, nor is her passion for Catullus (it is implied) equal to his for her.
The next lines reveal her as a flesh-and-blood adulteress who does not remain faithful even to her lover:
Even if she’s not content with Catullus alone, 135
I’ll bear the blushing lady’s occasional cheating, so I won’t be pestering her too much like some clown.
Often even Juno, greatest of goddesses, swallowed down her seething wrath at her husband’s wrongs, knowing all-lustful Jupiter’s rampant cheating.
(68.135-40)
Lesbia is a ‘‘divinity,’’ it seems, not in being all-powerful, but in being ‘‘all-lustful.’’ Once again, the implicit equation of Lesbia with Jupiter and Catullus with the wronged Juno reinforces the inversion of power and gender relationships that characterizes the poem. After all the astonishing analogies, however, the poem sounds a note of realism bordering on cynicism:
Still, she didn’t come to me to a home perfumed with Assyrian scent, led by her father’s hand, but gave furtive little gifts in the amazing night, 145
Stolen out of her very man’s very lap.
Therefore it is enough, if I alone am granted the day she marks with a more radiant stone.
(68.143-8)
Catullus in these lines makes explicit two points that are absent from the polymetrics but defining for the epigrams: what he has with Lesbia is both like and unlike a marriage, and she is in fact married to someone else. The poem closes with a benediction on the friends who made the relationship possible:
May both of you be happy, you and your Life together, 155
And the house where we had our game, my mistress and I, and he who introduced her to me in the beginning, from whom all good things first came into being, and she who far before all is dearer to me than myself, my Light: life is sweet to me while she’s alive.
(68.155-60)
This ending encapsulates the paradox underlying Roman erotic poetry, whose inherently adulterous nature makes it an arena for intense emotions without real consequences. Though what Catullus and Lesbia have together is in a sense frivolous, a ‘‘game’’ (Latin lusimus, literally ‘‘we played’’), this game and its player are dearer to the poet than life itself.
Poem 68, then, provides a crucial transition to the next movement in the Lesbia story. The polymetric puella - exclusively a sex object or subject - really had little to distinguish her from the polymetric puer, Juventius. The relationship between a man and an adolescent boy was characterized by its artificiality and temporariness: once body hair took over, the relationship would end (sex of any kind between adult men is the subject of disgust and ridicule in Roman poetry). With poem 68, however,
Catullus creates for Lesbia an entirely different role, one characterized by divinity, power, and adulthood.
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