View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Boston University Institutional Repository (OpenBU) Boston University OpenBU http://open.bu.edu Theses & Dissertations Boston University Theses & Dissertations 2015 Meter in Catullan invective: expectations and innovation https://hdl.handle.net/2144/15640 Boston University BOSTON UNIVERSITY GRADUATE SCHOOL OF ARTS AND SCIENCES Dissertation METER IN CATULLAN INVECTIVE: EXPECTATIONS AND INNOVATION by MICHAEL IAN HULIN WHEELER B.A., University of Florida, 2004 M.A., University of Florida, 2005 Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2015 © Copyright by MICHAEL IAN HULIN WHEELER 2015 Approved by First Reader ______________________________________________________ Patricia Johnson, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Classical Studies Second Reader ______________________________________________________ James Uden, Ph.D. Assistant Professor of Classical Studies Third Reader ______________________________________________________ Jeffrey Henderson, Ph.D. William Goodwin Aurelio Professor of Greek Language and Literature Acknowledgements Above all others, I would like to thank my family for their support along the journey towards the completion of my dissertation. I owe the greatest gratitude to my wife, Lis, whose (long-suffering) patience, love, and willingness to keep me on track has been indispensable; to my parents and grandmother, who have been nothing but supportive and encouraging along the way; to my late grandfather and great-uncle, who showed me that getting a doctorate was a possibility (though admittedly the two-years-to- degree record was impossible to match); and finally to Caesar Augustus, the most classically educated dachshund I’ve ever known, and to his loving successor Livia, both of whom are sorely missed. I would also like to acknowledge the dedication of my readers, Patricia Johnson, James Uden, and Jeffrey Henderson, whose honest and encouraging advice on the dissertation and willingness to read draft after draft in short order went beyond the call of duty, greatly improving my arguments and writing. I am also grateful to the faculty at Boston University whose classes prepared me to become a scholar, particularly Ann Vasaly and Stephen Scully (who were also willing to act as committee members), Zsuzsa Várhelyi, Wolfgang Haase (from whom I learned much about editing), and Mark Alonge (with whom I had many chats about Greek invective); to Tim Johnson, whose class on Catullus at the University of Florida was more influential than I realized; and to my friends and colleagues who have helped make Boston a supportive and warm environment, especially Dustin Dixon and Leslie Lemire (both in my wedding party) and the unflaggingly supportive Sophie Klein. Finally, I would like to express my gratitude iv for the frienship and collegiality of the graduate students both former and current: Tyler Travillian, Seth Holm, Miska Vincze, Emily Austin, Rachel Fisher, Bethie Baxter (and her husband Nick), and Becky Wysocki, each of whom made the big city a much friendlier place. Thanks also to the departmental administrators Stacy Fox and Melissa Joseph Parno, who were always willing to make sure I had my paperwork in on time. Finally, thanks to my students. I hope you learned as much as I did. v METER IN CATULLAN INVECTIVE: EXPECTATIONS AND INNOVATION (Order No. ) MICHAEL IAN HULIN WHEELER Boston University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, 2015 Major Professor: Patricia Johnson, Associate Professor of Classical Studies ABSTRACT This dissertation examines the place of Catullus’ poetry in the iambic tradition and its innovation within that tradition. By the Classical period, the genre iambos had been distilled down to invective content in iambic meters, despite the much greater variety of features found in the canonical Archaic iambographers (particularly Archilochus and Hipponax, 7th-6th C BCE). Catullus, familiar with these poets not only in their own right but also through the lens of Hellenistic authors such as Callimachus, partakes in and expands this tradition in novel ways. Catullus affirms the connection between invective and iambic meters in some of his poems (25, 29, 37, 39, 52, 59, 60). In others, he subverts his readers’ expectations, creating mismatches between meter and content. He employs iambic meters without invective content once in iambic trimeters (4) and in half of his choliambic poems (8, 22, 31, 44). Conversely, he uses unaccustomed meters for invective, including hendecasyllables and elegiac couplets. Scholarly efforts to explain the mismatch of meter and content in Catullus’ invective-free iambic poems and in his invective poems in vi other meters have largely been piecemeal; this study represents a more sustained approach to the problem. I argue in Chapter One that the speed of the skiff in poem 4 enables it to outpace obstacles representing iambos’ traditionally dominant feature, invective; against generic expectations, Catullus introduces speed as a pointed alternative to abusive content. Chapter Two demonstrates that Catullus employs his non-abusive choliambic poems in the diagnosis of literary-critical and medical problems, tapping into a strain of aesthetic criticism and complaint found in Callimachus’ Iamboi and in Hipponax himself. Chapter Three presents Catullus’ hendecasyllables as a flexible meter without a strong ethos, allowing Catullus to link it to both the iambic tradition and love poetry. Finally, Chapter Four explores Catullus’ use of elegiac epigram as an open form primarily for invective, matching the longstanding but uneasy coupling of hexameter and pentameter to vignettes of unbalanced relationships. With carefully considered mismatches of form and content, Catullus extends iambos beyond tradition. vii Table of Contents Acknowledgements p. iv Abstract p. vi List of Figures p. ix List of Abbreviations p. x Introduction p. 1 Chapter One. Catullus 4: Outstripping Invective in Iambic Trimeters p. 19 Chapter Two. Harsher Measures: Choliambic Invective and Critical Diagnoses p. 63 Chapter Three. Iambi and Amores: Catullus’ Flexible Hendecasyllable p. 137 Chapter Four. Catullan Invective and Elegiac Couplets p. 184 Conclusion p. 220 Bibliography p. 223 Vita p. 244 viii List of Figures Figure 1 p. 20 ix List of Abbreviations DK Diels, Hermann & Walther Kranz (1954 [1903]) (eds.), Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker. Griechisch und deutsch, 7th ed. (Berlin: Weidmann). GLK Keil, Heinrich (1855-1923) (ed.), Grammatici Latini, 8 vols. (Leipzig: Teubner). L&S Lewis, Charlton T. & Charles Short (1969 [1879]) (eds.), A Latin Dictionary (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press). LSJ Liddell, Henry George & Robert Scott (1968 [1843]) (eds.), A Greek- English Lexicon, 9th ed. with supplement, rev. Henry Stuart Jones (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press). OCD Hornblower, Simon & Anthony Spawforth (2010) (eds.), The Oxford Classical Dictionary, 4th ed. (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press). ODLT Baldick, Chris (2008 [1990]), The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms, 3rd ed. (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press). OED Simpson, John & Edmund Weiner (1989 [1884]) (eds.), The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed. (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press). OLD Glare, P.G.W. (1996 [1982]) (ed.), The Oxford Latin Dictionary, corrected ed. (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press). W West, Martin L. (1989, 1992 [1971, 1972]) (ed.), Iambi et elegi graeci ante Alexandrum cantati, vols. 1 & 2, 2nd edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press). x 1 Introduction Invective is a fundamental component of the poetry of C. Valerius Catullus.1 A willingness to attack enemies both personal and public is as integral to Catullus’ poetic self-presentation as is his affair with Lesbia. Invective content and iambic meters were closely aligned in the genre iambos, beginning from the poems of Archilochus in the 7th century BCE. By Aristotle’s time (4th century BCE), however, iambos had become a marginalized genre. In the Poetics2 Aristotle considers dramatic comedy the natural and superior heir to the blame poetry (ψόγος) with which iambos was closely associated. In giving genre a teleological aim, he relegates iambos to the status of a minor genre.3 Despite this schematized disdain for the genre, iambos underwent a revival in the Hellenistic period, both in the collection and arrangement of the Archaic iambic poets and in new attempts at developing the genre. By embracing Hellenistic (and particularly Callimachean) interests, including metrical and generic variety and a preference for the short and refined over the long and derivative, Catullan invective found its expression in personal poetry rather than in drama or prose (rhetoric being, arguably, Roman invective’s most fertile ground).4 1 Some critics have been uncomfortable with that fact to varying degrees. Fordyce 1961 omits a number of “unsuitable” poems due to obscenity (not invective, per se, but often present in invective poems), and Quinn 1972, p. 277, relegated the majority of the invective poems to lower “levels of intent” than others, particularly the Lesbia cycle. See Tatum 2007, pp. 333-334. 2 1448b-1449b, where he fails even to mention Archilochus. 3 He instead discusses the mock-epic Margites as a superior model, though in fact it is neither particularly psogic in comparison with iambos—Aristotle himself acknowledges in the same passage that it is an example of the laughable (τὸ γελοῖον), not psogos—nor even