V. The Poems (1)

Abstract

Catullus chooses to introduce his readers to the woman central to his life in the two poems about her pet sparrow. She is not there identified even by the pseudonym Lesbia, but, whatever other women there may have been in the poet’s life, there is no serious doubt that all the six love-poems in the first eleven refer to the same woman. We have come to appreciate that the first of these (2) is a hymn, the sparrow who drew Aphrodite’s carriage taking on her divinity, that it stands within Hellenistic traditions, and that the language is highly erotic in its details. There is one potent ambiguity:strouthosin Greek and its Latin equivalents,turturand the like, are used of the male sex-organ. This gives a strong ambiguity to the second poem (3), where G. Giangrande has argued that the death of the sparrow has an underlying meaning of sexual impotence. Not everyone accepts this, but there is no doubt about the ambiguities ofpasser, pipiare, mouere, gremium, andmors. The point is not that the poem is about sexual impotence, but that it must be read at more than one level.