In Defense of Reading Catullus

When I say that my favorite writer is a dead Roman whose thousand-year-old verses could contend with the likes of Eminem, people give me weird looks. Though his poems were explicit even by today’s standard, Catullus nonetheless pioneered the style of lyric poetry in celebrating the sensual joys of life—drinking, dancing, queerness, loving—topics ostracized in Roman society. Reducing his achievements to pages of sacrilege, flabbergasted critics slandered Catullus for not conforming to the honorable Roman standard of masculinity written in heroic epics. He continued to stir controversy with his words after his death.

However, I did not think that that same controversy would somehow make it to the Lawrenceville Latin classroom, where the Catullus unit I remember was my favorite term of Latin of all time. In a conversation with friends at lunch, one of whom was just starting their Catullus unit and the others non-Latin students, I overheard: “I can’t believe [teacher] is making us read Catullus. It disgusts me to no end. Yeah, who in the world is that obsessed with his penis? He sounds like a sex-obsessed misogynist, not gonna lie.” At that point, I couldn’t help but interject: “You guys don’t get it—Catullus is weird, and definitely misogynist, but he doesn’t just write about sex to write about his lust. He uses it as a metaphor for larger societal issues—like political corruption, social scandals, subverting social norms, criticizing the law—you have to actually know him, know Catullus, to understand it. [awkward silence]...and that’s why I will never understand why you want to be a classicist.”

Reading Catullus requires an open mind. You have to peer past the superficial guises of the unrequited lover or the spiteful ‘incel,’ his graphic and sometimes horrendous language tactfully underlines social and political commentary. Catullus 16 may be the most infamous and obvious depiction of Catullus’s tactic, in which he threatens to sodomize Aurelius and Furius, two of Catullus’s companions, for criticizing his poems for being too effeminate and romantically profane. In response, Catullus wrote, “The devoted poet is chaste, not his verses” (Car. 16). Now, imagine yourself the critic reading this. Once the initial shock and offense passes, you begin to realize that, perhaps, Catullus has a point in separating the poet from the Roman, just as the hypocrites of the Roman elite must learn to separate their furtive love affairs and personal ambitions from their political decisions. What about in Catullus 29, where he sarcastically refers to Mamurra, a spoiled general of Caesar’s army, as a penis (mentula)? The insatiable lust of the penis parallels boundless greed for spoils and wealth, which Mamurra eats up and conquers as though he were starving for Caesar’s approval. Catullus 49, where he thinly veils his distaste for Cicero under satirical self-deprecation? Catullus 13, where he criticizes Flavius’s gluttonous indulgence by comparing his lust for women to his nose, a phallic symbol?

Catullus’s wit is vulgar and ingenious. For someone of his social importance to redefine the shifting values of the late Roman Republic, I do not believe that he is given the credit he deserves—at least, outside of the classics circle. The old saying goes, don’t judge a book by its cover. For Catullus, that cover may be several poems thick, but I promise that once you peel back the layers of erotic metaphors, you will become one step closer to understanding and appreciating Catullus for who he really is.