Catullus’ keywords could be assigned to either of these sets. The rhetorical uses connote charm and wit and polish, the very qualities of the polymetrics; the other uses have an undercurrent of rakishness, the very quality, it would appear, of Catullus’ circle. But assigning the words merely to one category or the other misses something important. The positive and negative valences of the words are of a piece: they reflect precisely the ambivalence of the late Republican social elite toward aestheticism. On the one hand, elegance - of dress, of manner, of speech - was suspect, if that meant form and style had been favored over substance and character. Varro reflects the distinction - ironically - in describing what seems to be a swank conuiuium: omnes uidemur nobis esse belli festiui, saperdae cum/simus saproi ‘‘We’re all chic and convivial, so we think - though in fact/We stink, like fetid fish’’ (Men. 312 Bucheler, 311 Cebe). Cicero is less ironic in reproving Clodia’s retinue: ‘‘They can be as witty (faceti) and clever (dicaces) as they wish at parties, and even fluent from time to time in their cups; but the forum is one thing and the couch quite another. The courtroom and the bedroom don’t work the same way’’ (Cael. 67). On the other hand, elegance was a welcome mark of culture and status, particularly in a society where status was constantly symbolized. Cicero has such elegances in mind when - in the same speech in which he condescends to Clodia’s retinue - he suggests that Herennius’ attacks on Caelius’ morals belied Herennius’ participation in hac suauitate humanitatis qua prope iam delectantur omnes ‘‘in these cultured delights in which almost everyone takes pleasure’’ (Cael. 25). After the eastern wars of the second century, Greek culture - its art, its language and literature, its dress and habits - provided a deep well of such cultured delights that captured rustic Latium.3
How was the balance struck? In the gracious and old-fashioned world of On the Orator, style is kept carefully in its place, the handmaiden of high purpose: ‘‘I want to hear ‘well done! splendid!’ (bene et praeclare) as often as possible, ‘nicely done! delightful!’ (belle et festiue) not too often,’’ avows Cicero’s Crassus (De or. 3.101). The allure of lepos Cicero restricts largely to humor, and that of a careful and urbane sort. This subservience of lepos to dignitas is rather tidy. It thus provokes the suspicion that the late Republican elite could - or even had to? - give charm and style a larger role in fashioning their personae. Certainly suavity and even sauciness regularly appear in elite self-representation at this time. Caesar, who shaved his body (Suet. lul. 45.2) and wore a suavely slack tunic (45.3), approached effeminacy - and, apparently, thereby signaled political potency (cf. 22.2). Perhaps M. Caelius, an aggressive prosecutor, imagined his elegant gleam the same way (Cael. 77). Cicero’s gracious theory of humor belied his own practice: Cato called him a geloios hypatos (Plut. Cat. Mi. 21; = facetus consul)4 and contemporaries thought he went too far (Paetus ap. Fam. 9.20.1; Plut. Cic. 27.1; Quint. Inst. 12.10.12; Macrob. Sat. 2.1.12). If Cicero drove Verres from Rome under a crush of evidence, Hortensius, he of abundant graces, had doubtless planned to beguile by his art, which included gestures like a mime dancer’s, or so a critic said (Gell. NA 1.5.3 = ORF92.39; cf. Cic. Quinct. 77, Brut. 303).
Stylishness, then, was more than the vice it appears in Cicero’s oratory or the subsidiary virtue it is in rhetorical theory; it was also practically a cardinal virtue - political aestheticism, we might call it.5 Our keywords could describe stylishness in all these guises, and their slipperiness stems directly from the complexities of Roman views of stylishness. To be clear: this is a double claim on my part; first, that stylishness had multiple valences (a claim about culture); and, second, that our keywords reflect that multiplicity (a claim about semantics). There are two points to observe. First, the difference from English is noteworthy, where positive and negative assessments of style typically use different words altogether (‘‘elegant’’ vs. ‘‘foppish,’’ ‘‘funny’’ vs. ‘‘facetious,’’ etc.). Second, the use of our keywords for praise and for blame gives them a certain (and, to my mind, delicious) instability. By assigning the Pergamenes uenustas and facetiae, for example, Cicero plainly intends to impugn their fides: their social gestures, like those of non-Romans generally, cannot be trusted. But Decianus is also a credulous fool, the victim of a prank - punk’d, if you like (or so Cicero would have it). The perpetrators of a successful prank, however cruel or puerile, do win a round on their terms. Cicero’s disdain for the Pergamenes’ cleverness thus shades into censure of Decianus’ gamesmanship. Somehow uenustas and facetiae have their value even when contemptibly deployed.
I submit that it is this capacity of our keywords for ambiguity, effected by the Romans' ambivalence toward stylishness, that made them attractive to Catullus. On my view he uses the words not merely to represent one particular version of stylishness but to play against the complex ambiguities of its social construction. That is, Catullus does not merely describe the ethos of his own circle but describes it in a way that introduces, through its characteristic vocabulary, a cardinal concern of the larger society. Thereby Catullus both creates a distinctive erotic, social, and poetic ideal and raises challenging questions about the meaning of stylishness itself.
World History
