Catullus on bridging the gender divide for Colonia

Disparaging men’s sexuality contributes to the social construction of the gender divide. The Roman poet Catullus, writing about 60 BGC, considered this matter personally in relation to a fellow-citizen of his home city of Verona. That fellow-citizen was utterly failing to fulfill his sexual responsibilities to his young wife. Catullus’s proposed action for Colonia superficially adheres to the obtuse, yet common, penal principle of dysfunctional social groups: “the beatings will continue until morale improves.” However, with keen insight into bridges and connecting, Catullus subtly identified and sought to remedy a structural gender problem underlying men’s sexual failures.

Catullus harshly disparaged his fellow-citizen for a sexless marriage. Sex between lively, loving persons is sensual. According to Catullus, his fellow-citizen is wholly insensate:

He’s a most tasteless man and doesn’t sense to the extent of
a two-year-old child, asleep in his father’s rocking arms.
Though he’s married to a young woman, the freshest flower,
a young woman more frisky than a tender little goat,
needing to be watched more carefully than the ripest grapes,
he lets her play around as she pleases. He doesn’t make the smallest bang,
doesn’t raise himself in his part, but lies like a soft tree-trunk
in a trench, hamstrung by a Ligurian axe,
feeling everything as much as if it never existed at all.
The dullard is like that. He sees nothing, he hears nothing,
what he himself is, whether he is or is not, that he doesn’t even know.

{ insulsissimus est homo, nec sapit pueri instar
bimuli tremula patris dormientis in ulna.
cui cum sit viridissimo nupta flore puella
et puella tenellulo delicatior haedo,
adservanda nigerrimis diligentius uvis,
ludere hanc sinit ut lubet, nec pili facit uni,
nec se sublevat ex sua parte, sed velut alnus
in fossa Liguri iacet suppernata securi,
tantundem omnia sentiens quam si nulla sit usquam,
talis iste merus stupor nil videt, nihil audit,
ipse qui sit, utrum sit an non sit, id quoque nescit. }[1]

Husbands oblivious to their beautiful wives are scarcely alive. Compassion for them is nearly inconceivable with ordinary sense.

Ya’an-Kangding Highway Bridge Crossing the Dadu River in China

Catullus figured his sexually failing fellow-citizen as a dilapidated bridge for Colonia. His poem begins with a direct address to Colonia:

O Colonia, you who desire to folic on a long bridge
and are ready to dance, but fear the unfit
legs of the little bridge standing on its reused wood —
that it might fall supine and sink into the encompassing mud.
May you get a good bridge made fit for your passion,
on which could be undertaken even sacred service for the dance god,
if you would give me, Colonia, the gift of greatest laughter.

{ O Colonia, quae cupis ponte ludere longo,
et salire paratum habes, sed vereris inepta
crura ponticuli axulis stantis in redivivis,
ne supinus eat cavaque in palude recumbat
sic tibi bonus ex tua pons libidine fiat,
in quo vel Salisubsili sacra suscipiantur:
munus hoc mihi maximi da, Colonia, risus. }[2]

Colonia is a young, lively, passionate wife and a place with a faulty bridge. Colonia etymologically centers on farming / plowing. Her bridge’s faults — being small and weak, with unfit legs and old wood — suggest her husband’s sexual failure. Colonia’s bridge is both a bridge and her husband’s genitals failing to bridge the gender divide.[3]

Like the double referents of Colonia and the bridge, the gift that Catullus personally requests from Colonia — “the gift of greatest laughter {munus maximi risus}” — also has double referents. The subsequent four verses elaborate on one referent and hint at another:

From your bridge I want a certain fellow-citizen of mine
to go headlong into the mud, by both head and feet tumbling,
truly where the whole wine-vat and stinking swamp
is the most discolored and deep abyss.

{ quendam municipem meum de tuo volo ponte
ire praecipitem in lutum per caputque pedesque,
verum totius ut lacus putidaeque paludis
lividissima maximeque est profunda vorago. }

A man tumbling off a bridge could be “the gift of greatest laughter” only in a vicious and narrow sense. Scholars have rationalized the man tumbling off the bridge as a propitiatory sacrifice to make the bridge satisfactory for Colonia.[4] That interpretation lessens the viciousness and eliminates a fitting context for laughter. In his diction elaborating on his fellow-citizen falling from the bridge, Catullus uses language associated with disparaging the vaginas of some old women.[5] Compared to penises, vaginas typically are highly and warmly regarded in ancient literature. For the passionate and outrageous Catullus, “the gift of greatest laughter” plausibly encompasses sex with his fellow-citizen’s wife.[6] Catullus thus associates the husband-cuckold with unappealing sexual intercourse and himself with appealing sexual intercourse. The double referents of “the gift of greatest laughter {munus maximi risus}” are thrusting the husband from the bridge and having sex with the husband’s lovely wife.

Akashi Kaikyo Bridge in Japan

Showing unusual concern for the sexually inert husband, Catullus figured his own strong, independent sexuality as redemptive. Catullus explained to Colonia that he himself would from the back side thrust her bent-over husband from the bridge:

I want to thrust him bent over right now from your bridge,
if I can, to arouse him suddenly from foolish lethargy
and to leave behind a backwards spirit in the rank filth,
as a she-mule would leave behind an iron shoe in a tenacious abyss.

{ nunc eum volo de tuo ponte mittere pronum,
si pote stolidum repente excitare veternum
et supinum animum in gravi derelinquere caeno,
ferream ut soleam tenaci in voragine mula. }

Men’s tonic masculinity can confer the seminal blessing of abundant life, avert sickness and death, and even arouse a man from sexual lethargy. Myths of gender oppression imagine women being compelled to become domestic service animals with iron shoes on their hooves so that they can undertake heavy burdens. Catullus understood that men such as his fellow-citizen actually experience such a mulish position. The tenacious abyss abstractly represents oppressive demands gynocentric society imposes on men. To shed their lethargy and become fully alive, men must leave behind the iron shoes, the iron shackles, and the iron cages imposed on them, along with other metaphorical fecal matter. Catullus isn’t being gratuitously cruel to his fellow-citizen, but imagining himself providing harsh, necessary character reformation.[7]

Men’s impotence has long been regarded as an epic disaster. One should not simply blame the man-victim, nor of course rape him and thrust him from a bridge into the mud. Like everything else in the cosmos, men’s impotence is socially constructed within structures of dominance and oppression. Difficulties in bridging the gender divide are structural. Unsatisfying bridges, ideologically weakened by institutions of penal punishment and myths of patriarchy and misogyny, cruelly oppress women and men. Women and men must help to arouse men and to liberate men from the iron shoes weighing them down. Catullus imagined liberating a man. You should, too!

We don’t need to build bridges. The bridges we have are sufficient for us. We merely need to deploy our bridges well.

Golden Gate Bridge in California, USA

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Notes:

[1] Catullus, Poems {Carmina}, Poem {Carmen} 17, vv. 12-22, Latin text (modified insubstantially) from Thomson (1997), my English translation. Many translations of Carmen 17, e.g. Smithers (1894), Burton (1894), Cornish (1904), Rau (1999), and Kline (2001), are freely available online.

I’ve translated “blackest grapes {nigerrimae uvae}” as “ripest grapes.” In context, the blackest grapes mean the most desirable grapes. While skin-color racism existed in ancient Rome, it apparently didn’t color the meaning of this phrase here.

Catullus wrote Carmen 17 in the rare Priapean meter. That meter “combines two ‘aeolic’ cola, a glyconic followed by a pherecratean.” Morgan (2010) p. 35. Some other verses in Priapean meter are attributed to Catullus:

This enclosure I dedicate and consecrate to you, Priapus,
at Lampsacus, where your house and sacred grove are, Priapus,
since you are chiefly worshiped in the cities of the coast
of the Hellespont, which is richer in oysters than other coasts.

{ Hunc lucum tibi dedico consecroque, Priape,
qua domus tua Lampsaci quaque silva Priape,
nam te praecipue in suis urbibus colit ora
Hellespontia ceteris ostriosior oris. }

Here oysters perhaps alludes to men’s testicles. The only other surviving text in Priapean meter attributed Catullus is: “there is the desire to lick from my … {– ⌣ – ⌣⌣ de meo ligurrire libido est}.” Catullus, Fragments 2 and 3, Latin text of Eisenhut (1956) and English translation (modified) from Cornish, Postgate & Mackail (1913) pp. 182-3. Id., like most scholars, regards the attribution of these verses to Catullus as doubtful.

Catullus wrote three other poems “focalized through the generic perspective of Priapus.” Uden (2007) abstract. These poems are Carmina 16, “I with my dick will bang up your crapper and stuff your mouth {Pedicabo ego vos et irrumabo}”; 46, “Porcius and Socration, two left hands {Porci et Socration, duae sinistrae}”; and 57, “O rem ridiculam, Cato, et iocosam {O, Cato, what a ridiculous and funny thing}.” Priapus poems (Priapea / Priapeia) of antiquity critically concern men’s sexuality and often parody grotesque stereotypes of men’s genitals and men’s gender. For some relatively uncritical analysis of these poems, Uden (2007).

In one Priapea, Priapus appears as a crude wooden form protecting a bountiful garden from thieves. Men are gender-associated with crudeness and gender-directed to relatively dangerous jobs. This Priapus, however, maintained his self-esteem and recognized his importance. He explains to a traveler:

On me is placed in spring a decorated garland,
on me in the fervid sun red grain,
on me sweet grapes with green vines,
on me an olive hardened by frigid cold.
From my pastures the tender little she-goat
carries to the city her udders matured with milk,
and from my sheepfold the plump lamb
sends home the strong hand heavy with coins,
and a young calf amid its mother’s mooing
spills forth its blood before the gods’ temples.

{ Mihi corolla picta vere ponitur,
mihi rubens arista sole fervido,
mihi virente dulcis uva pampino,
mihi gelante oliva cocta frigore.
meis capella delicata pascuis
in urbem adulta lacte portat ubera,
meisque pinguis agnus ex ovilibus
gravem domum remittit aere dexteram,
tenerque matre mugiente buculus
deum profundit ante templa sanguinem. }

The traveler, not a thief, apparently desires Priapus sexually, or the fruits of the garden. However, in another horror of castration culture, Priapus is violently castrated:

Traveler, you therefore should revere this god
and hold your hands high. This advantages you,
for see, a fierce penis stands prepared.
“I’d like, by Pollux” you say, but by Pollux, see the bailiff
is coming! With his strong arm he breaks off
my penis, which becomes an apt cudgel for his right hand.

{ Proin, viator, hunc deum vereberis
manumque sursum habebis. hoc tibi expedit;
parata namque trux stat ecce mentula.
“velim pol” inquis at pol ecce vilicus
venit, valente cui revulsa bracchio
fit ista mentula apta clava dexterae. }

Priapea 2 (85 Bücheler, from the Appendix Vergiliana), Latin text from Fairclough (1918) vv. 6-15 and 16-21 (of 21), my English translation, benefiting from that of id. and those of Burton & Smithers (1890), who wrongly attribute the poem to Catullus. Here are some Latin reading notes for Priapea 2. The phrase “and hold your hands high {manumque sursum habebis}” could mean “keep your hands off the fruits growing close to the ground,” but hands held high is also a gesture of reverence. Similarly, “for see, a fierce penis stands prepared {parata namque trux stat ecce mentula}” has an erotic, non-masochistic sense. In contrast, the bailiff’s “apt cudgel {apta clava}” is brutalizing figure of the penis and purely punitive. Priapea 2 (85 Bücheler, from the Appendix Vergiliana) isn’t part of a poetic collection conventionally known as Carmina Priapea.

Priapea 2 signals the expansion of castration culture over time. The generic trajectory of Priapus poems regrettably droops toward infertility:

The generic narrative that is developed for the priapeum moves from the fertile and productive visions of nature in the genre’s code models to a partially urban landscape suffused with artificiality, leisure, indulgence and infertility.

Uden (2010) p. 215. Literary scholars should recognize that castration culture and associated infertility is socially constructed and not immutable or inevitable. Authors such as Catullus, Maximianus, and Rabelais have sought to promote penal justice and renew appreciation for men’s penises.

Subsequent quotes above are sourced similarly from Catullus’s Carmen 17. Those quotes are vv. 1-7 (O Colonia, you who desire…), 8-11 (From your bridge I want a certain fellow-citizen…), 23-6 (I want to thrust him bent over…). The above quotes thus cover all the verses of Carmen 17.

[2] Despite obvious figurative use of “Colonia,” Colonia has tended to be interpreted only as a specific, real town:

Colonia: usually identified since Guarinus with the modern village of Cologna, a few miles eastward from Verona, the marshy situation of which fits well with the description in the text.

Merrill (1893) p. 37, note to v. 1. More recently, scholars have identified Colonia with Vorona. Watson (2021) p. 38, with review of relevant scholarly literature in footnotes 6-7. Much more important is Colonia’s double referent as a place with a bridge and the wife of Catullus’s fellow-citizen.

Salisubsili, translated above as “dance god,” is not otherwise known. That word apparently is the genitive singular of Salisubsilus, It might be a variant of Salisubsalus or Salisubsalius. The name of this god seems to be rooted in dance: “to jump {salire / salio}.” Cf. Catullus, Carmen 17.2. Salisubsilus is perhaps associated with the god Mars. Salii were priests who did ritual war dances. They are known to have existed in Rome and Verona. Merrill (1893) p. 37, note to v. 6, and Adamik (2019) p. 321.

[3] Rudd observed:

There is something very strange about crura. Merrill tells us what it is. “The noun,” he says, “is unique in this humorous application to inanimate objects, pes being commonly used in such connections.” In other words your legs are crura, but the legs of your chair are not.

Rudd (1959) pp. 239-40. Rudd astutely recognized the bridge as representing the husband’s sexual failure, and Colonia, the sexual vigorous wife. Watson asked:

In making a bridge central to the mise en scène of a piece involving the jesting humiliation of a husband, is Catullus alluding, in a kind of Alexandrian footnote, to Greek γεφυρισμός, derived from γέφυρα ‘bridge’, in its transferred sense of ‘subjecting someone to mockery and abuse’?

Watson (2021) p. 39. That’s possible abstractly, but the bridge’s most specific alternate referent is best regarded as the husband’s genitals.

[4] E.g. Quinn (1969) p. 24, Morgan (2010) pp. 39-40. For additional relevant references, Watson (2021) pp. 38-9. A propitiatory sacrifice suggests piety rather than laughter, at least in traditional Greco-Roman religion.

[5] Specific words Catullus uses invoke disparaging figures of the vaginas of particular old women. Consider “mud {lutum}.” In a classical poem, a man harshly disparages his impotent, “villainous penis {scelestus penis}.” He condemns his penis to a highly unattractive woman — “a two-toothed woman-friend resembling old Romulus {bidens amica Romuli senis memor}.” Like Catullus’s aim for his fellow-citizen, this man’s penis faces mud, which figures the vagina of the old, unattractive woman: “you will immerse your wandering penis-head in her noisy mud {vagum sonante merseris luto caput}.” Priapea 4 (83 Bücheler, from the Appendix Vergiliana), incipit “What is this strange occurrence {Quid hoc novi est}?”, vv. 19 (villainous penis), 26 (two-toothed woman friend…), 37 (you will immerse), Latin text of Fairclough (1918), my English translation. Watson credited this reference to a referee. The referee suggested that the verse from Priapea 4 “may be indebted to and consciously ‘stain’ the concluding lines of Catullus 17.” Watson (2021) p. 50, ft. 84. Whatever the specific case, the figure of mud in relation to the vagina (or possibly the anus) seems more general.

In relation to the “deep abyss {profunda vorago}” of Catullus’s Carmen 17, Priapea 4 (83 Bücheler, from the Appendix Vergiliana), v. 32, refers to a “deep trench {profunda fossa}” in figuring the old, unattractive woman’s vagina. Sourced as previously. Catullus 17.18-9 refers to a soft tree-trunk in a “trench {fossa}” in an apparent figure of the husband’s sexual failure. In harsh invective against the eunuch Baeticus, Martial disparages him for not engaging sexually with men’s anuses. In a contrast with masculine anuses, Martial refers to the vagina as “the feminine abyss {femineum barathrum}.” Martial, Epigrams 3.81.1. The association of whirlpool / abyss {vorago} with women is probably rooted in the ancient Greek myth of the women-monsters Scylla and Charybdis.

[6] Catullus in another poem describes an unfeeling husband as a mule. In particular, he addresses Lesbia’s husband: “you mule, not feeling anything {mule, nihil sentis}.” Carmen 83.3. Catullus loves Lesbia. See, e.g. Carmen 92. Zarker argues that Lesbia’s husband, Q. Metellus Celer, is also the mule of Carmen 17. That would make Colonia a code name for Lesbia, and create a stronger association between the “gift of greatest laughter” and Catullus desire to cuckold the husband / fellow-citizen of Carmen 17. Identifying Q. Metellus Celer as the husband in Carmen 17 isn’t necessary for reasonably interpreting the gift as having a referent to cuckolding the husband.

[7] For simplicity of exposition I equate the ego of Carmen 17 with Catullus. In the surviving anthology of Catullus’s poetry, Carmen 17 is paired with Carmen 16. The ego of Carmen 16 expresses strong, independent sexuality. That ego is plausibly understood not as Catullus, but as Priapic persona that Catullus critically assumes. Uden (2007). The ego of Carmen 17 might similarly be a persona dramatically acting to change a man’s gender position. That ego could be a sophisticated exponent of Priapus in a particular literary representation. Cf. Kloss (1998) pp. 64-6.

In Carmen 17, the husband, Catullus’s fellow-citizen, has been interpreted as both an anti-Priapus figure and a Priapus figure. Anti-Priapus, Morgan (2010) pp. 36-40; Priapus, Watson (2021) pp. 43-51. Those starkly contrasting interpretations highlight lack of critical understanding of Priapus.

[images] (1) Ya’an-Kangding Highway Bridge Crossing the Dadu River in China. From photo made on June 13, 2019. Source image thanks to 来斤小仓鼠吧 and Wikimedia Commons. (2) Akashi Kaikyo Bridge in Japan. From photo made on June 26, 2005. Shared by Aurelio Asiain on flicker under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 2.0 license. (3) Golden Gate Bridge in California, USA. Photo made on October 12, 2014. Source image thanks to Wa17gs and Wikimedia Commons.

References:

Adamik, Tamás. 2020. “Vocabulary of Catullus’ Poems: Hapax Legomena as Vulgar Words.” Acta Antiqua Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae .59 (1-4): 317–25.

Burton, Richard Francis, and Leonard C. Smithers. 1890. Envocation to Priapus Priapeia, or, Sportive Epigrams on Priapus. Cosmopoli. 1995 reprint.

Cornish, F. W., J. P. Postgate, and J. W. Mackail, ed. and trans. 1913. Catullus. Tibullus. Pervigilium Veneris. Revised by G. P. Goold (1988). Loeb Classical Library 6. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Fairclough, H. Rushton, revised by G. P. Goold. 1918. Virgil. Aeneid: Books 7-12. Appendix Vergiliana. Loeb Classical Library 64. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Kloss, Gerrit. 1998. “Catullus Brückengedicht (c. 17).” Hermes. 126 (1): 58–79.

Merrill, Elmer Truesdell. 1893. Catullus. Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press.

Morgan, Llewelyn. 2010. Musa Pedestris: Metre and Meaning in Roman Verse. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Quinn, Kenneth. 1969. “Practical Criticism: A Reading of Propertius I. 21 and Catullus 17.” Greece & Rome. 16 (1): 19–29.

Rudd, Niall. 1959. “Colonia and Her Bridge: A Note on the Structure of Catullus 17.” Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association. 90: 238–42.

Thomson, D. F. S. 1997. Catullus. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Uden, James. 2007. “Impersonating Priapus.” The American Journal of Philology. 128 (1): 1-26.

Uden, James. 2010. “The Vanishing Gardens of Priapus.” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology. 105: 189–219. Alternate source.

Watson, Lindsay. 2021. “Catullus’ Priapean Poem ( c . 17).” Antichthon. 55: 35–52.

Zarker, John W. 1969. “Mule, Nihil Sentis (Catullus 83 and 17).” The Classical Journal. 64 (4): 172–77.

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