"Call me to you
at siesta
we'll make love
my gold and jewels
my treasure trove
my sweet Ipsithilla,
when you invite
me lock no doors
nor change your mind
& step outside
but stay a home
& in your room
prepare yourself
to come nine times
straight off together,
in fact if you should want it now
I'll come at once
for lolling on the sofa here
with jutting cock
and stuffed with food
I'm ripe for stuffing you,
my sweet Ipsithilla".
Catullus I Hate and I Love No32
Gaius Valerius Catullus wrote his poems of hate and love during the late Roman Republic. A member of a prominent equestrian family, his poems are widely recognised as showing a deep (poetical) insight into the world of the Romans. The details of Catullus's life are sketchy, but his almost obsessive and consuming love of "Lesbia", the subject of many of his poems, give us great personal insight into the thoughts of an 'ordinary' Roman.
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| Catullus the Poet |
"Lesbia" is widely assumed to be Clodia Metelli, sister of the infamous late Republic troublemaker, Clodius Pulcher. Catullus among his many poems describes several stages of his relationship with Lesbia, from his burning lust and love through to his feelings of rejection and loneliness.
The poem above tells of Catullus' longing and desire for a girl named Ipsithilla. What is most wonderful about the poem is its abrupt and explicit language. Sexual explicitness aside, the detail of telling Ipsithilla to stay indoors alludes to a freeness that women had in their own comings and goings. However there is no mistaking this poem is an invite, this is a man looking for sex and nothing more. A bragging, brash, strutting man firing off a quick poem to the object of his desire.
In his poems Catullus mentions at least five other men who were also the lover of "Lesbia". After Lesbia broke off her dalliance with Catullus, his initial reaction was to attack the character of Lesbia and her infidelities. The lovelorn poet takes his revenge by writing witty poems bad mouthing the lady who jilted him. The slander of a 'lady' of a prominent household skulking around the back alleys of Rome and performing sexual acts on the young men of Rome, is a stain not only upon the lady but also her family name. It also highlights what was seen as "taboo" for women among the aristocratic families. A prominent lady is a matron, the great motherly figure at the centre of a family, a lady in the back streets of Rome would have been scandal enough.
"Lesbia, our Lesbia, the same old Lesbia,
Caelius, she whom Catullus loved once
more than himself and more than all his own,
loiters at the cross-roads and in the backstreets
ready to toss-off the 'magnanimous' sons of Rome"
Catullus I Hate and I Love No58
In the end Catullus' feelings of rejection and anger turned to musings on the nature of his "love" for Lesbia. These poems give rare insight into a complex mind filled with feelings of love, desire abandonment, resentment and loss against the landscape of Rome. Catullus himself presents his feelings of angst and neglect in a poignant way, feelings that are too often lost among the great men, battles and events of history.
Catullus is a rare example of a "normal" Romans feelings of love and loss. None more so than in his most passionate and heartbreaking of poems,
"I hate and I love. And if you ask me how,
I do not know: I only feel it, and I'm torn in two"
Catullus I Hate and I Love No85
Thanks for Reading
James
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