Aven McMaster. A short summary of this paper. Download PDF. Translate PDF. The Problem of Gratitude: Catullus 49 and the Function of Liberalitas in Roman Poetry Gift exchange and the complex network of obligation that results from it were an important part of every aspect of aristocratic life in the Rome of the late Republic.
In particular, poetic expressions of gratitude for liberalitas received indicate the importance of reciprocal obligation and the anxieties that accompany it. In the poetry that has been preserved from this period there are not many direct and explicit thank- you poems, though there must have been many short occasional poems and epigrams of straightforward gratiae from well-educated clients, in addition to those from actual poets.
The poetic expressions of gratitude that do exist from this period, however, demonstrate that their authors were concerned with many of the same issues that Cicero and Seneca raise in their prose works. It is therefore perhaps no coincidence that one of the poems in the Catullan corpus that engages most obviously with the problem of liberalitas is actually addressed to Cicero himself.
Catullus 49 appears to be a thank-you poem from Catullus to Cicero. This conforms to all the basic conventions of liberalitas as Cicero himself defined it in the de officiis: it expresses gratitude, it is a public recognition of the service, and it enhances the reputation of the benefactor. However, since , when C. Clumper first proposed that the thanks were ironic and that the poem was a manifestation of the enmity between Catullus and Cicero, there has been continual debate about the sincerity of the piece, coupled with speculation about possible motivating occasions for its composition.
Many other elements have been pointed to as undercutting the sincerity of the poem, such as the use of disertissime 1 , both because of the excessiveness of the superlative and because of the possibly negative connotations of disertus in contrast to eloquens.
However, the very variety of suggestions of possible occasions for this poem, both sincere and ironic, points to the impossibility of ever reaching a definitive conclusion about their relationship.
This is a thank-you poem in form and language — what would that mean to a contemporary reader? When one considers the poem as an example of the conventions of liberalitas, the most striking feature is in fact the absence of a specified occasion, the lack of mention of what Catullus is thanking Cicero for.
If the poet is willing to publicly acknowledge his debt to Cicero, why does he not specify the reason? Seneca, in his de beneficiis, suggests some reasons why a recipient of a benefaction might not be eager to reveal what he has received: if for instance the benefaction relieves bodily infirmity, poverty, or disgrace, benefactors are advised to give those benefactions secretly de ben.
However, that does not seem to be the situation here, since Catullus would presumably conceal the transaction entirely if he was ashamed of it.
This lack of specific occasion is a problem whether one views the poem as sincere or ironic — in either case, one might reasonably expect the poet to let the audience know the favour or the insult that has been done to him.
The absence of a reference to the occasion of the poem therefore cannot be ignored as unnecessary, and remains a difficulty to be explained. While Catullus gives no information about the reason for his gratitude, he does unmistakeably place the poem into the tradition of thank-you poems, and thus invokes all the conventions and assumptions associated with liberalitas.
Nonetheless, the potentially sarcastic or overblown linguistic elements that cause discomfort for many scholars remain. Catullus published a number of well-turned insults as poems, and some compliments too, including this one. Why does he publish and versify this little thank you note? But can we be sure that it really is a compliment? It is as though Catullus wanted to give the impression that he was taking dictation. Such is the baldness and exaggeration of the comparison in the last three lines that an awkward silence seems to descend as the poem ends.
Even Cicero, who was not a modest man, must have suspected that there was more to this than meets the eye. Was Catullus parodying the orotund symmetries of his prose?
There is a nice effect in the second and third lines, where each element of the tripartite division between past, present and future is longer than the last.
But Cicero might also have suspected that Catullus was mocking his high opinion of himself. The great orator was notoriously self-important, and he was well aware of this reputation. Was Catullus trying to immortalise him as the sort of person who might swallow flattery this bald? Or were all these speculations paranoid imaginings, and Cicero should accept the compliment graciously? We readers are in much the same situation as Cicero, not sure whether we are in on the joke or not.
Like Cicero, we do not want to be dupes, and so we return to the poem again and again, trying to catch a tone of voice. But the poem maintains its deadpan. What do we learn about poetry from these two poems on the edge?
Perhaps a poem is what you read again because it seems to means something other than it says and vice versa. Williams and Catullus may be suggesting that there is a continuity between the care we take with the language of some of our everyday communications and the care with language that makes poetry what it is. But they are also asking us to notice what it is that kicks in when we write and read an utterance as poetry.
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