Lesbia
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Lesbia was the literary pseudonym of the great love of the Roman poet Gaius Valerius Catullus (c.82-52 BC).
She was a poet in her own right, included with Catullus in a list of famous poets whose girlfriends "often" helped them write their verses. The name Lesbia was chosen for several reasons, including its metrical match with her real name. The 2nd century AD orator Apuleius of Madaura gave a list of four such identities in court, to demonstrate his great erudition:
Catullus's Lesbia: Clodia
Ticida's Perilla: Metella
Propertius' Cynthia: Hostia
Tibullus' Delia: Plania
Apuleius' information is thought to have come from Suetonius de poetis, or Suetonius' most important source, a work on late Republican and Augustan period poets by Gaius Julius Hyginus.
The name also suggests literary and erotic connotations, evoking the famous circle of young girl lovers on Lesbos Island, who included the poetess Sappho. Catullus's poem 35 celebrating his poet friend Caecilius of Novum Comum also mentions the devotion of Caecilius' girlfriend, who is herself accorded a remarkable tribute as "Sapphic girl, more learned than the Muse" (lines 16-17: Sapphica puella / musa doctior). This could well be Catullus' Lesbia before she became his own lover.
Lesbia is the subject of 25 of Catullus' 116 surviving poems, and these display a wide range of emotions (see Catullus 85), ranging from tender love (e. g. Catullus 5, Catullus 7), to sadness and disappointment (e.g. Catullus 72), and to bitter sarcasm (e.g. Catullus 8), following the often unsteady course of Catullus' relationship.
Lesbia is traditionally identified with Claudia Metelli Celeris (uxor), the notorious Clodia of Cicero's extant speech (of March 56 BC) Pro Caelio, elder sister and lover of Publius Clodius Pulcher.
References
Ancient sources
- The Catullan libellus of 116 poems
- Oxford Classical Texts, C. Valerii Catulli Carmina (ed.) R A B Mynors (Oxford University Press, 1958)
- Penguin Classics, English translation, The Poems of Catullus by Peter Whigham (Penguin Books, 1966)
Modern works
- Wiseman, T Peter:
-- Catullan Questions (Leicester University Press, 1969), especially chapter 5: "Lesbia - When?" (42-49), and chapter 6: "Lesbia - Who?" (50-60)
-- Cinna the Poet and other Roman Essays (Leicester University Press, 1974), especially chapter 5: "Lesbia and her Children" (104-118)
- Oxford Latin Reader, Maurice Balme and James Morewood (1997)
- Hallett, Judith P: "Catullus and Horace on Roman Women Poets", Antichthon 40 (Thematic issue: Catullus in Contemporary Perspective, 2006), 65-88
