Catullus Vlll. 143 



imperfectly describe the situation of a lady of position who had 

 sent away her lover, but which describe with such accuracy the 

 situation of a woman of the libcrtina class who had lost her lover 

 and protector. It is not enough to account for the negative im- 

 plications of the passage ; the positive coloring of these verses must 

 also be explained, the heaping-up of amatory phrases, the dehb- 

 erate employment of the language of the half-world. 



It will be seen that whatever difficulties of interpretation the 

 poem presents are not in the verses themselves, but in the adjust- 

 ment of them to what is known of the life of Catullus and his re- 

 lation to Clodia. Taken by itself the poem is a specimen of a 

 particular class, fairly well represented in Latin literature, and the 

 interpretation will, I hope, gain something by a study of the type 

 of which it is a representative. 



The essential characteristic of the t^pe is that it pictures the 

 lover proclaiming his determination to break away from his mistress. 

 Its simplest form is in comedy. The opening lines of the Eunuchus 

 (46—49) present the type in outline : — 



Quid igitur faciam ? non eam ne nunc quidem 

 quom accessor ultro ? an potius ita me comparem, 

 non perpeti meretricum contumelias? 

 exclusit ; revocat : redeam ? non si me obsecret. 



The unhappy young lover is represented as trying to meet the 

 inconstancy of his mistress by an angr}' acceptance of her sentence 

 of dismissal. The picture is wholly humorous, the contrast between 

 the vehement expressions of determination and the underlying 

 weakness being brought out in the comments of the slave, vss. 

 50-70. Horace, in his paraphrase of the scene (Sat. ii, 3, 259-271) 

 perceives and sets forth the humor of the situation. In Plautus 

 there are several scenes of the same kind. In True. 759—769 the 

 lover is represented as in the same state of anger and expressing 

 the same determination not to submit to the inconstancy ot his 

 mistress, but two further elements are added ; he threatens the girl 

 and he is himself half-conscious of the weakness of his resolutions 

 (766 f.). So in Bacch. 500-525 the lover is in a whirl of conflicting 

 emotions. He tries to accept the situation (502, ilium exoptavit 

 potius ? habeat : optumest, cf. Eun. 49), hardens his heart (504), and 

 breaks out into threats (503, 506, 507 b, 512 ff.), the last threat 

 being in substance that he will abandon her to poverty. At the 

 same time he is represented as conscious of his weakness and as 

 betraying it — in the broad manner of Plautus — by the :^a<)a TiQoa- 



