This most recent volume in an occasional series that began in 1974 with A.J. Woodman and D. West's Quality and Pleasure in Latin Poetry contains a set of ten commissioned pieces on Catullus' poetry by selected scholars, in which ‘contributors have been free to choose their own themes and treatments’ (p. x). Not surprisingly, the authors' liberty to choose their subjects means that some poems and approaches are better represented than others. In this case, greater attention is devoted to the longer poems (61–8) than to the other parts of the corpus; these are central to D. Nelis (64), W. (65), D.Q. (66), M. Gale (68), P. Hardie (63, 64 and 66) and K.S. Myers (62, 64, 66).
Several authors (Nelis, Hardie, Myers and D.Q.) share an interest in both poetics (especially intertextuality) and Catullus' (as well as his models' and successors') engagement with contemporary politics. Nelis argues that the increased attention granted to historicising approaches in recent research on the Hellenistic masters (especially Callimachus and Apollonius) should encourage Catullan scholars to reconsider this aspect of Catullus' reception of these poets. Adducing recent work that has argued for political resonance of the Argonautic saga in Ptolemaic Alexandria, Nelis suggests that Catullus 64's recognised intertextual relationship with Apollonius' Argonautica could well have involved an engagement also with the political and cultural aspects of the Hellenistic epic. Hardie and Myers elucidate the extensive and complex intertextual relationship both Virgil and Ovid established with Catullus' poems. Both articles lead the reader through a series of passages in which these two Roman poets of the next generation employ allusions to Catullus, especially to 64, 66 and the wedding poems, in a manner that shows a keen sensitivity to the recurring patterns and themes in Catullus' own poetry. As Nelis did in regard to Catullus and his Hellenistic models, Hardie and Myers are concerned to explore how both Virgil and Ovid at times politicise and historicise their allusions to Catullus; Hardie's discussion of the relationship between Eclogue 4 and Catullus 64 (pp. 216–18) can usefully be read as a response to Nelis' article. D.Q. takes a historicising approach to aspects of poem 66, Catullus' translation of Callimachus' Coma Berenices, in relation to both contemporary Roman politics and the culture of Ptolemaic Egypt. Accepting the traditional identification of Q. Hortensius Hortalus as the benefactor for whom Catullus' translation was produced, D.Q. suggests that the subject matter of the poem may have been meant to reflect ‘a general interest in the Ptolemies connected with the current involvement of Hortensius in the efforts to restore Ptolemy XII to the throne’ (p. 161). In a separate argument, he defends Callimachean authorship of the lines translated by Catullus in 66.79–88, considered by some scholars to be the Roman poet's original contribution, making a case for the content of the lines as ‘thoroughly Ptolemaic’ (p. 173), especially as they focus on themes that draw on elements of the cult of Arsinoe-Aphrodite.
Gale's article is also concerned with Catullan intertextuality; she suggestively argues for an allusive relationship between poem 68 and Aeschylus' Agamemnon. While a direct and sustained correspondence between the two works may be difficult to discern with confidence, Gale's reading encourages us to consider seriously the possibility that Catullus would have recognised – and may well have wished to evoke for his readers – a similarity between the complicated moral and emotional situations and feelings (of suffering, personal responsibility and guilt) he wished to convey in poem 68 and those prominent in Aeschylus' tragedy.
W.'s sensitive exploration of how Catullus' contemporaries might have read poem 65 when encountering it for the first time brings out well Catullus' unusual ability to incorporate densely learned allusions to a number of Greek and Roman poets, including quite possibly Pindar, into a poem that simultaneously presents itself as a moving and personal meditation on the linked themes of forgetfulness, memory and grief. F. Cairns, like W., is concerned with the interpretative challenges faced by Catullus' contemporary readers. In his reading of poem 45, he argues that the educated Roman reader's expectations in regard to generic classification would ensure a straightforward (non-ironic) interpretation of the lovers' exchange. Cairns argues that the poem is an example of an ‘oaristys’, or ‘wooing’; he notes that the term has no ancient authority but insists that its existence and primary elements would be recognised by Roman readers: ‘Once its readers had identified it as an oaristys and had perceived from its first two words that neither of its protagonists is the poet himself, they would not have anticipated that Catullus’ treatment of the wooing would be ironic or humorous' (p. 128).
D. Feeney focuses on the relationship between representation and textuality in the polymetrics (1–60). Through nuanced close readings, especially of poems 1 and 22, he demonstrates how Catullus simultaneously highlights and problematises for his reader the relationship between the physical poetry book and its contents: ‘Catullus … keeps reminding us that our only access to a poet is via his text, a medium which he is at pains to depict as at once compellingly vivid and evocative and yet profoundly opaque in its mimetic dimension’ (p. 43). He stresses also that this particular feature of Catullan poetics makes itself felt only in the polymetrics; and his concluding remarks are usefully read alongside the articles by G.O. Hutchinson and K. Gutzwiller, both of which are concerned, in different ways, with the arrangement and divisions of the Catullan corpus as a whole. Hutchinson explores the similarities and differences between the different parts of the collection (divided into two sets of poems he considers author-circulated, 1–60 and 65–116, plus 61–4, which he views as a series placed together in the manuscripts) in relation to the expression of sexual desire. His analysis, like Feeney's, produces evidence of significant differences between the two ‘authorial’ collections 1–60 and 65–116, while his survey of the entire corpus, including 61–4, in regard to subjects and objects of desire, also suggests new insights into Catullus' wide-ranging interest in gender. Gutzwiller aims to demonstrate that several poems most often identified as programmatic and transitional, primarily between but also within parts of the collection, also regularly allude to key epigrams, serving similar roles, in Meleager's Garland. Her study not only supports the view that Catullus' corpus as we have it is an author-edited collection but also encourages a greater appreciation of Meleager, himself both poet and anthologiser, as a model for Catullus as poet and editor.
The book's epilogue constitutes a separate essay in its own right, in which the editors provide a survey of trends in Catullan scholarship since the 1950s, situate the articles in the current collection in relation both to new directions for Catullan research and to continued attention to questions of central importance (e.g. the difficulties inherent in establishing and interpreting a text whose transmission is seriously corrupt) and simultaneously offer their own critical appraisal of individual contributions.
A refreshing aspect of the collection is the authors' willingness to engage in speculation about issues of significance for Catullan readers where definitive conclusions based on clear evidence are unavailable. Especially interesting in this regard are the discussions concerning the relationship between Catullus and Helvius Cinna by both Feeney (pp. 36–7, 46) and W. (pp. 145–6), and Hutchinson's appendix on ‘Catullus’ Books and Archilochus' (pp. 75–8).
While such collections do not aim to be comprehensive, there are subjects one might have expected or desired to see included. Most noticeable, perhaps, in a book described by its editors as a sequel and companion to an earlier volume on Horace, is the absence of an essay that deals with the relationship between these two lyric poets. Still, readers not only of Catullus but of Greek and Latin poetry more widely will learn much from the rich, if not altogether varied, articles in this volume.
