Catullus

Facing charges of witchery, Apuleius defends himself by mentioning the name of the African village where one of his accusers, Sicinius Aemilianus, lives. The article begins with a summary of what should be known about the word (spelling, etymology, grammatical status) as well as the place it refers to.  It goes on to show how the utterance of the name is, in fact, used as a counterattack that aims to invalidate the charge of barbarism that faces the accused. The word, which is generally analyzed as a stroke of irony, covers though a complex game on the pronunciation of the accuser whose Punic accent is presented derisively, rather,  as a claim to the mastery of Attic Greek.This subtle game involves  making reference to authors brought back into fashion in the second century (Plautus, Catullus). In the end,  the paper  attempts to put into perspective this game on the  pronunciation of Sicinius Aemilianus in a reflection on the cultural identity of the sophist, who clearly rejects the Punic,  fetishizes Latin and carefully conceals his vernacular native language, the Libyan.

Este artículo intenta demostrar la influencia de determinados pasajes y composiciones del iber de Catulo en Graciliano Afonso (La Orotava, 1775-Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, 1861). Se estudia a este fin la Oda 11 de la obra El Beso de Abibina, publicada en Puerto Rico en 1838, fecha del regreso de Graciliano Afonso a Canarias tras su destierro en América. Se pretende así dilatar un poco más la pervivencia del poeta latino, aunque sea en la modesta vertiente literaria insular.

The Latin terms used to translate Alexandrian poetics are well-known in the Augustan era, but still insufficiently explored during Catullus’s times. Yet, I argue that Catullus played a major role in the constitution of the Latin terminology used by Augustan poets.

Inspired by Alessandro Grilli’s comment, the author proposed a new conjecture to resolve the crux of Catull. 25, 5, correcting mulier aries (O) in molliter mares: cum diua molliter mares ostendit oscitantes. Meanwhile, the author identified diua with Lesbia (Clodia), and Thallus cinaedus, probably a slave-dancer belonging to Metellus-Clodia’s family. The paper will be completed by stylistical and palaeographical analyses.

I propose a new instance of ‘stichometric allusion’ (when poets allude to a source using corresponding line-numbers) in the Culex. This example (an allusion to Catullus 64) is notable because it spans two lines, and because it contains a repetition. Since this makes coincidence very unlikely, we can consider the possible motives and potential implications.

This article argues that Catullus c. 34, the “Hymn to Diana” contains coded
critique of Valerius Cato’s lost poem the _Diana_. Catullus uses metapoetic
language to present the _Diana_ as an Antimachean poem that is over-long, oldfashioned, overly obscure, and generally uncouth. I also consider possible connections between Cato’s _Diana_ and Antimachus’ lost _Artemis_.

This article offers a reading of Catullus 4 that positions its protagonist—a talking ship—within the networks of travel, plunder, and intellectual exchange that attended Rome's annexation of Bithynia. This ship's reported account of his travels embeds, I argue, an anxious discourse on Roman authors' dependence upon books and scholars hailing from the Greek east to deepen their understanding of Hellenistic literature. Through its ambiguous presentation of a Bithynian ship as both a subject and an object, a master and a slave, poem 4 stages a defining first-century concern about the Roman poet's ability to control a poetic tradition drawn from a captive Greece and mediated by a newly conquered region of Asia Minor.

This discussion outlines the poetical features of style and narrative technique which contribute to Virgil's psychological characterisation and considers the role of audience response - in terms of reception, intertextuality and ideology - in determining Virgil's characterisation.

This essay interprets Eminem's song, "Criminal" (2000, The Marshall Mathers LP, Track 18), as a Catullan project in establishing distance between the poet and poetic persona, accomplished through Catullan invective. Drawing upon pedagogical experience, I argue that Catullus (a Roman poet of the 1st Century BCE) and Eminem use analogous rhetorical tactics and structures to challenge accusations (real or imagined) of poor character stemming from their poetry. Catullus and Eminem vociferously articulate a separation of art from artist, using common transgressive poetics. Each poet disavows his own self-constructed stance of authenticity with similar threats of violence and postures of hyper-masculine dominance. In so doing, Catullus and Eminem challenge interpretative practices they elsewhere seem to assume and even encourage. Finally, I suggest that the programmatic poems of Catullus and Eminem construct similar readerly personae and that, ultimately, this confluence suggests not only a common poetics but also common discursive strategies in ancient and modern audiences.

The scope of Hamilton’s project is not historical reconstruction, but an “attempt to show what the Romans were as they appear in their great authors” (263). Hamilton’s aim is to pinpoint the peculiar Roman qualities that distinguished them from the other cultures of antiquity (263). In order to do this, Hamilton takes her readers on a thirteen-chapter whirlwind tour of the most influential Roman writers—describing their texts and the Rome in which they lived. The book is written in four rough sections: the establishment of Roman letters in the comedies of Plautus and Terence (chapters 1-3); the Republic and Caesar as depicted by Cicero (chapters 4-6); the age of Augustus as depicted in the poetry of Catullus and Horace (chapters 7-10); and the elevation to romantic literature before the bifurcation and disintegration of Roman society (chapters 11-13). In each chapter, Hamilton makes the case that Roman writers were “Romans first” and “individual artists only second” (264). Her thesis is that in the end the differences between Roman authors were “superficial compared to their fundamental resemblances” (264). All followed “the Roman way.”

Abstract:  This study addresses the old question of poem-arrangement in the Catullan corpus from a new angle. It looks to a close-predecessor of Catullus, the epigrammatist Meleager, and traces of his Garland preserved in the Anthologia Palatina (hereafter AP), for parallels of compositional and organizational technique. Examination of a pair of Meleagrean sequences (AP 7.195-6; 5.6-8) and individual Catullan poems (2; 70) shows Catullus carefully included key words and sounds from the sequences he imitated. Comparison of AP 6.300-303 and Catullus 12-14 shows Catullus also imitated Meleager's use of key words and sounds in the composition of sequences of poems.*

Catullus's book of poems starts with a small but controversial textual problem: in the second line of the first poem should modern editors write 'arido ... pumice' or 'arida ... pumice' (meaning 'with dry pumice-stone')? This article offers a fresh study of this problem, in the first place by re-examining the evidence available: the witnesses who write 'arido', the quotation of the passage by the fourteenth-century antiquarian writer Guglielmo da Pastrengo, who writes 'arida', and the testimony of Servius. I argue that the evidence of these testimonia is inconclusive, and on their basis alone one could write either form; however, the reading 'arido ... pumice' with 'pumex' used surprisingly in the feminine is strongly supported by the existence of a group of Latin nouns of the third declension the gender of which is also flexible.

This article has appeared in "Quaderni Urbinati di Cultura Classica" 109 (2015), 137-152. The attached file contains a pre-publication version.

Il Liber di Catullo è il palinsesto puramente accessorio sul quale la poesia di Ceronetti opera una personale riscrittura del classico, partendo dal principio che quando «un poeta moderno converte nel proprio linguaggio un poeta antico, se l'operazione gli riesce, avrà compiuto un assassinio degno di essere messo tra i beaux arts». La traduzione tanto è figlia di questa forte impostazione teorica, quanto lo è del suo tempo e delle circostanze in cui vide la luce. Il testo di origine – in una prospettiva del tutto anti-filologica e anti-accademica – è sistematicamente forzato e attualizzato, per essere adeguato sia all'idea che Ceronetti ha di Catullo, sia alla sua concezione della poesia moderna e del pubblico dei lettori moderni. L'analisi degli aspetti più marcati e rilevanti (lo stile, i frequenti anacronismi, l'uso dell'intertesualità, gli elementi metrici e di versificazione, il trattamento della materia erotica e dell'osceno) consente di verificare nello specifico gli esiti dell'impostazione di base.

• Escribe un ensayo de unas líneas sobre cómo los lugares geográficos que se mencionan refuerzan el significado y el tono del poema. Para ello apoya tu argumentación en referencias sacadas del poema. Cada referencia en latín debe llevar entre paréntesis el verso donde se encuentra localizada. No se trata de hacer un resumen, sino de convencer a un lector potencial de que basas tus conclusiones en una comprensión detallada del texto latino y no en una idea general del mismo. El ejercicio debe mandarse a través del aula virtual a través del enlace que se dispondrá para ello. 4

This article is a contribution to our understanding of how Archilochean poetics may be situated in the longer poetic tradition. In examining two fragments that have received little attention, I hope to illustrate how Archilochus’ poetry both engaged with its predecessors and was in turn engaged by its successors. Fragment 222W employs a theme that was perhaps already conventional for Hesiod, in which the incompatibility of the sexes is implicated in the cycle of seasons, an idea that also seems relevant to Archilochus’ quarrel with the daughters of Lycambes. Light is shed on 39W by comparing it to later words for skinning that serve as metaphors for cheating someone, the best known example of which is found in Catullus. In the first fragment the text can be elucidated by a look to Archilochus’ forerunners, and in the second by looking to his heirs.

In 1.35 Martial deals with the crucial theme of the relationship between epigram and obscenity, relating to Catullus (c. 16), who is from his first book mentioned by the epigrammatist as his main model. The epigram’s addressee, Cornelius, who complains about the impossibility to read at school Martial’s poems, could be a teacher. This hypothesis would allow to see in the original metaphor of the libelli’s castration a real censorship’s intervention, suggested or already carried out, like the one witnessed by the carolingian manuscripts of the poet.

Alessandro Ronconi e Vincenzo Tandoi, nonché quello di Eduard Fraenkel 1 nel suo periodo 'inglese'. Questo strato folclorico entra in una relazione molto complessa con la poesia mondana della società c6lta nell'epoca di Catullo a Roma, soprattutto (anche se non esclusivamente) con l'epigramma di attacco personale o politico. Alcuni studiosi (in particolare negli Stati Uniti) hanno parlato di un epigramma «originariamente romano» («natively Roman» nella definizione data da D. O. Ross 2 ), un prodotto culturale che, nei suoi aspetti tematici, metrici e linguistici, ha poco a che vedere con il raffinato epigramma ellenistico e molto più con quelle forme di espressione 'popolare' e con caratteristiche peculiari della tradizione poetica romana, soprattutto scenica (Plauto e Terenzio); è un epigramma spesso 'di consumo', che dell'epigrammatica greca (soprattutto da Meleagro) assume solo un gusto per certe tematiche, in particolare erotiche, che finiscono con l'essere una nuova moda nella società c6lta romana tra la fine del II e l'inizio del I secolo a.C. (dall'esperienza di Lutazio Ca tulo in avanti), Questo gusto si diffonde poi anche In più ampi strati sociali in parallelo con il fiorire dell'epigramma scoptico, come dimostrano prove dirette (iscrizioni, graffiti poetici erotici e scoptici a Roma o altrove già nel I secolo a.C., soprattutto gli epigrammi di Tiburtlno a Pompei, CIL IV 4966-4973) o indirette (in primis, le testimonianze di Cicerone, Suetonio e Cellio riguardo versus populares di carattere politico), Le caratteristiche stilisti che d eli' epigramma in distici elegiaci di Catullo sarebbero, in codesta interpretazione, condizionate da questa tradizione: in Catullo sarebbe necessario distinguere tra carmi elegiaci di tradizione c6lta, raffinata, ellenistica nei caratteri tematici e metrico-stilistici (i carmina docta 65-68) ed epigrammi in distici stllistlcamente molto 1 A RONCONI, Studi catulllani, Brescia 19712, passlm; V. TANDOI, L'arguzia del carme 54 di Catullo, «SIFC» 48 (l 976), pp. 5-28 = Scritti di filologia e di storia della cultura classica, a cura di F.E. CONSOLINO, G. LOTITO, M.-P. PIERI, G. SOMMARIVA, S, TIMPANARO, M. A VINCHESI, Pisa 1992, pp. 299-316; Sul folclore come sussidio all'interpretazione del testi (Catullo, Petronio}, in AA.VV., Latino e scuola, Roma 1985, pp. 77-91 =Scritti di filologia, .. , eH.

This article considers Catullus’ reaction to his brother’s death and argues that the poet, having found the masculine vocabulary of grief inadequate, turns to the more expansive emotions and prolonged dedication offered by mythological examples of feminine mourning. I begin by showing
how Catullus complicates his graveside speech to his brother in poem 101 by invoking poems 65, 68a, and 68b. In these compositions, Catullus likens himself to figures such as Procne and Laodamia, and their feminine modes of grief become associated with the poet. While these
women’s grief brings them to a dreadful end, in my second reading of poem 101 I show how Catullus incorporates their emotional intensity and devoted attention into a masculine performance of mourning. Connecting his voyage to his brother’s grave with Odysseus’ journey, Catullus valorizes his single-minded remembrance of his sibling, even as he acknowledges that he will never overcome the distance between them.

Catullus 13 is a direct challenge to conventional Roman expectations about liberalitas: it establishes the prospect of an exchange or obligation, but then rejects the usual substance of that exchange, substituting things that the poet considers important. The framework of the poem deliberately establishes a conventional situation (a dinner invitation) and then overtly denies the importance of the usual content, substituting a complex set of poetic and emotional values. It also establishes the boundaries of the poet’s group, defined by the exchange of these beneficia and an expectation of shared values and mutual agreement on priorities. As often in Catullus’ poetry, an ostensibly trivial poem can be read as focussing attention on an important aspect of contemporary social expectations and practices. The poem centres on gift-giving, liberalitas, and friendship, while replacing the conventional objects of exchange with meros amores and unguentum. The importance of this poem lies in its simultaneous expectation of complicity from its addressee (and the larger poetic and social community of which Catullus and Fabullus are both members) and its awareness of the unconventionality of the poet’s stance and the reversal of the standard pattern of the dinner invitation. Catullus is deliberately establishing the boundaries of his social and poetic group and demonstrating the values they espouse while excluding those who do not share them.

Recent scholarship on islands in antiquity has highlighted their role in establishing connections, networks and communication. At the same time, islands for the ancient world were also a locus of isolation, especially given their use as places of exile in the Roman Empire. This idea is reflected in myths such as that of Ariadne, abandoned by Theseus on the island of Naxos, unable to escape, and seeing nothing but sea all around her from the top of the mountain. The poems of Catullus and Ovid offer us a bleak image of the situation that anyone exiled in a small island had to face: not the peace and quiet that Plutarch praises, but the depressing feeling of being cut off from the world, where the inability to return home nearly equals a loss of identity.

[This is the proof copy of the now-published paper available at https://muse.jhu.edu/article/712557.] The Asianist orator Hortensius Hortalus is a partial model for Horace's critique of Lucilius in his début collection Satires 1. Much mileage is derived from the metaphor of Lucilius as a "muddy river." The appearances of Hortensius, a wealthy lover of luxury and innovator in dining habits, in Varro's De Re Rustica 3, Cicero's Brutus (where, recently deceased, he is especially memorialized) and Orator, and Catullus 65 are grist to Horace's mill. Lucilius is tendentiously linked to Asianism as well as Asia itself, and the identification is pursued through recall of Lucilius' own statements, as Horace toys with Republican texts.

Se si dovesse rappresentare per mezzo di una figura geometrica questo mio contributo, non c'è alcun dubbio che sarebbe quella di un triangolo. Anzi due, perché due sono le sezioni dell'articolo, ciascuna dedicata appunto a una "triangolazione" i cui vertici sono costituiti nella prima da Catullo, Partenio e Cornelio Gallo, nella seconda da Partenio, Cornelio Gallo e Virgilio. * * * Il binomio Partenio di Nicea-Cornelio Gallo che emerge dalla lettera prefatoria degli Erotikà Pathémata è fin troppo noto 1 . Poco però si è indagato sui possibili rapporti tra i due scrittori, e ciò è giustificabile in ragione della carenza di testimonianze dirette o indirette sull'opera di Cornelio Gallo 2 . Sebbene allo stato attuale non sia possibile provare un utilizzo concreto da parte di Gallo né degli Erotikà Pathémata né dei componimenti poetici di Partenio 3 , qualcosa si può comunque ricavare per altre vie.