SYLLECTA CLASSICA 21 (2010): 65–92

CATULLUS 8 AND CATULLAN IAMBOS

Donald E. Lavigne
Abstract: In this paper, I account for Catullus’ use of the choliambic
meter in poem 8 and show how his redeployment of this iambic
meter impacts our understanding of genre. Seeing meter as an in-
tegral formal feature of the genre of Iambos, I argue that Catullus’
use of this meter encodes generic features. In poem 8, those features
are seen to be iambic distance and the concomitant iambic voice,
characterized by a self-conscious multiplicity.*

καὶ μ’ οὔτ’ ἰάμβων οὔτε τερπωλέων μέλει

“And neither iamboi nor enjoyments are a concern for me."

Archilochus, fr. 215 W

at non effugies meos iambos

“But you will not escape my iambi.”

Catullus, fr. 3

INTRODUCTION

The two fragments that comprise this article’s epigraph offer tantaliz-
ing clues as to the nature of the genre Iambos. The Archilochus fragment,
itself in iambic trimeters, announces the poet’s disavowal of Iambos
and the fragment of Catullus, a hendecasyllabic line, signals the poet’s
intention to attack someone in iambics. The two poems raise a similar
question—what do iambi/iamboi have to do with the poems in which
they occur? For both Archilochus and Catullus, the answer to this ques-

* This paper greatly benefited from a lively discussion when it was first presented in
Oklahoma City at the 2010 meeting of CAMWS. I would like to thank the panelists,
Tom Hawkins, Allen Miller, Allen Romano and David Smith, and members of the
audience for their stimulating discussion. It is a testament to their dedication to the
66 SYLLECTA CLASSICA 21 (2010)

tion is regularly intertwined with the question of genre.1 Responding

to the problems of meter and genre raised by Catullus fr. 3, Stephen
Heyworth has recently argued that the fragment is indicative of the way
in which the poet inscribes Iambos into his hendecasyllabics (125–130).
In fact, according to Heyworth, the flexibility of Catullus’ treatment of
genre becomes a hallmark of the poet’s neoteric style, creating tension
between the meter of a given poem and its content. For Heyworth, the
iambic genre (in Catullus’ hands) has abandoned its eponymous meter
and become a collection of thematic features, loosely organized under
the category invective. A poem like Catullus 8, hardly invective yet writ-
ten in the choliambic meter, somewhat ironically, does not qualify as
Iambos. According to Heyworth, the meter of poem 8 sets up a generic
expectation of invective upon which Catullus does not deliver (121). In
this paper, I would like to question the central assumption that makes
Heyworth’s argument possible—namely, that content has eclipsed meter
as the basic feature that constitutes the iambic genre—and argue that
there is a third feature that bridges meter and content in Iambos. That
third term is to be found in the voice of the iambic poet persona, which
through its multivocality creates a complex literary world wherein reflec-
tion upon the poem’s genre is encouraged.
The complexity of the iambic voice so conceived is an integral fea-
ture of Catullus’ iambi. An understanding of this third term, voice, is
fundamental to an understanding of Catullus’ iambic poetics because
voice figures so prominently in the genre throughout its history. In fact,
it will be a central tenet of my argument that one of the most important
features of the iambic genre from its inception is to be found in the dis-
tance evident between the narrating voice (what I call the poet-persona)
and the author. As even a cursory reading of the two iambic fragments
quoted above suggests, the distance between poet-persona and author

scholarly community that all of my fellow panelists read and improved this final version
of the paper. Thanks are also due to my colleague, David Larmour, who generously
read and commented upon this paper (among many others). Throughout this paper,
I use Iambos (capitalized) to indicate the iambic genre.
1
  On archaic Greek Iambos, the classic study is West 1974, 22–39; see also Bowie,
2–3 (with discussion of the Archilochus fragment) and the references cited at p. 2 n.
4, and, most recently, Rotstein 3–24 with an excellent discussion of this fragment at
pp. 151–66. On Catullus, more below.
 LAVIGNE: CATULLUS 8 AND CATULLAN IAMBOS 67

is highlighted in an iambic context.2 Furthermore, this distancing effect

of the iambic voice, as a feature of the text (or performance) of iambic
poetry, is intimately related to the sound of the poetry. Thus, follow-
ing Fredric Jameson, I will argue that Iambos, as a genre, encodes the
potential for such distance in its very form. The speaker who speaks in
iambics necessarily creates the aural conditions under which such an
effect becomes possible.
Therefore, in the remainder of this article, I will develop a reading of
Catullus 8 that attempts to account for its iambic form. While I admit
that offering yet another analysis of poem 8 might seem unnecessary
given the critical attention that has been lavished upon it, I neverthe-
less believe that the implications of my reading are significant for our
understanding of the entire corpus.3 First, and central to my immediate
purpose, I will provide a fuller understanding of Catullus’ relationship
to the genre of Iambos. Second, my arguments will necessarily work in
reverse, suggesting some ways this reading of Catullus may alter our un-
derstanding of Greek Iambos. Finally, and from a broader perspective, this
paper will begin to articulate a new way of understanding Catullus’ use
of his Greek models that accounts for Hellenistic and archaic influence,
2 
Both fragments foreground the relationship between speaker and genre. The
Archilochus fragment, whether Archilochus is the speaker or someone else (we can’t
be sure), highlights the relationship between voice and genre—who is this “I” who is
not concerned with iambics in an iambic poem. The Catullus fragment, more likely
in the voice of “Catullus” (cf. Porphyrion, ad Hor. Carm. 1.16.22), also highlights the
relationship between voice and genre by focusing on my iambics in a hendecasyllabic
poem, necessitating a reflection upon the generic mode of this persona; more on this
process in Catullus below.
3
  Poem 8 has been an important poem in Catullan criticism, largely because it is
positioned, from the point of view of narrative progression, at the center of the Lesbia
“novel”; see Wray, ch. 1, esp. p. 13. Most individual studies of the poem assume this
centrality within the Lesbia cycle as the starting point for their analyses; these studies
can be divided along two critical lines, which attribute either a serious or comic tone
to the poem. Fordyce’s introduction to the poem is a classic statement of the tragic
version of this line of interpretation (110), while Morris is still fundamental on the
comic interpretation. For an overview of the critical history, see Thomson, 226–27
with the references cited on pp. 228–29. No study, as far as I know, deals with the
generic impact of Catullus’ use of the choliambic meter in general; when the meter
is mentioned, it is typically to stress humor or vehemence (depending on the critical
position ascribed to by the scholar) as an aspect of the tone of the poem.
68 SYLLECTA CLASSICA 21 (2010)

the elegant and visceral aspects of his poetry, not as separate poles, but
as mutually determined and complementary generic features. Needless
to say, a full treatment of the second and third aims would require much
more space than the confines of this article will allow. Therefore, although
these parts of my argument will be necessarily brief, they are offered in
order to begin the process of articulating a much more global reading.

IAMBI IN CATULLUS: THE COMMUNIS OPINIO

Before turning to the analysis of poem 8, it will be useful to exam-
ine Catullus’ usage of the term iambus as well as several other iambic
poems in the corpus. Catullus himself uses the term iambi to refer to
his own poetry on four occasions, three times within his collection as
we have it and once, as we have just seen, outside.4 On the surface these
references seem to confirm Heyworth’s definition of Catullan Iambos.
Kenneth Quinn’s summary of the earlier communis opinio on the subject
is parallel: “Many hold . . . that C[atullus] uses iambi as a description
of a genre, not a meter” (1996, 199 ad 36.5). Understandably, Quinn
here elides one of the most fundamental formal characteristics of ancient
genres in order to make sense of Catullus’ usage.5 Indeed, Heyworth and
Quinn illustrate the fact that many have been and still are content with
this elision and argue that Iambos as genre, especially after Archilochus,
depends less on metrical and other formal considerations than it does
on the content and thematic material of a given poem.6
The poem upon which Quinn comments is itself a hendecasyllabic
poem and, since its tone is sufficiently aggressive, it seems to confirm
4 
In the collection: 36.5, 40.2, 54.6; on which, see Newman, 49, Wray, 177 and
Heyworth 125–30. Each use of iambi is modified with the first person possessive
adjective except at 36.5; and here, the context makes it clear that Catullus is referring
to his own poems. It seems that Catullus has a special interest in highlighting his own
iambic poems; more on this issue below.
5
  On the centrality of meter to the ancient conception of genre, see Farrell, 383–86.
As I hope to make clear in the course of this paper, it is not my intent to argue for the
equation of meter and genre, but merely to emphasize the generic information that
meter can encode. As Farrell, 387 points out in regard to Horace, ancient poets were
acutely aware of (and exploited) the generic information that meter could encode.

With regard to Catullus, most notable is Newman; on whom, see below. On thematic
6 

material in the iambographic tradition in Greece, see Rosen 1988, esp. 9–35.
 LAVIGNE: CATULLUS 8 AND CATULLAN IAMBOS 69

his broad construal of iambi. In other words, the referent of iambi at

36.5 can be taken to include reference to the poem in which it occurs.7
While I am sympathetic to such a broad construal, it seems to me that
Catullus immediately problematizes this sense of iambi in the follow-
ing poem, which far outweighs, in terms of iambic force, 36’s literary
critical dig at Volusius, even with its threats of burnt cacata charta.8
7 
Heyworth, 125–26 argues against the identification of iambi at 36.5 with the poem
in which it occurs, while Newman, 49 allows for this possibility. I would argue that
Catullus’ wit in this poem suggests such an identification. First, Catullus divorces his
iambi from his girl’s notion of the electissima pessimi poetae/scripta (“choicest writings
of the worst poet,” ll. 6–7), which she presumably equated with Catullus’ iambi. The
poem requires a necessary reflection on the meaning of pessimi. From Catullus’ point
of view in the poem, the adjective means “aesthetically worst”; from the girl’s point
of view, the adjective means “ethically worst” (a sense that Catullus will recharge in
his second use of the adjective at l. 9; see Wray, 76). Furthermore, in a discussion of
poem 36, Clarke, 578–80 amasses parallels that suggest the burning of an author’s
work is a kind of sympathetic magic that is meant to do harm to that author. Given
the attack on Volusius in this poem, Catullus wittily maintains his iambic program,
albeit in hendecasyllables, problematizing the relationship between meter and genre
(a problematization that will be brought to the fore of the reader’s mind with poem
37). The uses of iambi at 40.2 and 54.6 make the connection between iambi and
the hendecasyllabic poems in which the word occurs more obvious. However, in
those poems as well I would argue that Catullus requires the reader to reflect on the
relationship between meter and genre.
8 
The fact that these two poems are interrelated is bolstered by two intertextual
references. First, the mention of Vulcan as the “limping god” (tardipedi deo) at 36.7
might suggest the limping iambics of poem 37. Furthermore, the overall sense of
truces iambos at 36.5, seems to foreshadow poem 37, written in iambics that certainly
qualify as truces. An aural connection might be made between truces and truges (lees or
harsh wine), which might then resonate with the setting of poem 37 (a taberna). Wray,
75–87, discusses the pairing of these two “excrement” poems. In general, I assume a
serial reading of the corpus for the purpose of the present argument. This assumption
is justified on several grounds. First, the collection as we have it reflects at least a
possible arrangement of the polymetrics in antiquity and, certainly, represents our best
chance of recovering such arrangement; in general, see Skinner 2007a. Further, if it
were proved that the poems under discussion in this paper were found in other sedes
in other corpora, I believe the major thrust of my argument would still hold. As most
readers, ancient and modern, read and re-read the poems, I feel that I am justified in
this assumption; on the culture of the book at Rome, see Parker 2009, and for the
implications of such a book culture for Catullus, see Miller 1994, 51.
70 SYLLECTA CLASSICA 21 (2010)

Poem 37, significantly written in choliambs, features the extremes of

obscene, hyper-masculine hyperbole that Catullan Iambos can muster.
Surely, Catullus hurls what we would call invective at both Volusius and
the unfortunate Spaniard, Egnatius, but the tonal shift highlighted by
the juxtaposition of these two poems brings to the fore of the reader’s
mind the relationship between the degree of the invective and the meter
that conveys it. When read together the two poems require readers to
reflect upon the character of Catullan Iambos, to assess Catullus’ debt
to the archaic Greek iambographers and their Hellenistic imitators, as
well as to reconsider precisely what role the relationship between meter
and genre plays in the interpretation of Catullus.
While the question of the relationship between meter and content
is thrown into stark relief in poems 36 and 37, a similar issue does arise,
albeit more subtly, earlier in the corpus. The beginning of the collec-
tion, although dominated by poems in the hendecasyllabic meter, is
punctuated with two iambic poems, 4 and 8.9 In a way similar to the
relationship between poems 36 and 37, which illustrates Catullus’ ma-
nipulation of genre through his use of meter, the relationship between
poems 4 (iambic trimeters) and 8 (choliambs) calls attention to the poet’s
manipulation of the iambic genre. After the first three hendecasyllabic
poems, we come to poem 4, written in pure iambic trimeters, certainly
calling to mind the metrical tradition with Archilochus at its head, but
differing enough to distinguish these verses from that tradition:10
Phaselus ille, quem videtis, hospites,
ait fuisse navium celerrimus,
neque ullius natantis impetum trabis
nequisse praeterire, sive palmulis
opus foret volare sive linteo.
et hoc negat minacis Hadriatici

9
  There has been much discussion of the beginning of the collection as an
interconnected cycle; see, e.g., Segal and Dettmer, 13–41.
10
  There are three poems written in stichic iambic meters (4, 29 and 52), only one of
which (29) exhibits the full range of metrical features characteristic of Archilochus;
on poem 29 and the spondee in l. 20, see Wray 176, where he argues that this small
scale metrical change signifies Catullus’ debt to Archilochus; see also Quinn 1996,
250 on 54.6–7, where he argues iambi refers not to the hendecasyllabic poem in
which it occurs, but to poem 29, whose metrical character he strongly associates with
Archilochean usage.
 LAVIGNE: CATULLUS 8 AND CATULLAN IAMBOS 71

negare litus insulasve Cycladas

Rhodumque nobilem horridamque Thraciam
Propontida trucemve Ponticum sinum,
ubi iste post phaselus antea fuit
comata silva; nam Cytorio in iugo
loquente saepe sibilum edidit coma.
Amastri Pontica et Cytore buxifer,
tibi haec fuisse et esse cognitissima
ait phaselus: ultima ex origine
tuo stetisse dicit in cacumine,
tuo imbuisse palmulas in aequore,
et inde tot per impotentia freta
erum tulisse, laeva sive dextera
vocaret aura, sive utrumque Iuppiter
simul secundus incidisset in pedem;
neque ulla vota litoralibus deis
sibi esse facta, cum veniret a mari
novissimo hunc ad usque limpidum lacum.
sed haec prius fuere: nunc recondita
senet quiete seque dedicat tibi,
gemelle Castor et gemelle Castoris.11

That yacht, whom you all see, strangers, says that he was
the fastest of all the ships and neither was the beat of any
skimming beam able to overtake him, whether the flying
need be by hand or sail. And he denies that the shore of
the threatening Adriatic denies this fact, or the Cycladic
islands and honored Rhodes and the bristling Thracian
Propontis or the harsh Pontic recess, where before that
yacht-to-be was a hairy tree. For, on the Cytorian ridge
he often produced a hiss with his speaking hair. Pontic
Amastris and boxwood-bearing Cytorus, the yacht says
that all this was and is very well known to you; he says that
from his very birth he stood on your peak, that he dipped
his hands in your water, and that from here he bore his
captain through so many wild straits, whether a left- or
right-hand wind called, or whether favorable Jupiter struck
each footing at the same time; further, that he never made
any vows to the gods on the shore when he came from
the most foreign sea all the way to this glassy lake. But all
this was before; now he grows old in calm retirement and
dedicates himself to you, twin Castor and Castor’s twin.

11
  I cite the text of Catullus from Mynors’ OCT, unless otherwise noted; all translations
are my own.
72 SYLLECTA CLASSICA 21 (2010)

The six pure iambs in each verse of this poem are just discordant (or
should I say harmonious) enough to suggest an alteration of the metrical
usage of the reputed inventor of the genre from which the meter takes
its name, Archilochus.12 The rhythm forces us to pay close attention to
the poem—as J. K. Newman says, “[it] is a complete break in meter and
mood” (1990, 150). When we turn to the content of the poem, we can
be assured that this is no iambic (read Archilochean) poem. Further,
when we look for parallels to the thematic material of the poem, we find
them especially in the Hellenistic epigrammatic tradition.13 Therefore, we
might conclude that Catullus 4 represents a neoteric (read Hellenistic/
Callimachean) experiment with form and content; the form, slightly
altered from its invective roots, is made to voice the life story of a little
boat, à la epigrams of the speaking object variety.
This picture is complicated by the next metrically iambic poem in
the collection, which again, after three hendecasyllabics, presents an
arresting aural contrast:14
12
  For Archilochus as prôtos heurêtês of Iambos, see Theocritus Ep. 21 Gow with Rossi,
327, and Lavigne 2005, 12–57; on the development of the metrical term from the
genre, cf. Bartol, 30–40. The pure iambic trimeter is used exceedingly rarely in Latin
literature before Catullus. The senarius, in the hands of Plautus, for example, was much
more free; cf. Lindsay ch. 2 and 267–82, esp. 268 on the distinctly Greek character of
Catullus’ trimeters (citing poem 4) versus Plautus’ more Romanized usage.
13 
For parallels, see Quinn 1996, 100 and Thomson, 212–14, who goes so far as to
say the poem could be a translation of a Hellenistic poem. Newman, 150–1 identifies
the voice of speaking objects in epigram as that of the dedicator, and therefore
different from Catullus 4. Rather than a dialogue, it seems that Catullus here overtly
incorporates the epigrammatic tradition by essentially “quoting” an epigram (cf. esp.
l. 23, seque dedicat tibi, “he dedicates himself to you”); the fact that the quotation is
indirect highlights this act of appropriation. Here, Newman’s distancing of Catullus
from the Hellenistic tradition is based on his belief that there is a more primitive spirit
operative in Catullus, as opposed to the “artificial” mode of Hellenistic epigrams; this
distinction is symptomatic of Newman’s entire reading of Catullus, whom he sees
as embodying the forceful, unartificed voice of the early Greeks as opposed to later,
Augustan poets who embrace the poetry of the Hellenistic period. His argument is
based on too simple a correlation between poetry and politics as well as a faulty, to my
mind, biological understanding of the development of literary genre.
14 
As Newman 1990, 158, says, “Poem 8, following 7, provides another example of
polar shock.” Newman 1990, 278 offers some useful comments on the importance of
sound in ancient poetry in general and in Catullus in particular.
 LAVIGNE: CATULLUS 8 AND CATULLAN IAMBOS 73

Miser Catulle, desinas ineptire,

et quod vides perisse perditum ducas.
fulsere quondam candidi tibi soles,
cum ventitabas quo puella ducebat
amata nobis quantum amabitur nulla.
ibi illa multa cum iocosa fiebant,
quae tu volebas nec puella nolebat,
fulsere vere candidi tibi soles.
nunc iam illa non volt: tu quoque impote<ns noli>,15
nec quae fugit sectare, nec miser vive,
sed obstinata mente perfer, obdura.
vale, puella. iam Catullus obdurat,
nec te requiret nec rogabit invitam.
at tu dolebis, cum rogaberis nulla.
scelesta, vae te, quae tibi manet vita?
quis nunc te adibit? cui videberis bella?
quem nunc amabis? cuius esse diceris?
quem basiabis? cui labella mordebis?
at tu, Catulle, destinatus obdura.

Miserable Catullus, stop being foolish and consider lost

what you see is lost. Bright suns once shone on you, when
you used to tag along wherever your girl was leading—a
girl loved by us so much as no girl will be loved—there,
when happened those many enjoyments, which you
wanted and she did not shun. Truly, bright suns shone on
you. Now as it is, she doesn’t want you: you, too, powerless
fool, stop wanting her and stop following one who flees
and stop being so miserable; but, with a resolute mind,
get through it, be hard. Goodbye, girl. Already Catullus
is hard. Neither will he look for you nor will he ask after
you unwilling. But, you will be sorry when no one asks
after you. Wretch, woe is you! What life is left for you?
Who will now approach you? To whom will she seem
pretty? Whom now will you love? Whose will you be said
to be? Whom will you kiss? Whose lips will you nibble?
But you, Catullus, resolve to be hard.

This poem is written in choliambics, the meter made famous by Hip-

ponax, that “more iambic” descendant of Archilochus, and reused,
equally famously, by the paragon of Hellenistic poetic experimentation,

15 
I agree with Quinn 1996, 117–18 ad loc. that Avantius’ conjecture is best, given
the resonance it engenders between l. 7, nolebat, and l. 9 (with non volt).
74 SYLLECTA CLASSICA 21 (2010)

Callimachus.16 In fact, as the first of Callimachus’ Iambi shows, Cal-

limachus is adapting the choliambs of virulent Hipponax to his much
more delicate and urbane goals in a way similar to our cursory reading
of Catullus 4. The thematic material of Catullus 8, again, seems less
than Archilochean or Hipponactean; the speaker narrates his own in-
ability to win the affections of a woman. So, from this hasty overview
of the first two iambic poems in the corpus, the case seems closed on
the iambic voice of Catullus. We might conclude that, like Callimachus
before him, Catullus is using the iambic form to elegant, neoteric ends
and abandoning the archaic force of the genre in favor of surprisingly
delicate (and witty in the case of 4; and impotent in the case of 8) the-
matic concerns. In short, it seems that the generic force of the meter is
overridden by the content of the poem.17
I would like to problematize this reading and reassess the effect
Catullus’ use of the iambic meter engenders in the reader. We will recall
from the brief discussion of poems 36 and 37 that the iambic meter of
poem 37 makes difficult a simple equation of iambi at 36.5 with purely
thematic material and requires that the reader consider the relationship
between content and meter. Similarly, the iambic rhythms of poems 4
and 8, highlighted by their hendecasyllabic surroundings, demand that

16 
On Hipponax as “more iambic” than Archilochus, see Lavigne 2008b, 411, esp.
the discussion of Demetrius de eloc. 301; this passage is significant for my argument
in that it combines the alteration of meter with an alteration of content in order
to describe Hipponax’ relationship to his generic forebears. Thus, Hipponax (as a
descendent of Archilochus and the inspiration for Callimachus) and his characteristic
meter are excellent devices through which to connect to the entire iambic tradition.
As Vine, 213 has recently pointed out, Hipponax’ presence in the Catullan corpus is
often ignored; in fact, even Syndikus only rarely mentions Hipponactean influence,
e.g., p. 192, ad 33 (cited by Vine, 213 n. 2).
17
  In regard to the generic force of meter, it is interesting to note that Catullus’ favorite
meter in the polymetrics, the hendecasyllable, has no tradition of an archaic Greek
founder. The earliest poet known to have used the meter is Sappho; see Newman, 49
with the references cited at n. 20. Newman, 49–50 argues that the meter has some
iambic affinities; see especially his discussion of Phalaecus’ epigram 3 HE on pp.
303–4. It is tempting to see the hendecasyllabic meter in Catullus’ hands as a generic
tabula rasa, waiting to be charged with Catullus’ iambic program, especially here at
the opening of the collection. This is essentially the position of Heyworth; more on
this issue below.
 LAVIGNE: CATULLUS 8 AND CATULLAN IAMBOS 75

the reader take into account their iambic qualities.18 Instead of resort-
ing to inventio or variatio as an explanation, I argue that the iambic
meter still carries with it the weight of its genre, a weight that is hefted
by Catullus in his attempts to write himself into the canon.19 This is
not to say that previous readings are wrong, or that there is no value in
seeing Catullus’ inventive use of this or that meter; however, at least in
the case of Catullus’ iambic poems, it seems that invention is only the
tip of the iceberg.20
There are two important, large-scale accounts of Catullus’ debt to
Archilochus and the iambic mode he invented, those of Newman and
David Wray.21 Both differ from previous readings in offering an analysis
of the entire corpus with its iambic roots in mind. Newman sees all the
poetry as fundamentally satiric, thus, Roman. This satiric impulse is
heavily indebted to the iambic mode of Archilochus, which he argues
is ritualistic and carnivalesque, while Catullus’ relationship to Helle-
nistic, and especially Callimachean, poetic modes is seen as secondary.
In Catullus, Newman sees a recapitulation of the archaic force of the
iambic genre, akin to the Old Comic tendencies in Plautus’ New Comic
plays. Once the freedom of Republican Rome is abandoned, and the

18 
I want to reiterate here that this reading does not depend on the context, but that
in this context the contrast is enhanced. The clash of meter and content in these two
poems, even read in isolation, would be enough to prompt a reflection upon their genre.

  For similar remarks on Horace’s use of the iambic meter, see Farrell, 387 and
19

Barchiesi 2002. Wheeler, 33–86 and Quinn 1969, 1–26 survey the Greek and Roman
poetic milieu within which Catullus writes.
20
  Thompson, 21 is indicative of the problem: “Perhaps the chief among Callimachus’
gifts to Catullus is the principle of variety. For example, the extremely rare and difficult
metre in which poem 63 is written was a novelty employed, and possibly first attempted,
by Callimachus.” What novelty is there in such imitation? Indeed, it is increasingly
clear that invention for the sake of such novelty is inadequate as a final explanation of
Hellenistic poetic strategies; see, e.g., Cameron 146–52 and the penetrating analysis
of Barchiesi 2001b, whose reevaluation of Kroll’s Kreuzung is particularly relevant to
my remarks on genre below.
21
  Also important is Heyworth, discussed above, who, building on Newman’s work,
assembles a mass of parallels between Catullus and the Greek iambographers. I
summarize Newman, chapters 1 and 2 in this paragraph. The comments on Wray
represent a summary of my reading of his monograph.
76 SYLLECTA CLASSICA 21 (2010)

Augustan deformation takes hold, poets tap Callimachus and his ilk for
their central poetic models.22 In contrast, Wray sees Catullus in a post-
modern light, performing manly excellence behind two masks, which
signify what he calls code-models, represented by Archilochus in his
full iambic intensity on the one hand and by Callimachus at his most
daringly delicate on the other.23 While both interpretations have much
to commend them, nevertheless, both are ultimately lacking. Newman’s
excising of Callimachus’ iambic influence lessens the usefulness of his
refreshingly holistic (if a bit too ritually determined) picture of archaic
Greek Iambos. Wray’s nearly complete division of Callimachus from his
archaic iambic predecessors is similarly limiting.24 Nevertheless, Wray’s
focus upon poetics offers a wide-ranging corrective to the previous
focus upon the poet. However, whereas Wray would see two polar op-
posite code-models for Catullus in Archilochus and Callimachus, I see
one continuous tradition that is characterized by incredible variation
and contradiction, but variations and contradictions seen as mutually
determined and complementary generic features.25

ON GENRE: IAMBIC PERFORMANCE AND IAMBIC

DISTANCE

In order to illustrate what I mean by the complementary nature of
variation and contradiction, let us recall that, on the surface, neither
of the two early iambic poems, 4 and 8, seems very iambic, certainly
22
  Newman does allow for some Alexandrian influence on Catullus, but this influence
is secondary to the Roman, satiric, and thus iambic impulse. Again, Newman is
influenced by his romanticized notion of the primitive Greek spirit; see above, n. 13.
23 
Wray’s theory of performance (see esp. 60–63) is based upon Herzfeld’s study of
the performance of masculinity in the Mediterranean; the idea of “code-models” (see
esp. 167) he borrows from Conte, 31.

  Important in this regard is Rosen 2007, 174–206, who presents a strong case for
24

Callimachus’ affinity to the archaic Greek iambographers.

  In using the designation “one continuous tradition” I do not mean to essentialize,

25

but rather to emphasize the connections through time. The generic unity I see here is
dialogically constructed both intratextually and intertextually, i.e., both within and
outside the collection; see Miller 2007, esp. 488–89 and Barchiesi 2001b, 155–58.
 LAVIGNE: CATULLUS 8 AND CATULLAN IAMBOS 77

not in theme. What other than the regular rhythm of a short syllable
followed by a long do these poems have in common? One of the most
ready answers to this question is to be found in the fact that both po-
ems feature an arresting use of narrative voice; i.e., both poems force
the reader to come to terms with the purported speaker of the poem.
As we have seen, poem 4 has a distinctly Hellenistic tone, one not too
distant from that employed by Callimachus in his Iambi.26 Moreover,
as Thomson has pointed out, the phaselus begins to take on several hu-
man characteristics in the description of its equipage (214–15). There is
even a hint that this vociferous boat had an invective mode in his youth,
which may be at least partially reflected in the boastfulness of his old
age—in any event, lines 10–15 suggest that this boat has been talking
from the time when he was just a young tree.27 The anthropomorphized
voice of this tree-cum-boat is reported by an equally disembodied voice,
that of the unnamed narrator. The strange ventriloquism of Callima-
chus’ fourth Iamb offers an interesting parallel for such an impossibly
“epigrammatic” speaker and highlights the way in which voice figures in
Hellenistic iambic poems. As Edmunds has pointed out in his treatment
of Ia. 4, the poet-persona (Edmunds uses the term persona loquens) is one
of the key features of Callimachus’ iambic poetics (91–92). The voice
of the poet-persona in the next iambic poem in Catullus’ collection is
similarly complex. Catullus 8 is composed in choliambics, the meter of
Hipponax as well as Hipponax’ most famous imitator, Callimachus.28
26 
See Ia. 6, 7 and 9 with the discussion of Acosta-Hughes, 265–303. On the socio-
political effects of voice in the poem, see Young, passim; especially interesting for my
argument are Young’s comments on p. 81, where she argues, “Our inability to pinpoint
the source and style of the speaking voice throws us into perpetual confusion about
whom we are hearing….”
27
  At ll. 10–12 we learn that the tree “often produced a hiss with his speaking hair.” The
sibilance in saepe sibilum (l. 12) mirrors the sound of wind whistling through his leaves
as a sound made in the natural world. If however we think of this hissing as a sound
made by a human, in which terms much of the language in the poem encourages us to
see this tree/boat, the hissing takes on an invective character; see OLD, s.v. sibilus1, 2.

  It is interesting to note here that Catullus’ first two metrically iambic poems,
28

moving from iambic trimeters to choliambs, encapsulate the basic meters of the two
most famous Greek iambographers, and thus can be seen as a totalizing conception
of Iambos, including Archilochus, Hipponax and Callimachus. A similarly totalizing
impulse could be seem in the relationship between poems 36 and 37, where iambi,
78 SYLLECTA CLASSICA 21 (2010)

In this poem, Catullus’ poet-persona is also called into question. In a

way, Catullus reveals his Callimachean debt by deploying his choliambs
for such a non-Hipponactean effect, namely the description of his own
failing. Catullus, like Callimachus before him, signals his affinity to the
archaic poet precisely through the distance he creates between his poetry
and that of Hipponax.29
The paradoxical effect of affinity reinforced through distinction ne-
cessitates certain assumptions about genre. I find useful the formulation
of Jameson, who argues that:
…genre is essentially a socio-symbolic message, or in other terms,
that form is immanently and intrinsically an ideology in its own right.
When such forms are re-appropriated and refashioned in quite dif-
ferent social and cultural contexts, this message persists and must
be functionally reckoned into the new form (141, emphasis mine).

Jameson’s definition offers two useful features for the study of the genre
of Iambos. First, in highlighting the ideological, in the Marxist sense,
nature of genre, it offers a way to understand the persistent claims of
the iambographers to have an almost total command of the rules of
their societies. The archaic Greek iambographers regularly justify their
violent, anti-social outbursts through a claim of prior violation—Ar-
chilochus is jilted by Lycambes, Hipponax by Bupalus. Ironically, their
extreme reactions, like the extreme release of carnival, serve to reinforce
the social norms that they transgress.30 The idea of transgression, then,
is fundamental to the ideological import of the genre; so, in this sense,
potentially read initially as trimeters, are redefined as choliambs; for some further
suggestions along these lines, see below.
29
  Horace makes a similar move in his Epodes, as he himself tells us at Epist. 1.19.23–25;
see Barchiesi 2001a, 149–50. Barchiesi 2001a, 159–60 has argued that this passage
also functions as a comment on Horace’s relationship to Catullus in the iambic genre.
In general, Barchiesi’s account of Horace’s relationship to his generic predecessors has
much in common with my reading of Catullan Iambos (2001a and 2002).
30 
Newman’s comments on the interrelationship between positive and negative within
Iambos are illuminating, but limited to the archaic Greek and Republican Roman
practitioners (43–45). Indicative is his notion of the failed iambographer, to which he
assigns Horace and Callimachus (59–65). As I will show, failure is itself a requirement
of the iambic poet-persona (as Newman’s association of both positive and negative
aspects with the genre suggests).
 LAVIGNE: CATULLUS 8 AND CATULLAN IAMBOS 79

the creation of distance from their social norms fuels the poetics of early
Greek Iambos.31 The second important feature of Jameson’s definition for
my analysis of the iambic genre is the stress he places on the persistence
through time of the original ideological message as a property of form. I
want to stress here that I see the redeployment of genres over time as a
dialogic process; that is, Catullus participates in a mutually defining dia-
lectic with his iambic predecessors through his use of the iambic meter.32
The question becomes, how does the form that Catullus uses in these
poems re-encode the socio-symbolic message of his generic predeces-
sors. To answer this question, we have to take into account the change
in the material realities of literary production from the eighth to the
first century BCE. During this period, to pass blithely over a morass of
problems, the fundamental move is from a primarily oral-poetic context
to a primarily literary one—that is, a move from performance to roll,
from song culture to book culture. In his 1994 book on Catullus and
the lyric tradition, Allen Miller has argued that this move stimulated
the birth of modern lyric consciousness. Whether or not we read birth
pangs into the poems, Miller’s study confirms that this more literally
literary milieu within which poets like Catullus composed allows for
much more sophisticated strategies of self-presentation.33 One such
strategy lies in the possibility of exploiting the divide between author
and poet-persona—the poem on the page is always already separated
from its author in the world whereas the ideal situation of the oral poet
is one of integration with his “text.”34 In the oral-poetic context, it is
the goal of the performer literally to embody the author. Of course, in
both the literary and the oral context, a given poem can create more or
less ambiguity of authorial voice; in fact, in both contexts, the exploita-

31
  See Miller 1994, 9–36 and Lavigne 2008a.
32
  Barchiesi 2001b is fundamental to my understanding of this process.
33
  On the development of such strategies of self-representation and their connection
to literary culture in late-Republican Rome, see Fantham, 20–54.
34
  Nagy, 61, speaking of the rhapsodic performance of Homer, says: “the rhapsode
is re-enacting Homer by performing Homer, that he is Homer so long as the mimesis
stays in effect, so long as the performance lasts” (emphasis his).
80 SYLLECTA CLASSICA 21 (2010)

tion of this ambiguity is characteristic of iambic poetics, whether the

performance of the poet-persona is virtual or actual.35
So, how does iambic performance impact the way in which the
generic message of Iambos is re-encoded from archaic Greece to late-
Republican Rome? In order to answer that question, we need to reexam-
ine the distance that I earlier argued was one of the primary features of
the genre. What I will call “iambic distance” is nearly always a product
of the relationship between a poet-persona and the norms of the society
in which he lives. Because the actual acts that the archaic Greek iambic
poet-persona narrates himself as doing are nearly always anti-social
(albeit at least ideologically in the service of the larger goals of society),
those acts force an audience to reflect on the status of the relationship
between the performer standing before them and the poet-persona’s
contemptible actions. The separation of the mask from the face of the
performer is enhanced by the underlying cause for these anti-social acts,
which are typically motivated by a slight to the poet’s masculinity. Since
they are aligned with social norms, the narrated actions are appealing;
but, as extreme, rabid attacks, they always hint at their cause, which
lies in an earlier failure of masculine prowess.36 Thus, on two levels,
such faulty performance reveals the divide between poet-persona and
performer. There is much in common with Judith Butler’s analysis of the
“performativity” of drag queens, who simultaneously repulse, through
their over-the-top performance of gender roles, and attract, by the ac-
curacy with which they perform gender and, thus, reveal their status as
performances (134–42). In other words, there is a heightened sense of
performativity, to use Butler’s term, at play in archaic iambic poetry.37
Iambic distance, then, is a feature of the performativity of the iambic

35
  In general, see Lavigne 2008a and b; Wray, 186–90 offers a stimulating analysis
of poem 116 as a programmatic statement of Catullus’ personation of two opposite
poles, his use of the code-models of Archilochus and Callimachus, although I would
read this poem as programmatically announcing the interrelationship through generic
affinity of these two code-models.
36
  On this “hyper-masculine” stance in Catullus, see below with n. 51.
37 
Wray’s characterization of Catullus as “multiphrenic” is significant for my argument
here: “[Catullus] is all the speaking subjects of all the poems, and none of them” (209).
I would extend this characterization to include all the major iambographers.
 LAVIGNE: CATULLUS 8 AND CATULLAN IAMBOS 81

poet-persona.38 It is in this way, then, that the socio-symbolic message of

Iambos is re-encoded in Catullus’ seemingly un-iambic first two iambic
poems, that is, as a distancing effect between author and poet-persona.
As we have seen, this distance that is so characteristic of the poet-persona
of Iambos arises on several levels in Catullus’ collection. On the larger
level, Catullus fashions his relationship to his iambic ancestors in terms
of his distance from them in the way in which he uses and refers to the
iambic meter. The contradictory moments in the collection when the
reader is prompted to reflect on the use of the iambic meter are akin, in
generic terms, to the moments when the reader is prompted to reflect
on the relationship between the “real” author and his voice.

POEM 8 AND THE IAMBIC VOICES OF CATULLUS

Certainly, as poem 37 attests, Catullus could channel the anti-social
violence of an Archilochus or a Hipponax, and he certainly understood
the thematic concerns of what Aristotle had earlier characterized as the
ἰαμβικὴ ἰδέα.39 In fact, I would argue that the iambic distance that I
see in poems 4 and 8 could also be seen in poems that exhibit a more
typically aggressive, violent mode. For example, in poem 16 the voice
of the poet-persona takes on a vehemently aggressive tone, but that
tone is based on the distance created between that poet-persona and his
(previous?) failed masculinity.40 Similarly, a mutually determined and
complementary logic of failure and aggression effects the iambic distance
in poem 8. As should now be clear, Catullus is not simply signaling his
adherence to a Callimachean iambic precedent in poem 8 (in fact, I
think he is, but not simply that). Like Callimachus, who foregrounds his
masculine failure in his iambic collection, Catullus is also injecting his
voice into the iambic genre writ large (that is, an Iambos that includes
  The arguments in this paragraph take their inspiration from Lavigne 2005, esp.
38

144–69, with the evidence cited there.

  Arist. Poet. 1449b8. On Catullus’ relationship with the ἰαμβικὴ ἰδέα, see Newman,
39

43–74.
40
  Here Catullus overtly contrasts his performance of unseemly behavior with his
performance of traditional morality as a function of his poet-persona; Selden, 514–17,
sees this poem as presenting a rhetoric of distance between author and text. See also
Wray, 82 who connects poems 16 and 37 as examples of extreme Priapic threats which
arise as the result of the questioning of the poet’s masculinity.
82 SYLLECTA CLASSICA 21 (2010)

both Callimachus and Archilochus). The first two words of the poem,
the author’s self-apostrophe, require readers to reflect upon the voice of
the poet-persona, a reflection subsequently encouraged by the circling
rhetoric of the poem.41 Using Butler’s term, this voice is performative,
i.e., it highlights the fact that it is part of an ongoing and vacillating
performance of the Catullan ego represented in this poem. It is precisely
this performative poet-persona that characterizes the predominant speak-
ing voice of archaic Iambos. Thus, Catullus creates in poem 8 an iambic
distance by forcing his reader to ask, “Who is this Catullus and what is
he doing in this choliambic poem?”
The poem starts in a traditionally iambic vein, that of paraenesis.
As Werner Jaeger long ago noted, the paraenetic mode is complemen-
tary to the more familiar and aggressive features of the archaic Greek
genre (121–24).42 However, the self-apostrophe causes some problems,
especially as such apostrophes are usually directed to another person,
or, at least, to an organ of cognition.43 Who is addressing Catullus? Are
we not reading this very man’s words? If this is really an iambic poem,
why is “Catullus,” the iambic poet, miser? After all, the socio-symbolic
message of the genre had required a much more active masculine stance;
and in Rome, miser certainly does not correspond to an active, male
state of mind—in fact, it is most typically used of precisely those men
and women who have been jilted.44 If Catullus is a “real” Roman man
living in the late Republic, he simply cannot be both hard and soft,
both active and passive.45 How are we to mesh these two Catulli—the

  On the circling rhetoric in poem 8 with some interesting comments on the effect
41

of meter, see Fitzgerald, 121–23.

42
  See also Rotstein, 23, where she cites Jaeger and others.
43
  See Kroll, 16 ad 8.1, who claims Euripides as the most important influence for
the trope of self address; see also Selden, 502 who comments on the highly emotional
(and feminine) associations of such self-apostrophes and argues that they suggest the
desperation of the poet-persona. The self-apostrophe here brings the issue of the status
of the poet-persona to the fore.
44 
The basic study is Allen; see also, Selden, 502–04, on poem 8, with the references
cited there.
45
  On the possible poles of “real” performance of Roman masculinity (i. e., performance
in the real world of late-Republican Rome), see Parker 1997; Wray’s comments on
 LAVIGNE: CATULLUS 8 AND CATULLAN IAMBOS 83

more typically iambic, poet-persona proffering hard advice, and the soft,
lovelorn Catullus, a mere character in the poem? A key to the interpreta-
tion lies in the highly rhetorical flourish of the opening apostrophe. As
Jonathan Culler argues, “apostrophe is different [from other tropes] in
that it makes its point by troping not on the meaning of a word but on
the circuit or situation of communication itself ” (150). This is precisely
the effect the poem engenders in the reader—we simply have to reflect
on the situation of this communication. So, from the very first two words
of the poem, the reader has to deal with the dilemma of two Catulli, and
I would argue that this revelation of the disjunction between Catullus
miser and Catullus the iambic advisor illustrates the poem’s use of iambic
distance. Furthermore, the fact that this is a choliambic poem, and thus
indebted primarily to Hipponax, but also to Callimachus, reiterates the
contrasting modes of these Catulli.46
Following the opening advisory note, the poet-persona launches into
a description of the past affair, painting a happy, but feminizing portrait
of the romance—l. 4 is especially suggestive of the atypically active role
of the puella in this relationship (the frequentative ventitabas and puella
as subject of ducebat). Further, in line 7, the second to last line of this
well-delimited vignette, the very intentions of Catullus and the puella
are nearly identical (although the double negative used to express the
will of the puella is not quite as strong as the simple positive used of
Catullus’ will).47 Given the lack of a typically Roman masculine role in
this happy affair, surely the reader has to reconsider the referent of tibi
in the next line, a repetition with slight variation of line 3, where it had
seemed to refer clearly to Catullus. With line 9, the narrator returns to
the precariousness of letting one’s masculine guard down are instructive (206–09).
On Catullus’ vacillation between gender roles in this poem, see Greene and Skinner
2007b; it is precisely such an impossibly contradictory stance that is adopted by the
later elegists to create their literary selves, on which, see Fitzgerald, 7–9.
46 
I would maintain that, in the collection of Callimachus and the mouth of Hipponax,
the meter can and does express both hardness and softness at the same time. Of course,
one or the other quality is suppressed, but not omitted.
47
  A similar mutuality between Catullus and the puella is evident in ll. 6–7. I would
argue that such mutuality seems odd from the point of view of Roman masculinity
(given the erotic associations of iocosa, l. 6, on which, see Thomson, 228) and that
the oddity is realized in “Catullus’” response to l. 9, in which non vult corresponds to
non nolebat in l. 7; cf. Syndikus, 108.
84 SYLLECTA CLASSICA 21 (2010)

his paraenetic ways, using the very same verbs (probably) that described
the will of Catullus and the puella at their most unified. This line at-
tempts to drive home the difference between then and now—imperfect
becomes present; the puella has made up her mind, Catullus is to make
up his, though the imperative in combination with the adjective impotens
suggests that the narrator is taking a stronger stance with his advisee.
Of course, no Roman male (much less an iambic male) should display
impotentia (which signifies the loss of power over others and the self )—in
a way, this is a harsher version of miser and actually, a quintessentially
feminine quality in the Roman imagination.48 In fact, in the following
line, these feminine implications are made explicit in the travesty of
male pursuit that is nec quae fugit sectare (alluding to line 5) and, ex-
tending the allusion to the beginning of the poem, nec miser vive. The
paraenetic-Catullus is tired of his alter-ego’s effeminate flopping about,
and, in line 11 he exhorts himself to set his mind against her—obstinata
mente—and to get over it and get hard. There is no more manly and, thus,
iambic advice than this—in fact, the placement at line-end of obdura
emphasizes the relationship between the meter and the sentiment.49 Of
course, Roman men, and archaic Greek iambic poets, pursue this state
of impenetrability so assiduously as to reveal the tenuousness of the
whole conceit of hardness.50
At this point, the reader is becoming accustomed to the two Catulli
as distinct voices—the one speaks, the other is addressed, one is active,
the other passive, although both the same person. Lest we should become
48
  On the feminine associations of impotentia and their deployment in another
Roman iambographer, see Barchiesi 2001a, 147–49, with the references cited at 147
n. 11. It is interesting to note here that the phaselus in poem 4 boasted of his ability to
overcome impotentia freta (“wild straits,” l. 18); by so many times (tot, l. 18) taming
the uncontrolled seas, he renders them powerless (playing on the two meanings of
impotens) and thereby highlights his own power.
49
  The word occurs in the same sedes three times in the second half of the poem (ll.
11, 12 and 19). On Catullus’ exploitation of the final metron of the choliambic line
to rhetorical effect, see Vine, 214 and the suggestive remarks on poem 8 made by
Fitzgerald, 122–23.
50
  On the archaic Greek iambographer’s hyper-masculine stance and the concomitant
slight on which this stance depends, see Lavigne, 2005, 144–69; on the double-edged
danger of Iambos in Horace, see Barchiesi 2001a, 146. On the double bind that
encourages these poles of performance in late Republican Rome, see Wray, 206–9.
 LAVIGNE: CATULLUS 8 AND CATULLAN IAMBOS 85

too comfortable with this dichotomy, there is yet another apostrophe in

line 12 that causes the reader to reconsider the neat division of Catulli—
which Catullus addresses the puella and tells her goodbye? It should be
Catullus the character, but he has said nothing to this point—no clear
answer emerges, as, after the caesura, Catullus, formerly addressee, is
now the subject of the verb and doing exactly what Catullus the narrator
commanded—Catullus is now hard. This phrase could be a Caesaresque
report or the narrator’s interjection—there is no way to be sure which is
more apt. So, at the very point in the poem that we were beginning to
come to terms with the relationship between the Catulli, the relationship
is once again confounded. Whoever this Catullus is, he is hard now and
it seems the puella will soon be put in her place. Indeed, it looks like
Catullus (hard to say which, but it hardly matters now) is going to put
on the fully masculine and aggressive mantle of archaic Iambos, since
he seems to be heeding the advice of the paraenetic narrator, whose
mental attitude he has adopted and whose proscriptions he seems to
be following—no more seeking after her, no more asking after her. The
mind of Catullus now truly seems obstinata. At the very moment that
the narrative mode of the two Catulli is brought together, line 14 of-
fers another apostrophe—at tu—and suggests that the puella will soon
be miser, once there is no asking after her. This union of the Catulli is
continued in the next line with yet another apostrophe—scelesta, vae
te—which represents the height of iambic abuse this poem has to offer
the puella.51
One of the most striking effects of the poem, of course, lies in the
subsequent series of rhetorical questions that descend from angry (what
kind of life will you have without me?) to sentimental mush (whose lips
will you be plying…without me?). Of course, upon reflection, lines
13–14’s obsession with the avoidance of questioning is now clearly
ironic.52 Nonetheless, the reader once again must decide which Catullus
51
  Certainly a rather weak piece of invective, given what the poet is capable of; cf.,
e.g., poem 58, which begins in a sentimental vein akin to poem 8, and descends to a
truly obscene characterization of Lesbia (ll. 4–5).
52
  So Schmiel, 164–65, who survey’s the critical history in his article. My position
is close to that of Fitzgerald, 121–23 and Selden, 500–05, who see the poem as
constantly putting off a definitive interpretation. For Fitzgerald, the poem “dramatizes
the conflict between closure and continuity” through its rhetoric of “staying” (123)
and, for Selden, the poem exploits the “empirical suspense” between the two possible
poles of interpretation (504–5).
86 SYLLECTA CLASSICA 21 (2010)

is left—has this puella dominated both our Catulli and rendered them
miseri? The final line of the poem again returns to that most self-reflexive
rhetorical device—at tu, Catulle—again, identifying Catullus with the
erstwhile iambic target of the poem, again effeminizing Catullus and
again enjoining him to be hard. Both Catulli have failed, one in escap-
ing the emasculating state of subservience to the puella, the other in
efficaciously performing his paraenetic role—failures highlighted by
the change of line 11’s obstinata to destinata in line 19, a change that
suggests the sentiment is no longer primarily present in focus.53 In the
end, these two voices that struggle to come together into one resounding
iambic roar end up breaking down into what seems likely to become a
never ending cycle. While this is admittedly not typical of the iambic
mode of Archilochus or Hipponax, it is structurally analogous.54 For, the
unrelentingly aggressive, active, hyper-masculine stance of the archaic
Greek iambographers is always based on a slight, and, in Archilochus’
case at least, one that involves a woman.55 Catullus has shifted the ground
and chosen to focus his lens upon the masculine fault that should, and
almost does, result in a violent backlash. Like his archaic Greek iambic
predecessors, Catullus has employed multiple voices and speaking po-
sitions to create his persona. Also like his iambic fathers, he has used
this multiplicity of voice to foster distance between the poet and his
poet-persona. In this sense, then, poem 8 is indeed an iambic poem.

CONCLUSION

Let us now consider a parallel between the two poems which bookend
this paper, that between 8.5 and 37.12:
  For the sense, see OLD, s.v. obstinatus, 1 and destino, 3. Quinn 1996, 119 ad 8.19
53

characterizes the difference thus: “obstinatus stresses the beginning of the process,
destinatus, its continuance” and offers oppressus (“struck down”) and depressus (“held
down”) as parallels.
54
  A possible instance may be found in Archilochus fr. 196 and 196a W, if fr. 196
does, in fact, belong to the beginning of fr. 196a; for the suggestion, see West 1975,
217. Even so, in general, the archaic tradition does not dwell on the fault, but rather,
takes such a fault as inspiration for its invective, whether implicit or not; cf., e.g., also
Archilochus fr. 172 W and Hipponax fr. 1 and 115 W.

  This fact is dramatized in the later epigrammatic treatment of Archilochus; cf. test.
55

20–23 assembled by Gerber.

 LAVIGNE: CATULLUS 8 AND CATULLAN IAMBOS 87

amata nobis quantum amabitur nulla.

Loved by us so much no girl will be loved. (8.5)

amata tantum quantum amabitur nulla.

Loved so much as no girl will be loved. (37.12)

Quinn has argued that the agent dative in 8.5 may add “grandiloquence
to the line, but hardly implies recognition by C[atullus] of an alter ego”
(1996, 117). As my reading of 8 should make clear, I would argue that
this is precisely the force of nobis here, namely that it highlights the
iambic multivocality of Catullus in this poem. Nevertheless, how might
we then account for the omission of nobis in poem 37? The answer, I
think, lies in the Catullus’ use of the iambic voice. In poem 8, nobis is
the sole use of the first person, and is all the more significant given the
fact that the entire thrust of the poem is a meditation on its author.
The contrast with poem 37, which features the abundant use of the first
person singular, is stark. The parallel between the poems thus highlights
the range of voice possible in Catullus’ truces iambi. As in poem 8, Catul-
lus can reveal the mask that he wears, laying bare the duality that is at
the heart of the genre, that his is a performance of masculine excellence
which, in turn, is based upon a failed performance of masculinity.56
Or, as in poem 37, the poet-persona can attempt to disguise the failure
that gives rise to his railing abuse with an unrelentingly vehement (and
thus suspicious) masculine mask. In Catullan Iambos, and the archaic
Greek tradition, such an attempt at authorial control, at limiting the
poet-persona to a singular masculine performance of the self, always
reveals the impossibility of its own performance.57
In closing, I would like to make a suggestion as to how my reading
here may affect the larger interpretation of the corpus and our global
understanding of how Roman poets redeploy Greek genres. As Heyworth
56
  Barchiesi’s comments on Horace’s iambic program are similar (2001, 141–47).
57
  As Wray, 82 argues, poem 37 is unique, in that its Priapic threat is “physically
impossible of literal realization.” The idea of an impossible performance suggests
interesting parallels with epigram, the conceit of which often involves an “impossible
voice”; for a discussion of some iambic epigrams with an eye toward issues of voice,
see Lavigne 2008b, esp. 398–401 on the choliambic “epigram” of Aeschrion (1 HE).
This idea, prefigured in my epigrammatic interpretation of poem 4, may contribute
to an iambic reading of the later portion of the Catullan corpus. For some suggestive
remarks on Iambos in the epigrams of Catullus, see Heyworth, 137.
88 SYLLECTA CLASSICA 21 (2010)

has pointed out, the first two iambic poems, 4 and 8, infuse the surround-
ing hendecasyllables with an iambic tenor (130). It just may be the case
that Catullus has been more systematic than this characterization implies.
In an effort to push Heyworth’s argument further, I offer the following
observations. I think it fair to say that it may not be an accident that 3
poems separate each iambic poem (roughly the same number of verses,
a picture complicated by the problem of poem 2). Two further points
further call into question an accidental arrangement. First, the metrical
sequence of the two iambic poems, trimeter then choliamb, dramatizes
the development of Greek Iambos (from Archilochus to Hipponax and
Callimachus) and thus calls attention to Catullus’ insertion of the total-
ity of the genre into his hendecasyllables. Secondly, when we look at
Catullus’ use of mei iambi, we see that each occurs in the same metrical
sedes, namely, following the hiatus after the choriambic section. Should
we not hear an expressively iambic rhythm in this section of the hen-
decasyllable? Could not Catullus here call attention to the way in which
he has inserted his Iambos into his collection? The Iambos in Catullan
iambics, the many voices of Catullus in that relentless rhythm of short
followed by long, illustrates how, for a Roman poet, “the recalling of
origins identifies the new work in the literary space but also suggests a
drama of appropriation and legitimization” (Barchiesi 2001b, 157).
Department of Classical and Modern Languages and
Literature
Texas Tech University
Foreign Languages Bulding, Lubbock, TX 79409
don.lavigne@ttu.edu
 LAVIGNE: CATULLUS 8 AND CATULLAN IAMBOS 89

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