Month: February 2013

I read this today, and thought you all might enjoy another brief reminder of why we study Classics:

If we permit ourselves to compare small things with great ones (this formulation is itself a central topos of the classical tradition), we would hope to serve, in our own small way, as guides for the interested and perplexed, as the Sibyl did for Virgil’s Aeneas, and as Virgil then did for Dante, bringing to renewed life the only apparently dead and restoring a voice to those who had given us ours but had temporarily lost their own.

-from the preface to The Classical Tradition.

Seth MacFarlane really could have benefitted from studying Catullus, Horace, and Juvenal a bit more. Read this article on one of the oldest rules of satire: never punch down.

(And while we’re criticizing the Oscars, I think you all might appreciate and understand this critique entitled: “The Awful Gender Politics of ‘We Saw Your Boobs’“.)

• Catullus acts indignant, using the word “istos” (line 26, “those men”) when referring to the litter, which has a very negative connotation. Catullus has no reason to be disappointed with the litter, he is merely taking his frustrations out on the slaves instead of accepting that he made a blunder
• However, once caught in the lie his poetic style sputters with indignation; his sentences become hard to follow, his reasoning uncharacteristically off point.
• In defending himself he cedes all culpability by assuming a passive role; he says he did not make a profit in Bithynia because his praetor was an “irrumator” (“a man who forces someone to perform oral sex”, line 12) and then later explains that he lied because “fugit me ratio” (“reason escaped me”, line 29). The former demands forced submission and the latter places Catullus in the passive role by having him be the direct object and the “reason” the subject. Had he remained in the passive role, this tactic might have been successful in his recovery; however, he instead attacks Varus’ girlfriend, assuming an active role.
• In Catullus 10, Catullus reacts to being caught in a lie by shifting the blame to the girl who catches him. Catullus achieves this by muddling his words and using accusatory language.
• Another way Catullus chooses to show his reaction to the reader is through the two dialogues, his own internal one and the one he is having with the girl, which he parallels throughout the entire poem
• However, Catullus’s aggression is weakened by the fact that he chooses never to address Varus or his girl in the vocative. The litotes he uses in line 4 when insulting the girl also adds to his circumlocution…
• His verbal attack on the girl continues in line 33, where the elision in the phrase “male et molesta” (“awfully troublesome”) highlights the alliteration of the m’s, creating a mumbling effect. Additionally, there is repetition of s sounds in “insulsa” “molesta,” and “vivis” in this line, which creates a hissing effect. Put together, these auditory cues add to Catullus’s slander while simultaneously making it sound more indirect.
• By adding this insult in a passing phrase, Catullus makes it more subtle, preventing the reader from focusing on Catullus’s harsh, crude words.
• The poet first attempts to defend himself to the girl, but stylistic choices such as his convoluted word order and some of his word choice render his defense somewhat ineffective. In the last two lines of the poem, however, Catullus goes on the offense against the girl who caught him in his lie. There, interestingly, it is his stylistic choices – specifically, his word choice – that make his insults all the more effective.
• Catullus loses his power when his lie is caught by the girl, and Catullus 10 is an attempt to recover it. To Catullus, words are power, and when he is first caught, Catullus stumbles over his words and loses his power
• In Catullus #10, the poet reacts to his being caught in his lie with indignation, as evidenced by the stylistic choices of his stumbling response and the defensive counterattack with which he follows.