The Latin Past and the Poetry of Catullus by Jesse Michael Hill A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Classics University of Toronto © Copyright by Jesse Michael Hill, 2021 ii The Latin Past and the Poetry of Catullus Jesse Michael Hill Doctor of Philosophy Department of Classics University of Toronto 2021 Abstract This dissertation examines the relationship of the Latin poet Catullus to the preceding Latin poetic tradition, particularly to the pre-eminent figure of that tradition, pater Ennius. Classical scholarship has long thought the nature of this relationship settled: in a surge of revolutionary force (so goes the story), Catullus and his poetic peers (the “neoterics”) broke violently away from Ennius and the dominant Ennian tradition, turning instead to the recherché Greek poetry of the Hellenistic period for their inspiration. My study complicates this dominant narrative: Ennius, I argue, had a foundational, positive influence on Catullus; Catullan poetry was evolutionary, not revolutionary at Rome. Chapter 1 sets the stage by redefining neotericism: this was a broad poetic movement that included, not just Catullus and his friends (“the neoteric school”), but a majority of the Latin poets writing c. 90-40 BCE. Neotericism, moreover, was an evolutionary phenomenon, an elaboration of second-century Latin poetry. Chapters 2-4 attend to specific Catullan poems that engage closely and allusively with Ennius. Chapter 2 shows how, in poem 64, Catullus reinvents Roman epic on the model left to him by Ennius. Chapter 3 takes up poem 116, which I read as a programmatic statement of its author’s Ennian-Callimachean poetics. Chapter 4 turns to poems 1 iii and 68: here I demonstrate how Catullus draws on Ennius qua complex cultural authority in order to defend, question, and think through his own identity as a Transpadane-Roman. iv Acknowledgments So many people helped me write this thesis, it’s a joy to acknowledge them now. At the University of Toronto, I have been extraordinarily fortunate in my supervisor, Michael Dewar, who agreed to oversee my work when I was still a bumbling and indecisive MA student (“maybe I’ll work on the Georgics or Paulinus of Nola or Prudentius or how about Catullus?”). Michael’s critical acumen, erudition, and sense of style have improved every one of my chapters; his warmth and encouragement have made the UofT a happier place. Alison Keith and Jarrett Welsh, the other members of my committee, have been exceedingly generous both in the support they have given me since I landed in Toronto and in the attention they have paid the present work, which is more concise, less polemical, and all around better for their generosity. Jackie Elliott and Regina Höschele offered helpful comments on the thesis’ penultimate draft; I am eager to integrate their insights into whatever it next becomes. I have presented drafts of all of the following chapters at conferences and seminars in Toronto, Hamilton, Washington, D.C., and (virtually) Chicago; I covertly tested out certain ideas from Chapters 1 and 4 on the kind and intelligent students in several of my undergraduate classes at UofT; and a version of Chapter 3 has gone through peer review at TAPA. Warm thanks to the receptive audiences and readers in each of these instances (particularly Andromache Karanika, the reviewers at TAPA, and the members of my Winter 2020, “Roman Republic” course). Warm thanks also to Lorenza Bennardo, Peter Bing, Coral Gavrilovic, Ann-Marie Matti, Kevin Wilkinson, and Kenny Yu for their various acts of kindness here at the UofT over the past half-decade. Amidst sight exams, reading list exams, modern language exams, major field exams, course work, the dissertation, a final oral exam, and a global pandemic, I have been sincerely thankful for the friendship of Joseph Gerbasi, Matt Watton, Chiara Graf, Ted Parker, Snejina Sonina, Chris Stait, Drew Davis, Emily Mohr, Rachel Mazzara, Emelen Leonard, Gianmarco Bianchini, Kate Edmond, Emily Doucet, Curtis McCord, Shelagh Pizey-Allen, Marie-France Hollier, Cam Scott, Ainslie Schroeder, Cole Woods, André Thériault, Suz, Candice Giesbrecht, Joel Mierau, Nick Liang, Rob Gardiner, and Christian Boulley. Amicus certus in re incerta cernitur, it’s true. v Back in Winnipeg a decade ago, Jane Cahill and Mark Golden first introduced me to Latin, Catullus, and many other things besides. I owe them both an enormous debt of gratitude, and I’m heartbroken I can never talk with Mark again. I am thankful for the constant love and support of my family: Zach, Beth, and Bud Gage; Jen, Gord, and the Miles/Peters family; Shelagh, Paul, Gavin, Domo Lemoine, my brother Riley, and especially my mom and dad. But I owe the most to Jayne Miles, whom I love more than I can say. The vast bulk of this thesis was researched and written at the University of Toronto’s St George Campus, the traditional land of the Huron-Wendat, the Seneca, and most recently, the Mississaugas of the Credit River. I am grateful for all I have learned here. vi Table of Contents Abstract ii Acknowledgments iv Introduction: Catullo e Ennio? 1 Chapter 1: Neoteric Questions 10 I. The first-century shift 12 II. The name and nature of neotericism 25 III. Cicero talks neoteric 29 IV. Neoteric poets, neoteric poems 38 V. The neoteric school 58 VI. Ennius the neoteric 70 Chapter 2: The Pursuit of Novelty 74 I. at non effugies meos iambos 75 II. primus Homerus apud Latinos 85 III. Being Greeker 92 Chapter 3: True Friendship 103 I. Beginning with Ennius 104 II. Gellius the poet 110 III. False friendship, archaic woe 119 IV. Ending with Ennius 128 Chapter 4: Ennius in Verona 138 I. libellus perennis 139 II. unus Italorum 149 III. cor Romanum 160 IV. fuimus ante Transpadani 168 Conclusion 184 Abbreviations and Bibliography 190 1 Introduction: “Catullo e Ennio?” We know the story well. As the Republic came crashing down in the first century BCE, Caesar and Pompey wrestling with the senate and each other for power, wealth, and glory, a triumvirate of young writers burst onto the Roman scene. Catullus, Cinna, Calvus: “these were the poets,” wrote Christian James Fordyce in 1961, “who broke violently away from the old established tradition of Latin poetry, the epic and tragic tradition of Ennius, … and brought to poetry a new style and spirit, individual, subjective, and romantic.”1 To the nascent political revolution of the 50s BCE, the neoterics responded with a revolution in sensibility and taste. While this attractive version of literary history, inaugurated by Kenneth Quinn’s combative 1959 monograph, The Catullan Revolution, never quite convinced all students of Catullus and his fragmentary peers, its influence on the field has been, and remains, wide-spread and nearly hegemonic. Dissenting voices are few2 and, despite the fact that the study of Catullus has shifted dramatically in many other respects since the 1960s,3 the just-quoted words of Fordyce seem almost perfectly current.4 Catullus and his fellow neoterics “broke violently away” from the Latin past. It’s practically a fact of life. 1 1961: xix. 2 Publications that have complicated or dissented from certain aspects (never the entirety) of this narrative include Crowther 1970, Ross 1969a, Zetzel (1983) 2007a, 2007b: 6, Hinds 1998: 74-83, Agnesini 2012: 175-81. 3 Think, for instance, of the “Catullan Question”: did Catullus himself arrange his poems as we have them? In the mid-twentieth century, the common answer to that question, which could safely be expressed without much in the way of argument, was, “no, he did not” (see, e.g., Fordyce 1961: 409-10). In recent decades, however, although skeptics remain (especially in Italy: Conte 1999: 143, Bellandi 2007: 63-96), the majority of Catullan scholars believe that Catullus arranged part, if not all, of the corpus as we know it. Particularly important “positive” scholarship on this issue includes Wiseman 1969, 1985: 130-206; Skinner 1981, 2003; Holzberg 2002; Hutchinson 2003, 2012; and especially Schafer 2020. On the history of the Catullan Question: Skinner 2007b. 4 I substantiate this claim in Chapters 2 and 3. But for starters, see the subtitle of my Introduction, which quotes the incredulous response of a Roman historian of distinction upon hearing the topic of my research. 2 This dissertation aims to tell a very different story. I do not seek to discuss Catullus’ reception of every aspect of what could be denoted by the term The Latin Past, a project which would be far too large for just one dissertation.5 My central theme is rather that poet’s reception of, from the vantage point of the late Republic, perhaps the most important figure of this past – namely, pater Ennius. My central thesis is that Catullus did not “break violently away” from Ennius: Ennius in fact had a foundational, positive influence on Catullus, who invites his corpus to be seen as developmental within an Ennian tradition and who draws on the principles, styles, and themes of Ennian poetry at various points throughout his corpus. In other words, pace Kenneth Quinn and the narrative he helped create, Catullan poetry was evolutionary, not revolutionary at Rome. My argument has been shaped, to a large degree, by recent developments in Ennian studies. From one perspective, the narrative of revolution found in Quinn and others was nearly inevitable, for a great deal of twentieth-century scholarship offered us an Ennius who indeed would have bored the daring, learned author we know in Catullus. This Ennius was a kind of poet- for-hire,6 who was famous for having written a year-by-year chronicle of Roman history (something approaching a hexametrical Ab urbe condita)7 in verse that was perhaps ingenio maximus, but definitely arte rudis (Ov.