+RUDFH&DWXOOXVDQG0DHFHQDV

Marilyn Skinner

Syllecta Classica, Volume 24 (2013), pp. 29-45 (Article)

Published by Department of Classics, University of Iowa

DOI: 10.1353/syl.2013.0012

For additional information about this article

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/syl/summary/v024/24.skinner.html

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 SYLLECTA CLASSICA 24 (2013): 29–45

HORACE, CATULLUS, AND MAECENAS

Marilyn Skinner

Abstract: This essay argues that the scenario of Horace’s Epode 3 is

modeled upon that of Catullus 14. In each case the speaker protests
against a practical joke played by a friend; the obvious programmatic
stance of the latter poem, moreover, casts light on the operations
of the former. In c. 14, Catullus threatens to respond to Calvus’
gag volume of doggerel with his own collection of no less awful
verse. Suffering heartburn from a dish primed with garlic, Horace
meanwhile wishes garlic breath upon his host Maecenas should
he try the same trick again. Both malefactors will thus be repaid
in kind. Like the anthology of bad poets, the garlic arguably has
metapoetic significance, and an allusion to Catullus 13 at the close of
the epode suggests that Horace is poking fun at Maecenas’ fondness
for composing verse in the neoteric style. Fragments of Maecenas’
own hendecasyllabics addressed to Horace support that possibility.

“What might Maecenas’ liking for the neoteroi have meant for
Horace?” asks Lindsay Watson in his recent commentary on the Epodes
(2003, 19). The question calls attention to the private context of Horace’s
reception of Catullus. Although indebtedness is evident throughout his
oeuvre,1 echoes of Catullus occur most often in the Epode collection, rais-
ing queries about the extent to which the poet’s artistic choices respond
to the preferences of the dedicatee (Hierche 1974, 155). Unmistakable
allusions to his Republican predecessor frame the volume at beginning
and end: in Epode 1.11–14 a list of war zones to which Horace, if asked,
will accompany Maecenas is based on the catalogue of distant lands
that opens Catullus 11; in Epode 17.36–44, Horace’s terminal plea to
1 
Horace’s engagement with Catullus has been the topic of a number of significant
studies recently, including a full-length monograph. Putnam (2006), a major
investigation of Catullus’ impact upon the Odes, demonstrates the tremendous extent
of stylistic and thematic borrowings while finding that Horace carefully controls and
masters Catullus’ intensity of feeling by universalizing concrete personal situations.
McNeill (2007) independently confirms Horace’s great obligation to Catullus.
30 SYLLECTA CLASSICA 24 (2013)

Canidia for mercy is studded with caustic quotations from cc. 4, 8, 29

and 44. Previous studies of neoteric elements in the Epodes have largely
ignored the impact of Maecenas’ tastes, however, an omission Watson
finds surprising. This essay will venture a partial and limited answer to
his question in the hope of opening up new lines of inquiry.
One hitherto unnoticed instance of intertextuality furnishes a point of
departure. The likely Catullan antecedents of Epode 3, Horace’s complaint
about an overdose of garlic administered by his host as a practical joke,
have not been adequately explored. McDermott highlights the unusual
amount of Catullan diction in the epode, but only to demonstrate that
Horace adopts neoteric mannerisms when addressing his patron (1982,
215–16).2 Fraenkel likened the circumstances to Catullus 44, in which
the speaker suffers a bad chill, comparable to Horace’s dyspepsia, upon
reading the “frigid” oration that was his admission ticket to P. Sestius’
extravagant dinner (1957, 68). Reitzenstein saw situational resemblances
between Epode 3 and Catullus 14 but accounted for them by postulating
that the two writers had simply imitated the same work of Archilochus or
Hipponax (1908, 87 n.10). No one has remarked that the parallels with
c. 14 are close enough to allow the programmatic bearing of the earlier
poem to cast light on the aims of the later one. As we will see below,
Horace appropriates Catullus’ scenario in order to disparage Maecenas’
own verse playfully. In a serendipitously surviving rejoinder, however,
Maecenas goes his detractor one better. Thus Horace’s treatment of
Catullus 14 as a source text appears to be part of a broader conversation
about aesthetic principles.
In c. 14, Catullus berates his friend and fellow author Licinius Calvus
for regifting him as a Saturnalia prank with an anthology of terrible poets
acquired from a cliens, perhaps the amateur versifier Sulla, and threatens
to buy up and send in retaliation a collection of no less repulsive doggerel.
Ni te plus oculis meis amarem,
iucundissime Calve, munere isto
odissem te odio Vatiniano:
nam quid feci ego quidve sum locutus,
2 
Catullan stylistic traits, she notes, are clustered in lines 9–18. They include use of the
mock-elevated mythological and geographical exempla of Medea and the Argonauts,
Horace’s native Apulia, and Hercules and Deianeira; adjectives in –osus (siticulosae,
aestuosius); and suavio in line 21, an “urbane colloquialism” that occurs only here in the
Horatian corpus (McDermott 1982, 215 n. 10). On Catullus’ employment of –osus
adjectives and of suavium, see Ross (1969, 53–60, 104–105).
 SKINNER: HORACE, MAECENAS, AND CATULLUS 31

cur me tot male perderes poetis? 5

isti di mala multa dent clienti,
qui tantum tibi misit impiorum.
quod si, ut suspicor, hoc novum ac repertum
munus dat tibi Sulla litterator,
non est mi male, sed bene ac beate, 10
quod non dispereunt tui labores.
di magni, horribilem et sacrum libellum!
quem tu scilicet ad tuum Catullum
misti continuo, ut die periret,
Saturnalibus, optimo dierum! 15
non non hoc tibi, salse, sic abibit.
nam, si luxerit, ad librariorum
curram scrinia, Caesios, Aquinos,
Suffenum, omnia colligam venena,
ac te his suppliciis remunerabor. 20
vos hinc interea valete abite
illuc, unde malum pedem attulistis,
saecli incommoda, pessimi poetae.

If I didn’t love you more than my eyes, Calvus you amusing man, for
that gift of yours I would hate you with Vatinian hatred—because
what did I do, or what did I say, that you should wreck me utterly
with so many poets? May the gods cast many evils upon that client
who sent you such a huge mass of transgressors. But if, as I suspect,
Sulla the schoolmaster is giving you this novel and unique present,
I’m not upset—actually, I’m thrilled your labors haven’t been in
vain. Great gods, a monstrous and obscene booklet, which you, to
be sure, sent right off to your Catullus, that he should perish on
the Saturnalia, the best of days! No, you joker, no, you won’t get
away with this. For, if morning comes, I’ll run to the book stalls,
I’ll collect the Caesii, the Aquinii, Suffenus, every kind of poison,
and I’ll gift you back with these as punishments. You, meanwhile,
get out of here and go back there from where you brought your
lame foot, misfortunes of the age, worst of all poets.

The “textual praxis” informing the poem is the elite custom of cir-
culating writings not only vertically—whereby literature honoring great
patrons was composed by lesser-ranking men in exchange for favors—
but horizontally, involving persons of approximately equivalent status
soliciting and receiving texts from each other (Burgess 1986; Wray 2001,
98–109). Several poems in Catullus’ collection have been identified as
epistolary requests for a poetic performance—such as c. 38, addressed
to Q. Cornificius and seeking a consolation in the manner of Simonides
32 SYLLECTA CLASSICA 24 (2013)

(Wray 2001, 100–101). Works that participate in that egalitarian system

of gift-exchange have a special designation, munus, connoting their ir-
replaceable value and the addressee’s duty to reciprocate (Stroup 2010,
67–70). Catullus’ poem twists protocols in two ways. First, by the rule of
reciprocity, bad poetry sent as a munus requires bad poetry in return (te
his suppliciis remunerabor, “I’ll gift you back with these as punishments,”
14.20). Such a reversal befits the Saturnalia (Burgess 1986, 583). Second,
horizontal exclusivity is affirmed by the expulsion of pretentious inter-
lopers from the community. Catullus sardonically reduces the original
donor of the offending libellus to the status of cliens or dependent favor-
seeker, disqualifying him from the competition of equals (Stroup 2010,
78–82). Then, in finally banishing the pessimi poetae from his presence
(vos hinc interea valete abite / illuc, unde malum pedem attulistis, “you,
meanwhile, get out of here and go back there from where you brought
your lame foot,” 21–22), he clears ground for the “best” poets—himself
and Calvus, his literary peer—to continue their artistic interchanges.
Horace alters the particulars of the situation yet preserves, though in
a less outspoken fashion, the tension between reciprocity and hierarchy:
Parentis olim si quis impia manu
      senile guttur fregerit,
edit cicutis alium nocentius.
      o dura messorum ilia!
quid hoc veneni saevit in praecordiis? 5
      num viperinus his cruor
incoctus herbis me fefellit? an malas
      Canidia tractavit dapes?
ut Argonautas praeter omnis candidum
      Medea mirata est ducem, 10
ignota tauris illigaturum iuga
      perunxit hoc Iasonem,
hoc delibutis ulta donis paelicem
      serpente fugit alite.
nec tantus umquam siderum insedit vapor 15
      siticulosae Apuliae
nec munus umeris efficacis Herculis
      inarsit aestuosius.
at siquid umquam tale concupiveris,
      iocose Maecenas, precor, 20
manum puella suavio opponat tuo
      extrema et in sponda cubet.
 SKINNER: HORACE, MAECENAS, AND CATULLUS 33

“If ever anyone shall have broken with impious hand the aged neck
of a parent, let him eat garlic, more baneful than hemlock.” O the
tough guts of reapers! What poison is this raging in my organs?
Surely vipers’ blood steamed with these vegetables didn’t slip past
me? Or did Canidia handle the noxious meal? With this Medea,
having admired Jason, the captain handsome beyond all other Ar-
gonauts, greased him when he was planning to bind the unknown
yoke to the bulls; having wrought vengeance on her rival by presents
smeared with this, she fled on her winged serpent. The heat of the
Dog Star never settled so greatly on thirsty Apulia, nor did a gift
sear the shoulders of capable Hercules more fiercely. But, I pray, if
ever again you fancy something like this, mischievous Maecenas,
let your girl block your kiss with her hand and lie on the farthest
side of the couch. (Epod.. 3)

Picking up Catullus’ description of current writers as “poison” (omnia

colligam venena, “I will collect every kind of poison,” 14.19), the speaker
brands what is giving him indigestion an unknown poisonous substance
(quid hoc veneni saevit in praecordiis? “what poison is this raging in my
organs,” 3.5),3 speculates upon the witch Canidia’s access to the dinner
ingredients, and cites the exempla of Medea and Deianeira as givers of
deadly gifts (all hints designed to mislead) before unmasking his host
as the true perpetrator. Addressing him as iocose Maecenas (mischievous
Maecenas, 3.20), an epithet reminiscent of Catullus’ iucundissime Calve
(literally: most congenial Calvus, 14.2), Horace wishes garlic breath upon
Maecenas should he ever contemplate playing such a trick again. This
imprecation nicely conforms to the horizontal rule of textual reciprocity,
since the malefactor is being repaid in kind.
Functionally, then, Horace’s garlic is analogous to Catullus’ volume
of pessimi poetae—both are imparted in jest, both received with horror.
We may ask whether the herb too has literary import. Several critics
have already posited figurative associations for it. Gowers (1993, 308)
says that it “shares the qualities of iambic vis” such as heat and pungency
and physiologically replicates the wrathful abuse of the iambic poet.
Fitzgerald thinks the effects of garlic mark an insecurity in Horace’s
relations with his benefactor ([1988] 2009, 149–50), and Johnson
likewise believes its ingestion a “metaphor for the rewards and risks of
working/writing for the powerful” (2012, 93). The Catullan intertext
3 
This use of the partitive genitive is another attribute of Catullan style: e.g., ni tu quid
facias ineptiarum (if you were not doing something foolish, 6.14).
34 SYLLECTA CLASSICA 24 (2013)

confirms that last inference by reminding us, paradoxically, that the

speaker’s relationship with Calvus is subject to collaborative give-and-take,
while that of Maecenas and Horace, although open to practical jokes on
Maecenas’ part, is still a vertical one, that of greater and lesser amicus.
Indeed, Horace’s retaliatory curse, which has been pronounced “tooth-
less” for being provisional and without lasting consequences (L. Watson
2003, 39, 129), could reflect that imbalance of power. Bad-mouthing a
superior can go only so far.
The content of the curse may involve another inversion of Catullus
triggered by a reminder of an adjoining poem. Critics are now generally
agreed that, whoever determined the overall order of the liber Catulli,
the artfully arranged first fourteen or twenty-six polymetric poems show
authorial planning and were probably part of the libellus presented to
Cornelius Nepos (Skinner 2007a).4 In the poem immediately preced-
ing c. 14, Fabullus is invited to dinner in order to sample a perfumed
unguent bestowed upon Catullus’ own puella by Veneres Cupidinesque
(13.11–12): 5
sed contra accipies meros amores
seu quid suavius elegantiusve est: 10
nam unguentum dabo, quod meae puellae
donarunt Veneres Cupidinesque,
quod tu cum olfacies, deos rogabis,
totum ut te faciant, Fabulle, nasum.

…but in return [for providing food, wine and company] you will
receive undiluted affection or whatever is sweeter or more stylish, for
I’ll give you a balm that Venuses and Cupids gave my girl, which,
once you are sniffing it, you’ll beg the gods to make you totally,
Fabullus, nose. (13.9–14)

Once more we have an occasion of reciprocity—fragrance in exchange for

all other dinner trappings. Conceivably, the perfume too has metonymic
4 
Authorial design for the initial group of fourteen poems has been argued recently
by, among others, Hubbard (1983) and (2005), Scherf (1996), and Beck (1996) and
acknowledged by Bellandi (2007, 64–65).
5 
Although the noun puella already carries erotic overtones in Roman comedy, where it
is applied to the sweetheart of the adulescens (Plaut. Poe. 1094, 1301; Ter. Phorm. 81), it
was Catullus who gave the word its specialized literary sense of the poet-lover’s mistress
(Adams 1983, 347 n. 76; P. Watson 1983, 136). See now Hallett’s re-examination of
its history (2013).
 SKINNER: HORACE, MAECENAS, AND CATULLUS 35

aspects, standing in for the beloved herself, and, by extension, for Catul-
lus’ poetry (Bernstein 1984–85; Nappa 1998, 390–91).
Assuming that Horace read the juxtaposed texts 13 and 14 in the
same order we do, we may surmise that he reproduced the contrast of
gifts, the divine ointment and the accursed libellus, by bringing a recol-
lection of c. 13 into play.6 Along with the banquet settings, mention of
a puella in the closing lines of both that poem and Epode 3 forges a link
between the passages. However, the governing relationship of the two is
adversative, since “on any cultural scale in antiquity,” as Gowers remarks,
“garlic was at the opposite extreme from sweet perfumes” (1993, 290).
Insofar as the garlic breath of Epode 3 cancels out the alluring scent of the
Catullan poem, we can posit a parallel antithesis between Maecenas’ girl
and Catullus’ beloved. The uncooperative puella who shrinks from her
lover’s kiss (manum puella suavio opponat tuo / extrema et in sponda cubet,
“let your girl block your kiss with her hand and lie on the farthest side of
the couch,” Epode 3.21–22) is arguably a negative foil for the Catullan
puella who confers on her lover the sensuous, miraculously stimulating
unguent.
From a programmatic perspective, it is imaginable that Maecenas’
girl is herself a trope. Contemporary readings approach the love object
of Roman lyric and elegiac poetry as a scripta puella, a synecdoche for the
poet’s erotic creations.7 Propertius’ punning declaration that his Cynthia,
at once mistress and book, is “read in the entire forum” (toto Cynthia
lecta foro, 2.24.2) virtually sanctions such an understanding. As a glance
at his poetic fragments shows, Maecenas was a devout Catullan follower,
emulating his style, themes, vocabulary, and meters, even trying his hand
at galliambics in a poem on the Magna Mater (Courtney 1993, 276;
Hollis 2007, 318). In the last lines of the epode, we may consequently
detect a critique of those literary efforts, chaffing him about writing in
the now-hackneyed neoteric manner by saddling him with a disoblig-
ing muse-mistress. After all, Horace’s patience with second-generation
Catullus imitators had long been exhausted. In his initial book of Satires,
6 
Putnam discerns the inspiration of Catullus 13 in Carm. 4.12.13–28, where Horace
asks Vergil to share an expensive vintage in recompense for a small jar of nard (2006,
96–98). This transaction between two poets involving perfumed ointment again
conflates cc. 13 and 14.

The phrase scripta puella, denoting the beloved as a personification of the poet’s art,
7 

was coined by Wyke (1987). For full discussion of the textualized mistress, see now
Keith (2012), who also provides a comprehensive bibliography of previous scholarship.
36 SYLLECTA CLASSICA 24 (2013)

dated to 36–35 bce and hence prior to publication of the Epodes,8 he had
already referred to simius iste / nil praeter Calvum et doctus cantare Catul-
lum ("that ape educated in singing nothing except Calvus and Catullus,"
Sat. 1.10.18–19). While the slur does not disparage Calvus and Catullus
themselves, it intimates that the fad for them, in his opinion, should by
now have run its course.9
Among Maecenas’ surviving fragments only two are in hendecasyl-
labics. Both are addressed (not coincidentally, as we will see) to Horace.
In view of Catullus’ fondness for the meter, though, he may well have
composed other such nugae, some with an amatory flavor. Maecenas’
scripta puella, in that case, could have been the Licymnia who appears
in Carm. 2.12 as the embodiment of light erotic verse (Sutherland
2005, 196).10 In this recusatio Horace, after making the typical claim
of incapacity to sing of historical or mythic wars (and the untypical,
presumably frivolous recommendation that Maecenas himself undertake
a prose account of Caesar’s triumphs), turns to a subject he is equipped
to handle:
Me dulces dominae Musa Licymniae
cantus, me voluit dicere lucidum
fulgentis oculos et bene mutuis 15
     fidum pectus amoribus;

8 
For the date of Satires I see Gowers (2012, 1). While individual epodes may have been
composed during the decade 42–31 bce, their publication as a collection is obviously
post-Actium (Mankin 1995, 10; L. Watson 2003, 2–4).
9 
Simius “mainly implies slavish imitation of fashionable neoteric poetry” (Gowers
2012, 316–17). Hubbard detects parody of neoteric affectations in the use of the code
words doctus and cantare (2000, 27).
10
  In the oblique cases, the Greek name “Licymnia” fits readily enough into a
hendecasyllabic line even without recourse to elision, but the nominative can only be
accommodated if the final syllable is elided or if a trochaic base is substituted for the
conventional spondaic opening. In his hendecasyllabics Maecenas apparently admitted
a weaker base, as Catullus did, instead of conforming to stricter practice and beginning
each line with a spondee (Courtney 1993, 277; cf. Hollis 2007, 322). Mankin perceives
a metrical pun at Epod. 3.22, where the rare word sponda (literally “bedframe”) forms a
spondee “in the last (extrema) place in the last dimeter of the poem where such a foot
can occur” (1995, 99). The joke, if there is one, could be gratuitous, but it would be
more relevant if Maecenas’ employment of spondees was at issue.
 SKINNER: HORACE, MAECENAS, AND CATULLUS 37

quam nec ferre pedem dedecuit choris

nec certare ioco nec dare bracchia
ludentem nitidis virginibus sacro
Dianae celebris die. 20

num tu quae tenuit dives Achaemenes

aut pinguis Phrygiae Mygdonias opes
permutare velis crine Licymniae
     plenas aut Arabum domos,

cum flagrantia detorquet ad oscula 25

ceruicem aut facili saeuitia negat
quae poscente magis gaudeat eripi,
     interdum rapere occupat?

Me, the Muse bade tell of the sweet songs of mistress Licymnia,
me, her eyes brightly flashing and her heart truly faithful for re-
ciprocal love;
whom it has not disgraced to dance in a chorus nor to trade jokes
nor to join hands in performance with dazzling virgins at the
crowded festival of Diana.
You surely would not want to trade for a lock of Licymnia’s hair
what the wealthy Persian king once possessed, or the Mygdonian
riches of lush Phrygia, or the plentiful estates of the Arabs,
when she bends her neck toward ardent kisses, or with adept cruelty
refuses them, who on further demand would like them snatched,
and meantime snatches first? (Carm. 2.12.13­–28)

Whether Licymnia is Horace’s fictive mistress or Maecenas’ wife Terentia

disguised under a nom de plume continues to be debated,11 but if her
name, by analogy with “Polyhymnia,” reflects her musical associations,
the question is probably moot.12 Within the poem her transformation
11
  For the difficulties posed by following ps.-Acro’s identification (on Serm. 1.2.64)
of Licymnia with the metrically equivalent Terentia, see Nisbet and Hubbard (1978,
180–82 and ad loc.). According to Davis (1975) the conventions of the recusatio demand
that she must be Horace’s mistress. Davis has been recently followed by Sutherland, who
sees the speaker at the end handing her over, as the materia of his text, to Maecenas as
reader (2005, 202–206). Dismissing Davis’ argument, however, Freis believes Horace
repudiates the Catullan glorification of extramarital affairs in celebrating the marital
love of Maecenas and Terentia (2005, 72–77).

  Supposing her originally the subject of Maecenas’ poems, Kiessling and Heinze note
12

but do not endorse the derivation of “Licymnia” from λιγύς and ὑμνεῖν (1930, 206;
38 SYLLECTA CLASSICA 24 (2013)

from steadfast companion in love and celebrant of Diana’s rites (15–20)

into an accomplished sexual tormenter (25–28) is a generic one, mark-
ing a shift from Horace’s lyric mode to a pastiche of Maecenas’ piquant
versiculi. In the ode’s closing vignette, the flagrantia oscula of a pressing
suitor are welcomed, then rebuffed, and finally preempted, just as in
Epode 3 Maecenas’ suavium was firmly blocked. Saevitia or cruelty, in
Latin amatory discourse the distinguishing quality of the unwilling
partner, is here modified by facilis (“dexterous, practiced, adept”), sug-
gesting habitual denial.13 Hence the reluctance, or feigned reluctance, of
the puella could have been a leitmotif of Maecenas’ poetic productions,
with the word for “kiss” probably basium.
Horace’s tendency to affect Catullan usage in poems addressed to
Maecenas, in conjunction with Maecenas’ own hendecasyllabic frag-
ments naming Horace, led McDermott to conjecture a protracted verse
dialogue between the two men concerned “with a genial, but somewhat
barbed, exchange of advice or mild criticism” (1982, 217). There may be
criticism on Horace’s part, as we have just witnessed, but Maecenas turns
their conflict over the merits of neoteric poetry into a running gag. In
one fragment Horace, identified by his cognomen Flacce, is caressingly
dubbed mea vita. This Catullan endearment is inserted into a catalogue
of jewels, all of which the speaker rejects:
lucentes, mea vita, nec smaragdos,
beryllos mihi, Flacce, nec nitentes,
<nec> percandida margarita quaero,
nec quos Thynia lima perpolivit
anellos, nec iaspios lapillos…

I want for myself, Flaccus my life, no glowing emeralds nor shining

aquamarines nor pure white pearls nor rings finely polished with
a Bithynian file nor jasper pebbles. (Hollis fr. 185 = 2 Courtney)

Maecenas was teased by Augustus for his interest in precious stones

(Macr. Sat. 2.4.12) and is cited by Pliny as an authority on the subject
Nauck 1894, 122). Nisbet and Hubbard’s reservations stem from the false etymology
of “Polyhymnia” (originally Polymnia) and uncertainty over the first element of the
name (1978 ad loc.).

  Nisbet and Hubbard (1978, 199) term facili saevitia an oxymoron, with facili
13

implying compliance and saevitia the reverse. For the beloved’s saevitia in scorning a
kiss, see Catullus 99.6.
 SKINNER: HORACE, MAECENAS, AND CATULLUS 39

(NH 1 ad fin., cf. 37.10). If, as seems likely, these lines form a priamel,
Horace is professed more desirable than any gem in Maecenas’ collection
(Oliensis 1977, 164–65).14 However, we should not overlook the pointed
implications of Thynia lima perpolivit, recalling Catullus’ sojourn in
Bithynia (Thyniam atque Bithynos, Catul. 31.5) and his libellus polished
(expolitum, Catul. 1.2) with dry pumice. Engraved stones, as the lithica
poems in the new Posidippus papyrus reveal (P. Mil. Vogl. VIII 309, col.
I–IV.6), are a material counterpart of the fastidiously honed Alexandrian
epigram.15 With mea vita, Maecenas indulges in Catullan romantic ex-
travagance even as he ostensibly repudiates Catullan refinement.
Such considerations also make Maecenas’ own adaption of Catullus
14 more intriguing. We owe its preservation to Suetonius, who in his
biography of Horace quotes it as artless proof of the writer’s affection for
his friend (Maecenas quantopere eum dilexerat satis testatur illo epigram-
mate, Suet. Vit. Horati 11–12). As in the previous fragment, though,
Maecenas is being flippant:

Ni te visceribus meis, Horati,

plus iam diligo, tu tuum sodalem
hinnulo videas strigosiorem.

If I didn’t already love you more than my vital organs, Horace, may
you see your comrade scrawnier than a little mule-colt. (Hollis fr.
186 = 3 Courtney; ap. Suet. Vit. Horati 13–15)16

Sly enough as it stands, the takeoff becomes even wittier if read as a direct
response to Epode 3. For Catullus’ oculis Maecenas substitutes visceri-
bus, a slight variant on Horace’s praecordiis. Sodalis, as Hollis observes
14 
L. Watson finds a reference to this fragment in Epod. 8.13–14: nec sit marita
quae rotundioribus / onusta bacis ambulet, “nor let there be a matron who walks forth
burdened with rounder pearls” (2003, 19).

  On the self-reflexive analogy of carved gemstone and finely crafted epigram, see
15

Schur (2004); Bing (2005, 119–21); Kuttner (2005, 162–63).

16 
Hinnulo, Oudendorp’s emendation of the paradosis nimio, derives from Plin. NH
8.172, in which the male get of a stallion upon a jenny is labeled a hinnus (Gr. γίννος
or γιννός), and from 8.174, describing the female mule born of a wild ass and a mare
as strigoso corpore (of scrawny body). While Courtney obelizes the word, Hollis defends
Oudendorp’s reading.
40 SYLLECTA CLASSICA 24 (2013)

ad loc., is a favorite Catullan word, often used for like-minded literary

associates; tuum sodalem, then, smacks of irony.17 However, strigosiorem
is the operative word in the domains of both diction and metapoetics.
As a grammatical form, it evokes Catullus’ habit of placing comparative
adjectives at the end of the hendecasyllabic line, just as hinnulo recalls his
penchant for diminutives.18 The epithet strigosus itself, meaning “thin”
in a pejorative sense and applied chiefly to domestic animals, is almost
a technical term in agriculture, but its sole nonliteral use is memorable.
Employment of anatomical similes when deprecating an opponent’s
literary style figured prominently in the debate between Cicero and
proponents of the spare Attic method of delivery (Keith 1999, 42–46).
In his Dialogus de Oratoribus, Tacitus’ spokesman Aper gives examples
from Cicero’s letters:
Legistis utique et Calvi et Bruti ad Ciceronem missas epistulas, ex
quibus facile est deprehendere Calvum quidem Ciceroni exsanguem
et attritum, Brutum autem otiosum atque diiunctum; rursusque
Ciceronem a Calvo quidem male audisse tamquam solutum et
enervem, a Bruto autem, ut ipsius verbis utar, tamquam ‘fractum
atque elumbem.’

You have certainly read the communications of both Calvus and

Brutus to Cicero, from which it is easy to discover that Calvus on
the one hand seemed to Cicero bloodless and thin, Brutus on the
other verbose and digressive. Cicero, in turn, was disparaged by
Calvus as limp and nerveless, so to speak, and by Brutus, to use his
own words, as “affected and effeminate.” (Dial. 18.5)

At Brutus 64 Cicero renders a judgment on the oratory of Lysias, whom

the Atticists took as their exemplar. After admitting that the Greek master
does in places display “muscle” (lacerti), he adds verum est certe genere
toto strigosior (but he certainly is rather scrawny in his manner overall).
17
  E.g., Cinna at Catul. 10.29 and perhaps 95b.1; Caecilius at 35.2.
18
  Though this is admittedly speculation, hinnulo, if correct, might also gesture
toward the prominence of mules in the Catullan corpus. At 83.6 mule, nihil sentis
(mule, do you perceive nothing?) is unremarkable, as the abusive intent is paramount,
but details in both 17.25–26, where a mule’s shoe comes off in sticky mud, and
97.7–8, comparing a foul mouth to the spread haunches of a female mule in estrus,
seem drawn from first-hand observation. From Catalepton 10, the clever parody of
Catullus 4 lampooning Sabinus, a former muleteer, L. Watson concludes that mules
were distinctively associated with the Gallic provinces (2012, 162).
 SKINNER: HORACE, MAECENAS, AND CATULLUS 41

Conveying lack of robustness through an image of emaciation is not

surprising, but insinuating at the same time that Lysias, a metic and
paid logographer, was a half-starved beast of burden is polemic genius.
Cicero’s real targets are Lysias’ Roman admirers, who should, he
opines a little later, “imitate [Lysias’] blood as well as his bones” (utinam
imitarentur nec ossa solum, sed etiam sanguinem, Brut. 68). As the founder
and chief theorist of Atticism, Licinius Calvus was unquestionably
foremost in Cicero’s mind, even though the Brutus was published after
Calvus’ death. His close identification with the movement is evident
not only from that treatise (ipse errabat et alios etiam errare cogebat, “he
himself [Calvus] went astray and forced others to stray as well,” Brut.
284) but from later experts on rhetoric such as Tacitus and Quintilian.19
Maecenas may be employing strigosior of an equid, but its occurrence
as a comparative in an imitation of Catullus’ poem to Calvus would
likewise conjure up Cicero’s deleterious comparison of orator to barn-
yard animal. By arrogating the adjective to himself, Maecenas assumes
the role of Calvus to Horace’s Catullus—in a riposte that may well be
complete, since it caps its antecedent so effectively.
Even if Maecenas is prepared to acknowledge their disagreement
good-humoredly, however, Horace might not be willing to leave it at
that. His reworking of Catullus 14 could be part of a wider program-
matic strategy underlying the Epodes as a whole. Catullus had repeatedly
designated his invective verses as “iambs” (cc. 36.5, 40.2, 54B.1, and fr.
3), even when he appears to have had hendecasyllabics in mind.20 Because
iamb was a genre already connected with the novi poetae, Maecenas would
have been well positioned to appreciate new contributions to that tradi-
tion. With its numerous neoteric reminiscences, Horace’s collection of
iambic verse seems both homage to Maecenas’ enthusiasms and a frank
avowal of independence. Later in his career, we recall, he will expressly
declare his own primacy in imitating Archilochean iambics, along with
his greater restraint in pursuing his model:
…Parios ego primus iambos
ostendi Latio, numeros animosque secutus
Archilochi, non res et agentia verba Lycamben.

19
  Tac. Dial. 18.4–5, 21.1, 25.4; Quint. Inst. 10.1.115, 12.1.22, 12.10.11.
On Catullus as an iambographer, see Newman (1990, 45–59) and Heyworth (2001).
20 

Quintilian famously assigns him to that poetic category (Inst. 10.1.96).

42 SYLLECTA CLASSICA 24 (2013)

I first introduced Parian iambs to Latium, reproducing the measures

and the disposition of Archilochus but not his subject matter and
his language harassing Lycambes. (Epod. 1.19.23–5)

Even as they pay tribute to Archilochus or Hipponax or, at a further

remove, Callimachus, are Horace’s iambs also a rejoinder to Catullus’
generic self-staging—less personally acerbic, more sympotic? The formal
distinction he carefully draws between imitating animos…Archilochi,
Archilochus’ spirit, but not res, his substance, invites us to think so.
Keeping such a possibility in mind, we should be better able to
observe how the Epodes as a whole makes use of Catullus not only
through direct verbal reminiscences but also through situational corre-
spondences, which are often more covert. In discovering the affiliation
between Catullus 14 and Epode 3 and unpacking its nuances, the present
essay has taken a first step along that proposed path of inquiry. Further
correlations involving other Epodes remain to be investigated. Yet, in
response to Lindsay Watson, we can already say that Maecenas’ partial-
ity is a complicating ingredient of Horace’s allusions to Catullus, and
that we sometimes need to view their very existence through the lens of
the two men’s friendship. That makes their latent subtexts all the more
tantalizing.

Department of Classics
University of Arizona
Learning Services Building 204
Tuscan, Arizona 85721-0105
mskinner@email.arizona.edu
 SKINNER: HORACE, MAECENAS, AND CATULLUS 43

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