Catullus 2

Catullus 2 is a renowned poem by the Roman poet Gaius Valerius Catullus (c. 84 – c. 54 BC) that describes the affectionate relationship between Catullus' lover, Lesbia, and her pet sparrow. As poet and scholar J. S. Phillimore has noted, "The charm of this poem, blurred as it is by a corrupt manuscript tradition, has made it one of the most famous in Catullus' book."

This poem, together with Catullus' other poems, survived from antiquity in a single manuscript discovered c. 1300 AD in Verona, from which three copies survive. Fourteen centuries of copying from copies — the "corrupt manuscript tradition" mentioned above — left scholars in doubt as to the poem's original wording in a few places, although centuries of scholarship have led a consensus critical version. Research on Catullus was the first application of the genealogical method of textual criticism.

Lines 1-10 represent the preserved core of the poem. Lines 11-13 are denoted as "Catullus 2b" and differ significantly in tone and subject from the first 10 lines. Hence, these latter three lines may belong to a different poem, although most scholars do not believe so. Rather, the prevailing hypothesis is that the two sets of lines (1-10 and 11-13) are fragments of a whole, and that lines to bridge the transition between them have been lost. Originally, this poem was combined with Catullus 3, which describes the death of Lesbia's sparrow, but the two poems were separated by scholars in the 16th century.

The meter of this poem is hendecasyllabic, a common form in Catullus' poetry.

Rough translation

The following rough translation attempts to capture the mood of the poem in modern language:

Little bird, my girlfriend loves you
and loves to play with you, to hold you
in her bosom, to dangle her finger
for you to nip at. When she,
the shining girl of my longing,
delights in sweet silly games with you,
I think she is seeking comfort for her sorrows,
to soothe her troubled heart.
If only I could find such relief
for my sad soul by playing with you!

Historical context

Catullus (c. 84 BC - c. 54 BC) lived in the waning days of the Roman Republic, just before the era of Augustus. Catullus is the chief representative of a school of poets known as the poetae novi or neoteroi, both terms meaning "the new poets". Their poems were a bold departure from traditional models, being relatively short and describing small, everyday occurrences and intense personal feelings; by contrast, traditional poetry was generally large and epic, describing titanic battles among heroes and gods. These avant-garde poets drew inspiration from earlier Greek authors, especially Sappho and Callimachus; Catullus himself is known to have translated at least two of Sappho's poems into Latin, namely, Catullus 11 and Catullus 51. Catullus is renowned for his love poems, particularly the 25 poems addressed to a woman named Lesbia, of which Catullus 5 is perhaps the most famous. The name Lesbia is likely an homage to Sappho; scholars generally believe that it was a pseudonym for Clodia Metelli. Catullus is also admired for his elegies, especially Catullus 101 and Catullus 96, for his hymn to his homeland, Sirmio, in Catullus 31, and for his many depictions of everyday life in ancient Rome, such as Catullus 4, Catullus 10, and Catullus 13. Finally, he was well-nigh infamous even in his own time for his fierce, sometimes obscene, invectives against faithless friends (e.g., Catullus 12, Catullus 16 and Catullus 116), faithless lovers (Catullus 8, Catullus 30, Catullus 58 and Catullus 70) corrupt politicians () and bad poets (Catullus 14 and Catullus 44). His poems are written in a variety of meters, with hendecasyllabic verse and elegiac couplets being the most common by far.

Catullus was much admired in ancient times for his elegantly crafted poems, and inspired many of the next generation of poets, especially Ovid, Tibullus, and Sextus Propertius. Even Virgil and Horace are also known to have adopted some elements of his poetry, although the latter was also critical of his work. Martial seems to have been the only later Latin poet to be influenced by Catullus. Catullus is mentioned by a few other Roman scholars, such as Pliny the Younger and Quintilian, and by St. Jerome. However, Catullus' work was not adopted as part of a classical curriculum, which meant that it was gradually forgotten up to c. 1300 AD, although one Bishop Rather of Verona is known to have delighted in reading him c. 965 AD.

Latin text and translation

The following Latin text was taken from the 2003 critical edition of D. F. S. Thomson, which derives from a centuries-long process of textual criticism. Remarkably, almost all of Catullus' poems survived from antiquity in a single manuscript discovered c. 1300 in Verona, conventionally called "V" for the "Verona codex". Two copies were made from th V manuscript, which was then lost. One of the copies was itself copied twice, and was then lost in turn. Hence, Catullus' works depend on three surviving copies of the single V manuscript. Using the then novel genealogical method of textual criticism, Catullus' works were reconstructed and published in 1577 by J. J. Scaliger. Scholars since then have worked to emend these reconstructions to approximate more closely the original poems of Catullus; examples of these variant readings and emendations are given in the footnotes to the text below.

Poem 2

Line	Latin Text	English Translation
1	Passer, deliciae meae puellae,	Sparrow, darling of my girl,
2	quicum ludere, quem in sinu tenere,	with whom she often plays, whom she holds in her lap,
3	cui primum digitum dare appetenti	to whom she is in the habit of giving the tip of her index finger as it pecks,
4	et acris solet incitare morsus,	and stir you to bite her sharply,
5	cum desiderio meo nitenti	whenever she is gleaming with longing for me,
6	carum nescioquid lubet iocari,	and wants to play some dear game or other,
7	ut solaciolum sui doloris,	she can enjoy a little solace for her pain,
8	credo, ut tum gravis acquiescat ardor;	I believe, that then her heavy passion may be satisfied,
9	tecum ludere sicut ipsa possem	to be able to play with you, like the mistress,
10	et tristis animi levare curas!	and to raise up the sad passions of my heart!

Lines 11-13 refer to the Greek myth of Atalanta, a young princess remarkably swift of foot. To avoid marriage, she stipulated that she would marry only a man who could beat her in a footrace. Suitors who failed to defeat her would be put to death. The hero Melanion (also known as Hippomenes), wooed Atalanta, who fell in love with him. During the race, Melanion threw a golden apple to distract her; stopping to pick it up a golden apple, Atalanta deliberately lost the race so that she could marry him. The phrase "undoing her girdle" refers to undressing on the wedding night.

Poem 2b

Line	Latin Text	English Translation
11	tam gratum est mihi quam ferunt puellae,	is as welcome to me as they say,
12	pernici aureolum fuisse malum,	the swift girl that found the golden apple,
13	quod zonam soluit diu ligitam.	which undid her girdle that had been tied for a long time.

Connotations of the text

Lines 11-13

Catullus is remarking how if he was in the sparrow's place, it would be as welcome to him as the golden apple which was Atalanta's excuse for losing the race.

Textual conjectures and changes in translation

Line 6

Instead of "to do some unspecified fooling around" one translation has rendered "carum nescio quid" as "to make some loving joke," noting that the Latin phrase is "a very idiomatic usage."

Line 7

et — Many scholars have thought this word was a corruption in the text and have proposed alternatives: Ramler: ad (indicating purpose); B. Guarinus, also Zicàri (and as printed in Thompson's version): ut (also indicating purpose); Jonathan Powell: te (with other changes in line 8)

Line 8

cum ... acquiescat — B. Guarinus suggested replacing these words with tum ... acquiescet, and most modern editors have agreed.

Assonance

The screech of the sparrow as the girl teases it is evoked in the Latin, and mixed in with "ah" saounds that could be interpreted as the narrator's sounds of longing: ("quicum ... quin sinu … cui primum ... appetenti ... acris ... nitenti ... iocari).

The "a" sounds serve various purposes: a startled cry of pain at being bitten (appetenti); dolorous contemplation (acris); and a comforting sound in solaciolum and acquiescat.

Manuscript evidence for the unity of Catullus 2 and 2b

In the manuscript conventionally called "V" (and also called the "Verona codex"), from which all extant manuscripts have descended, poems 2, 2b and 3 appear to have been one unit under the title (likely supplied by a later editor) "Fletus passeris Lesbie". This lack of division continued to the time of early printed editions until Catullus 3 was separated from the rest by Marcantonio Sabellico shortly before 1500.

In 1472, the first printed edition (edito princeps) of Catullus appeared in Venice. The next year, Francesco Puteolano published the second printed edition in Parma. Puteolano stated that he made extensive corrections of the previous edition.

By 1521, Alessandro Guardino wrote that he had found in an old book that there were missing words just after line 10. In 1566 Aquiles Estaço (Achilles Statius) contended that 2.11-13 did not cohere with the first 10 lines of the poem. However, it was not until 1829 that the first printed edition (by the editor Karl Lachmann) showed the two parts of the poem with a lacuna in between. Lachmann's separation of 2 and 2b has been followed by many subsequent editors.

The O manuscript has a critical sign (not datable) after line 10, indicating some reader separated the two parts, and a similar sign separates 2b from the next poem, Catullus 3. Yet a similar sign occurs after line 7 in Catullus 2, a spot that has been described as a "distinctly improbable point of poem-division."

Themes and the debate over unity

Scholars have argued over whether or not the last three lines (2b) make up a different poem in whole or in part. Connected with this debate is another over whether there are missing words between 2 and 2b.

Those arguing for separation suggest that the poem (in the first 10-line part, at least) is a quasi-hymn in which the narrator addresses the pet sparrow. (Line 1, passer ; line 9, tecum). In the classical world, hymns traditionally address gods in the second-person. Yet in 2b the sparrow is suddenly no longer addressed and the narrator switches to third-person (he, she).

This problem has sometimes been addressed with suggested changes in the corrupted text.

Textual changes and unity

In 1521, Allesandro Guarino reported editorial marks in one of the source texts indicating that words were missing between 2 and 2b, and most scholars who argue for unity have said that the missing words would probably rectify the change in tone and subject matter between the two parts. But S.J. Harrison, who believes the 13 lines are unified, has nevertheless argued that "there seems to be no vital gap in content which short lacuna would supply" and if the missing words are many, then it is impossible to guess what they were and the poem must be accepted as simply broken into fragments.

Unity advocates have also suggested word changes in the first part of the poem that would make the shift in tone less abrupt. For example, changing posse for possem in line 9 ("to be able to play with you as she does and to relieve the sad cares of my mind is as pleasant to me as ..." — emphasis here added). Heyworth calls that construction convoluted and undermining the theme that the speaker wishes he were in the position of the woman in lessening his own erotic longings by playing with the bird.

Harrison suggests adopting a reading found in the second printed edition of Catullus (by Francesco Puteolano, Parma, 1473) in which the third-person phrase "Tam gratum est" is replaced by "Tam gratum es" (dropping the last letter). The change keeps the second-person hymn-like structure, and 2b becomes hymnic praise of the bird. Although "es" refers here to a masculine subject (posser, the bird), Harrison asserts that it can be "perfectly acceptable" Latin grammar.

Thematic unity or disunity

The sparrow carried erotic symbolism in the Classical world and has erotic connotations in the poem. The biting it does in line 4 compares with Catullus 8, line 18 (cui labella mordebis). Some scholars have called it a phallic symbol. The bird has been connected with Aphrodite in Sappho (a poet much admired by Catullus), and Pliny remarked on the erotic connection.

Birds were common love-gifts in the Classical world, and Harrison (with other scholars) speculates that the narrator gave it to the woman. This would explain the narrator's possessiveness about the sparrow and the hyperbole of the poet's lamenting for the bird in Catullus 3 (line 15).

As a love gift, the bird would provide a thematic link to 2b, where the apple is a love gift. Catullus makes it one apple, providing a stronger link to the single bird, although in other versions of the Atalanta story say there were multiple apples (Ovid makes it three in Metamorphosis 10.649-80). In the same way that the apple helped Hippomenes woo Atalanta, the sparrow is meant to do the same for the narrator of the poem and the woman in it.

Yet the narrator explicitly compares his own pleasure in the sparrow's antics with Atalanta's pleasure in the apple, which mixes up the correspondence between the two gifts. Harrison believes there is still a strong enough correspondence in these images to show a thematic unity and asserts that Catullus' frequent "transgendered" adoption of active and passive roles in romance, shown in his other poems, reveals a pattern that is repeated here.

Advocates for the two-poem theory have often said that the first 10 lines of the poem, opening with the woman playing with the bird and closing with the narrator's wish to do so, forms a thematic whole "which is both formally and psychologically satisfying." Similar "closing wishes" can be seen in poems 1, 28, and 38. The poem's climax would be the desire to play with the sparrow, which is not fulfilled. (With the addition of 2b the climax is the expression of affection for the bird).

Harrison believes 2b provides a suitable closure for the poem in that (1) Classical poems sometimes end in implicit references to myth (Catullus 51, lines 13-15; Horace Odes 2.5.21-4); (2) Catullus' poems often end in extended comparisons (Catullus 11, 17, and 25), and Catullus 65 ends with a simile using an apple. Horace also closes poems that way (Odes 3.5.53-6; 3.20.15-16); (3) The idea of unloosing Atalanta's girdle is connected to marriage, an event that Massimo Fusillo has called a "strong closure force", and is used in Moschus' Europa, in Greek novels and in New Comedy; nonmarital sexual consummation also closes some of the poet's other poems (Catullus 56, lines 5-7; Catullus 59, line 5).

Influence on later poetry

This and the following Catullus 3, which is about the death of Lesbia's sparrow, influenced a whole tradition of later poems about lovers' pets, including Ovid's elegy on the death of his mistress Corinna's parrot (Amores 2.6.). Martial's epigram (Book I number CIX) on a lap dog specifically refers to Poem Catullus 2 ("Issa est passere nequior Catulli", "Issa [the dog] is naughtier than Catullus's sparrow"). After the rediscovery of Catullus's works, Poems 2 and 3 continued to exert an influence, most notably perhaps on John Skelton's long poem Phyllyp Sparrow (?1505). Edna St. Vincent Millay also refers to Catullus 2 and 3 in her poem, Passer Mortuus Est:

DEATH devours all lovely things;
   Lesbia with her sparrow
Shares the darkness,–presently
   Every bed is narrow.

Bibliography

• Jones, JW, Jr. (1998). "Catullus' Passer as Passer". Greece and Rome. 45: 188–194.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)

• Thomas, RF. (1993). "Sparrows, Hares, and Doves: a Catullan Metaphor". Helios. 20: 131–142.

• Hooper, RW. (1985). "In Defence of Catullus' Dirty Sparrow". Greece and Rome. 32: 162–178.

• Nadeau, Y. (1984). "Catullus' Sparrow, Martial, Juvenal and Ovid". Latomus. 43: 861–868.

• Jocelyn, HD. (1980). "On Some Unnecessarily Indecent Interpretations of Catullus 2 and 3". American Journal of Philology. 101: 421–441.

• Giangrande, G. (1975). "Catullus' Lyrics on the Passer". Museum Philologum Londiniense. 1: 137–146.

• Genovese, EN. (1974). "Symbolism in the Passer Poems". Maia. 26: 121–125.

• Brotherton, B. (1926). "Catullus' Carmen II". Classical Philology. 21: 361–363.

External links

Translations

• Catullus 2- For a translation of Catullus 2.
• Catullus 2 For another loose translation of Catullus 2.
• Catullus 2b The translation of lines 11-13
• [6]Another translation
• [7] A translation at Cipher Journal Web site (scroll down)
• [8] Rick Snyder's loose translation in jubilat (2003)

Other

• "Notes on the text, interpretation, and translation problems of Catullus", by S.J. Harrison and S.J. Heyworth, from an Oxford University Web site:
  • [9] As HTML page
  • [users.ox.ac.uk/~sjh/documents/catconj.doc] As WordPad file
• [10] Page explaining the relationship of the sounds of the poem to its meaning and a link to a recording of the poem sung in Latin
• [11] Text with translation notes
• [12] Page with a link to WordPad document of "Sparrows and Apples: The Unity of Catullus 2", by S.J. Harrison, an article in Scripta Classica Israelica (scroll down to "Articles in Journals" No. 60)