1 Cf. Gunderson 1997.

2 Catullus’ self-depiction in lines 9–17 is strongly reminiscent of literary treatments of unrequited (or not yet requited) love/sexual desire: compare, for example, Ariadne in poem 64 as well as Apollonius’ Medea (Argon. 3, esp. 751–2, 819–21), Virgil’s Dido (Aen. 4, esp. 1–5, 529–32), and Longus’ Chloe (1.13.6), who are variously afflicted by the ‘fires’ and ‘frenzy’ of passion (compare 50.8: incensus, 50.11: indomitus furore with 64.97 and 64.54), and by sleeplessness, loss of appetite, and longing for reunion with the beloved. Nemesis (50.20), too, is commonly invoked in erotic contexts, with reference to the punishment of hard-hearted or unresponsive lovers (e.g. Meleager, Anth. Pal. 12.141 (HE 4510–15); Ov. Met. 3.406, 14.694).

3 See Chapter 2, n. 12, above.

4 See pp. 74–5 below.

5 For a range of interpretations of the intersection between poetics and erotics in poem 50, see esp. Segal 1970; Janan 1994: 50–8; Fitzgerald 1995: 36–7; Gunderson 1997; Roman 2014: 56–8.

6 On urbanitas in the social and erotic spheres, see further pp. 13 and 34 above.

7 On the terminology, and on Roman ideals of amicitia, see Chapter 2, pp. 47–9, above.

8 See Chapter 1, pp. 11–13.

9 So Burgess 1986; Gunderson 1997; Wray 2001: 106–7.

10 For the view that the anger expressed in this poem is less than wholly serious, see Baker 1960; Skinner 1981: 31–2; Uden 2021: 109–11. That the request is specifically for a poetic consolation is suggested by the phrase ‘sadder than Simonidean tears’ (maestius lacrimis Simonideis) in the poem’s final lines: Wray 2001: 100–5 and Kowerski 2008 argue that the poem’s central point lies in the poetic challenge implicitly issued here.

11 For readerly communities in Catullus, see also Gale 2016 and – on the culture of literary participation and exchange more broadly – Citroni 1995 (esp. 57–166 on Catullus); Johnson 2009, 2010; Stroup 2010 (esp. 72–88 and 216–36 on Catullus).

12 See, e.g. C. A. Williams 2012: 14–15, with further bibliography at n. 27.

13 See pp. 47–8.

14 The manuscripts give the unmetrical immo etiam taedet obestque [obstetque R] magisque magis; the text adopted here follows the Aldine edition of 1502.

15 See Fitzgerald 1995: 128–34 on officium and related terms in Catullus and in Cicero’s letters, and – more generally – C. A. Williams 2012: 218–38 on the lexicon of friendship in the letters.

16 See Hill 2021:172–3 on the ‘bombastically self-pitying’ tone and archaizing, tragicomic style of this and the other betrayal-of-friendship poems.

17 On the emotive use of elision, here and elsewhere in Catullus, see West 1957; Lee 1962. See also Newman 1990: 261, from whom the phrase ‘stammering and sobbing’ is borrowed.

18 Cf. also 30.2 with 64.137–8; 30.4–5 with 64.133–4, 140 (miserae), and 151; and 30.6 with 64.143–4. Vessey 1971 points out in addition that the speaker is grammatically passive throughout: almost every verb in the poem has Alfenus as its subject or agent, so that Catullus, like Ariadne, appears helpless to extricate himself from his predicament.

19 Nothing is known of the poets attacked at 14.18–19, 36.1–2, 36.18–20, and 95.7–8 (for Suffenus, see also poem 22) beyond Catullus’ own highly tendentious assessment, though attempts have been made to identify them with contemporary writers mentioned in other sources (see e.g. Neudling 1955: 2, 6, 41, 188–9; the identification of Suffenus with the jurist P. Alfenus Varus [the Varus of poems 10 and 22?] has more recently been revived by Nisbet, 1995: 411; Feeney, 2012: 42). Poem 95 possibly makes reference to the orator and poet Q. Hortensius Hortalus, alongside Volusius; but the identification is problematic for a number of reasons – not least the startling clash with poem 65’s respectful, even affectionate, address to (the same?) Hortalus, and the name should perhaps be emended. See further Munro 1905: 213–14; Solodow 1987; Courtney 1993: 231; and n. 22 below. For Volusius’ role as foil in poem 36, see Chapter 2, pp. 34–5, above.

20 Salse (G) is preferable to the alternative manuscript reading false (OR), particularly in the light of the similar comment on Asinius’ feeble attempt at a practical joke at 12.4: hoc salsum esse putas? See Fordyce 1961: 137, ad loc.

21 For these poets, and their relation to Catullus and other (so-called) neoterics, see Chapter 1, pp. 20–1, above.

22 The manuscript reading is Hortensius (see n. 19 above); the emendation of Munro, printed here, assumes that Volusius came from the town of (H)atria, near the Padua, the branch of the Po mentioned at line 7. There is no independent evidence for this, but the conjecture seems a reasonable one, given the implications of 7: ad ipsam, ‘right there’. The supplements provided in the translation for the missing line 4 are offered exempli gratia: cf. e.g. Goold’s uersiculorum anno putidus euomuit.

23 The status of lines 9–10 (often printed as a separate poem, 95b) is the subject of long-standing critical controversy (see e.g. Solodow 1987); I follow (e.g.) Goold, against Mynors, Fordyce, and Quinn, in printing lines 1–10 as a single poem. Line 9 is defective in the manuscripts: the supplement sodalis goes back to the Aldine edition of 1502 and is accepted by most modern editors.

24 For the attractive suggestion that the publication of Cinna’s poem is implicitly troped as childbirth, see Quinn 1973: 431, ad loc.: the participle editus is ambiguous as between ‘published’ and ‘born’ (OLD 9, 2), and nonam messem, ‘the ninth harvest’, suggestively evokes the similar-sounding phrase nonam mensem, ‘the ninth month’ (sc. of pregnancy). The metaphor once again connects the publication of Cinna’s poem with its subject matter (the birth of Adonis, resulting from Smyrna’s incestuous relations with her father Cinyras, was perhaps the climax of the poem: compare Ovid’s version of the story at Met. 10.298–518), and at the same time furthers the contrast with Volusius’ poem, which will soon ‘die’ (morientur; 7).

25 Literally, ‘unroll’, the reference to the book-roll contrasting with the sorry fate of Volusius’ papyri in the next couplet; but the prefix conveys an additional suggestion of repetition or thoroughness.

26 See esp. the exemplary comments of Clausen (1964: 188–9) on the poem’s elegant composition and ‘minute’ artistry. For probable allusions to the content of Cinna’s poem, see also Noonan 1986; J. D. Morgan 1991; Hollis 2007: 35–6.

27 For this conjectural interpretation, see n. 22 above.

28 So Puelma 1995: the antonomasia would identify Volusius as an epigone of the late fifth/early fourth century epic and elegiac poet Antimachus, whose Lyde was (significantly) attacked by Callimachus at fr. 398 Pf. as ‘bloated and unrefined’.

29 Explicitly, the girl is imagined as delaying Caecilius’ trip to Verona (8–10); but the suggestion that she is also impeding the progress of the poem is arguably implicit in the emphatic repetition of the loaded word incohata(m) (‘begun’), applied to the poem at lines 13 and 18, as well as the speaker’s eagerness to part the lovers, at least temporarily. For this reading, see e.g. Fredricksmeyer 1985; others (esp. Buchheit 1976; Forsyth 1984; Solodow 1989) read the poem primarily as a literary manifesto, to which the girl and her relationship with Caecilius are more or less incidental.

30 The seminal text is Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s study of male homosocial desire in English literature (Sedgwick 1985). See also Wray 2001: 64–112 (esp. 70–2 on the commodification of both Mamurra’s girl and Lesbia in poem 43); Fitzgerald 1995: 212–35 on homosociality and misogyny in Catullus’ modern reception.

31 E.g. Callim. Epigr. 30 and 43 Pfeiffer; Asclepiades, Anth. Pal. 12.135.

32 nam nil ista ualet, nihil, tacere is Lachmann’s emendation for the meaningless nam inista preualet of the manuscripts.

33 Latus (literally, ‘flank’) is a common euphemism for the male genitalia: the primary obscenity ecfututa immediately following abruptly (and comically) deflates the speaker’s pomposity.

34 For febriculosi, ‘diseased’, as an epithet of low-class prostitutes, cf. Plaut. Cist. 406, with Uden 2005: 639.

35 In this context, ineptiae (14) suggests something foolish or in bad taste, out of keeping with urbane manners, like the gaucherie for which Catullus berates Asinius at 12.4, Egnatius at 39.16, and himself at 8.1.

36 Similar in theme are poems 55 and 58b, where Catullus represents himself as seeking vainly to ferret out another friend, Camerius, who has disappeared from the social scene, putatively because of a new love interest (though interpretation of these two poems remains controversial, particularly with regard to the social status of Camerius, the ambiguous ending of 55, and its relationship to 58b: see esp. Goold 1973: 15–21; Slater 1974; Wiseman 1976; Benediktson 1986; Nappa 2018 [with a useful review of earlier scholarship at 336–8]; Polt 2021: 154–67). More hostile versions of the ‘symptoms of love’ topos may be found in poems 80 and 89.

37 Wray 2001:145–60. See also Forsyth 1989; Fitzgerald 1995: 52–5. Uden 2005, in contrast, interprets the poem as primarily an attack on the girl – but the hypothetical nature of the insults (note nescio quid [4] and quidquid [15], as well as the potential subjunctives at 3 and 13–14) points rather to criticism of Flavius’ supposed lack of taste and hence to homosocial rivalry.

38 For – apparently widespread – ancient belief in the supernatural power of the malicious look or glance, see e.g. Ogden 2002: 222–6.

39 See pp. 77–9 below.

40 See p. 52 above.

41 For links between poems 6 and 10, see esp. Dettmer 1985.

42 With the provocative privileging of otium (‘leisure’) in relation to public business or negotium here, cf. 50.1 otiosi (‘at leisure’) and the more ambivalent attitude reflected in the final stanza of poem 51 (briefly discussed in Chapter 1, p. 10, above).

43 Scortillum suggests a slave or freedwoman, at best on the fringes of respectable society: the term is more derogatory than meretrix, though the (unique) diminutive form perhaps somewhat softens the tone (cf. Adams 1983: 324–6 and 353).

44 For the implications of the sexual language of lines 12–13, see Chapter 1, p. 16, above.

45 For a range of views, see Pedrick 1986; Skinner 1989; Fitzgerald 1995: 170–9; Braund 1996; Nappa 2001: 87–93; Roman 2014: 79–80; Polt 2021: 25–30.

46 See pp. 45–6 above.

47 See e.g. Rankin 1972: 749–50; Putnam 1974; Sweet 1987 on poem 11. For ironic readings of poem 100, see n. 51 below. On Furius and Aurelius, see further Chapter 2, pp. 45–50, above, and Chapter 4, pp. 82–3, below.

48 Representative of this reading is Quinn 1972: 197–8; see also Quinn 1973: 259, ad loc. See further Chapter 2, p. 31, above.

49 For adultery and incest as invective themes in Catullus, see further Chapter 4 below.

50 It may be relevant in this connection that homoerotic sex is sometimes regarded by Roman writers as less problematic or emotionally messy than heterosexual relations: see esp. Prop. 2.4.17–22, with C. A. Williams 1999: 25.

51 See esp. Forsyth 1977b, 1981; Levine 1987; Bannon 2000; Skinner 2003: 124–7.

52 Cf. West 1957: 101, who suggests that the spondaic ending here ‘heightens the mock-solemnity of the poem’.

53 Skinner (2003: 124–7) argues that the political overtones of sodalicium are salient: the term may well suggest a topical allusion to the Lex Licinia of 55 bc, which banned sodalicia formed for the purpose of rigging elections. For the assimilation of close male friendship to brotherhood, see also Otto 1890: 146; C. A. Williams 2012: 156–9.

54 On the history of the poem’s modern reception, see Fitzgerald 1995: 215–18.

55 See Toynbee 1971: 44 and n. 119; Hope 2009: 50 and n. 15. The closing salutation aue atque uale probably also has ritual overtones (both (h)aue et uale and uale alone are found in a number of inscribed epitaphs: see Fordyce 1961: 390, ad loc.).

56 The cognate noun allocutio appears, significantly, in the context of social and literary exchange at 38.5.

57 We should once again note the poem’s performative aspect (see Chapter 1, p. 29, above): in one sense, the poem is itself the funerary offering. With nequiquam, Stevens 2013: 220–1 compares Ariadne’s ignaris nequiquam conquerar auris (‘I cry out in vain to the unheeding breezes’; 64.164): as she goes on to say, the winds can neither hear nor respond to her complaint.

58 Fordyce 1961: 389, ad loc. See also Biondi 2007 [1976]: 183–4; Fitzgerald 1995: 187–8; Skinner 2003: 128.

59 Constraints of space preclude discussion of poem 96, which has similarly been read as combining a literary compliment to Calvus, fragments of whose own lament for Quintilia (frs. 15 and 16 Courtney) are echoed in lines 3–4, with the concurrent thematization of amor and amicitia and perhaps the expression of doubts as to the possibility of communication between the living and the dead – depending on how seriously we take the opening si-clause. See esp. Citroni 1995: 65–78.

60 Cf. Fitzgerald 1995: 189–96, who however reads the conflict as one between competing obligations (to amici and to the dead), rather than between the communal and the personal. Contrast Stroup 2010: 201, who argues that the protestations of incapacity serve in practice to increase the value of the text as dedicated object, while also representing loss itself as a ‘textually productive force’.

61 See Chapter 2, pp. 42–9, above.

62 On 65.13–14 and the Odyssean intertext, see esp. Wiseman 1969: 17–20; Seider 2016: 291–3. On the sponsa-simile (discussed further in Chapter 5), see e.g. Laursen 1989; Barchiesi 1993; Hunter 1993; Fitzgerald 1995: 192–5; Wray 2001: 197–203; Sweet 2006: 93–6; Woodman 2012: 149–51. For Laodamia and Helen in poem 68b, see Chapter 5, pp. 90–3, below. The connection between mourning and femininity in all three poems is perceptively discussed by Seider 2016. Cross-gender identification on the speaker’s part is further underlined in poem 65 by the troping of poetic composition as childbirth at 65.3, quoted above: while not uncommon, the metaphor resonates strikingly with the infanticide of Procne/Aedon, and with the dropping of the apple from the lap/womb of the sponsa in the closing simile (gremium, 20, can bear either sense: OLD §§1, 3; cf. Chapter 5, n. 39, below).

63 So Seider 2016: 304–7; Conte’s article, which first appeared in Italian in 1971, is reprinted in Conte 1986: 32–9. As Conte further observes, Virgil, in turn, looks back to Homer through Catullus in the scene of reunion between Anchises and Aeneas in the underworld (Aen. 6.692–3: quas ego te terras et quanta per aequora uectum/accipio, ‘after how long a journey over land and sea do I greet you!’), a moment that contrasts suggestively with Catullus’ inability to communicate with his brother (Gaisser 2009: 136–8).

64 The elegiac metre of poem 101 can in itself be seen to reframe the Odyssean journey, as the Homeric (hexameter) opening collapses into elegiac sorrow (miseras; 2): as the characteristic metre of epitaphs, elegy is commonly linked with sorrow and mourning (e.g. Ov. Am. 3.9.3: flebilis…Elegia). Several critics have accordingly seen a programmatic element in Catullus’ promise to ‘sing songs filled with sorrow by your death’ (semper maesta tua carmina morte canam; 65.12), in what is, significantly, the first poem of the elegiac part of the collection, poems 65–116 (see Chapter 1, p. 7, above).

65 Or more: see Fitzgerald 1995: 201–3.

66 Skinner 2003, esp. 173–80; Schafer 2020, esp. 190–5, 217–19. See also Janan 1994: 121–2; Gale 2012 on poem 68b. On the marriage theme in the carmina maiora, see further Chapter 5 below.

67 Particularly suggestive in this connection is the ‘grandfather’ simile at 68.119–24, where the old man’s only daughter is (merely) a link in the delicate chain of male–male familial continuity.