Catullus’s Love Poetry in Its Contemporary Intellectual Context (Part I)

Abstract

In the relatively small surviving corpus of his poetry, Catullus invokes Venus and Cupid, the deities of love,
approximately twenty times. While their names may sometimes serve merely as metonymies for love, desire, or sexual attraction,
the modern reader may ask: how are we to understand those instances where the deities are depicted in a more individualized
manner? For example, the “double-faced goddess” mentioned in Poem 68, or, even more significantly, the desperate plea
addressed to the gods at the end of Poem 76. To what extent do these poems imply the existence of personal deities who govern
human affairs? Or are the traditional names of the gods merely metaphorical expressions (*façons de parler*) serving to convey
what we today call “emotions” or “desires”? In the present article, these issues are examined from two interconnected
perspectives. Catullus’s poetry is set within the intellectual context of his era, specifically against the backdrop of the works of
Cicero and Lucretius. Both, albeit through different approaches, view traditional depictions of divinity with skepticism, yet
simultaneously affirm the vitality and significance of the very beliefs they critique. Against this background, I examine two
mutually contradictory models of love and desire employed by Catullus: first, as a *foedus* (“pact” or “agreement”) entered into
by free choice, for which human beings bear full responsibility; and second, as a disease caused by divine intervention, against
which a mortal human has no recourse other than prayer. The latter, more traditional model, in my view, reflects enduring
forms of thinking about desire and other passions that both Epicureanism and Stoicism directly oppose.