Although the text of Catullus has been damaged in transmission and has required some guesswork to make readable, it provides a remarkably direct window into the world from which it came. But for all its vividness, we cannot tell how accurately the libellus reflects its author. That is the Catullan question. If all reality is to some extent constructed, we are forced to admit that even if Catullus set out to be objectively autobiographical in his Carmina, the personality he reveals must be a literary artifact. Poets are not necessarily the best witnesses, especially concerning themselves. Even when they admit to some faults, there is a strong tendency to self-justification.
The Catullus of the Carmina holds our attention, but he does not justify himself so much as he exhibits behavior that fits a discernible profile. In a culture where selfpossession was the highest virtue, the Catullus published in the poems that bear his name (he mentions himself by name 25 times in his lyrics) is signally lacking in this. That is one reason why it has been almost irresistible to read the Carmina as selfrevelation rather than fiction. In this way Catullus is the opposite of a Homer, who tantalizes because he so completely hides himself. After generations of fussing over the Homeric question, scholars grew tired of the subject and agreed to think about more interesting subjects. The Catullan question has come to a similar end. Whether the Catullus of the poems is a literary artifact or a biographical fact, he is a character worth knowing. We read for personality.
That personality is revealed ( inter alia) in the syntax of the libellus. To return to the kiss-poems, it is significant that Catullus is the one who wants to be kissed: Da mi basia mille (5.7). This sets the grammatical context for c. 7:
Quaeris quot mihi basiationes tuae, Lesbia, sint satis superque.
The force of the possessive adjective tuae, emphasized by enjambment, is subjective: Lesbia is doing the kissing. This is again implicit in lines 9-10:
Tam te basia multa basiare uesano satis et super Catullo est
Where it is the context rather than a rule of grammar that makes te the subject rather than the object of basiare. That same female-active role returns near the end of the poem that follows, Miser Catulle:.
Quem basiabis? Cui labella mordebis?
It is also prominent in the sexually passionate character given to Queen Berenice in c. 66, whose newly wedded spouse goes off to war bearing the marks of their erotic scuffle:
Dulcia nocturnae portans uestigia rixae, quam de uirgineis gesserat exuviis.
(13-14)
In the continual conversation that goes on between the poems of the libellus, c. 48 to the boyfriend Juventius is in pointed contrast to 5 and 7 to Lesbia:
MelUtos oculos tuos, Iuuenti, si quis me sinat usque basiare, usque ad milia basiem trecenta.
Here it is Catullus who wants to do the kissing, as he does again in 99 where he steals a kiss from Juventius (surripui and surripiam, the first and last words of the poem). Such are the significant particulars that illuminate the different modes of Catullus’ bisexuality.
World History
