Who Speaks the Final Lines? Catullus 62: Structure and Ritual

Abstract

POEM 62 Is ONE of two wedding poems composed by Catullus: equally important for our purposes, it is also one of Catullus' two amoebean poems, the other being, of course, poem 45. A re-examination of the structure of Catullus 62 in light of the conventions of amoebean poetry and consideration of certain features of Roman wedding ritual enable us to identify the speaker of the final lines and also shed new light on the text and interpretation of this poem. In addition to poems 45 and 62 of Catullus, we have Latin amoebean poems from Vergil (Eclogues 3, 7, 8), Horace (Odes 3.9), Calpurnius Siculus (2 and 4), and Nemesianus (2 and 4); in Greek we have Theocritus Idylls 5 and 8. Two features are characteristic of these poems: (i) two speakers engage in a singing contest in which the second tries to cap the first by variation on the words and/or ideas of the first, and (ii) although the amount of introductory material may vary, in the contest itself the two speakers are each given the same number of lines.1 In Theocritus Idyll 5 the contest proper involves Comatas and Lacon. Each sings fourteen couplets. Comatas then sings a fifteenth but Morson cuts the contest short and does not allow Lacon to respond. In Idyll 8 Menalcas and Daphnis first sing four 4-line stanzas apiece, followed by two transitional lines; and then each singer has a section of eight lines. In both of these Idylls there is a considerable amount of introductory material which is arranged with no strict symmetry. For Vergil the same rules apply. In Eclogue 3 Damoetas and Menalcas, after a certain amount of preliminary abuse, call on Palaemon to be the judge of their contest. They then each sing twelve couplets alternately. The poem ends with Palaemon declaring the match a draw. Meliboeus recounts the contest between Corydon and Thyrsis in Eclogue 7: each competitor sings six 4-line stanzas and Meliboeus concludes the poem with a couplet.