Identity, the self, and Catullan poetics in carm 63

Identity, identification and personae in Catull. 63and other Roman texts

Alexander Arweiler (Münster)

The human being is entirely a disaster.1

In the Partisan Review of 1947 Paul Bowles published a story entitled A distantepisode2: A professor of linguistics travels to a remote North African town tomake a survey of local dialects. Despite uneasy feelings he follows a stranger to adwelling outside the town where he is captured by nomads who beat him nearly todeath and cut off his tongue. The professor (not named throughout the story) fallsinto a state of near unconsciousness, while the nomads carry him along on theirtravels through the desert, make him sleep among the camels and after a whilestart to train him to entertain people at festivities by dancing, covered with »beltsmade of the bottoms of tin cans strung together«, and making »fearful growlingnoises«. After more than a year of a beast-like existence he is sold to a new owner,at whose house, at the sound of Arabic words he recognizes without recalling theirmeaning, »pain began to stir again in his being«. Having been left alone, he senseshunger and manages to escape from his prison, strays around the town, until aFrench soldier shoots at him, reckoning him to be a sort of »holy maniac«:

»The soldier watched a while, smiling, as the cavorting figure grew smaller in theoncoming evening darkness, and the rattling of the tin became a part of the greatsilence out there beyond the gate. The wall of the garage as he leaned against it still gaveforth heat, left there by the sun, but even then the lunar chill was growing in the air.«

Some of the discomforting effects of Bowles’ story originate in the narrator’sunwillingness to engage in his character’s possible feelings or to show sympathy.He is detached from the tragedy he is telling, as is the professor from his ownfortune (acting as witness rather than subject), and as his tormentors are detached

1 Herodot 1,32,4 in the translation proposed by Anthony Long (2001), 23.2 Republished a year later (in: New Directions in Prose and Poetry No. 10, Dec. 1948) and

later integrated into the collection The Delicate Prey and Other Stories 1950 (containing textswritten between 1939 and 1949).

50 Alexander Arweiler

from basic senses of humanity. The story shares many characteristics with Bowles’other works (especially with The sheltering sky), and some of these may be (and havebeen) associated with views on the subject and self held to be typically »modern«,such as notions of alienation, fragmentation, disconnectedness, incoherence, andcontradiction. The Distant episode develops these notions with regard to anotherwell-established idea of literary and cultural studies and social sciences, namely theindividual’s fundamental dependence on his or her cultural environment, whosedeliberate abandonment or loss may lead to the collapse of the individual’s innerconstitution or, as a common usage suggests, of his or her identity.

To motivate my following discussion, I would like to point to three more texts,first an observation by Anthony Long on Greek and Roman philosophies, thentwo plots from Roman literary texts. Long stated:

»Actually, all the philosophies I have discussed were so sensitive to the effects the socialforces have on shaping human identity that they more or less anticipated today’santhropological datum that human beings are ›cultural artifacts‹. Their educationalambitions […] were a critical and very deliberate reaction to it – a reaction to thepower of conventional ideologies to shape people’s values and motivations withoutremainder.«3

The two literary plots are: A young citizen of a Hellenistic polis travels to thePhrygian shores, participates in orgiastic celebrations of the Great Goddess Cybele,and emasculates himself in frenzy. Having regained reason, he returns to the beachand desperately regrets what has been done until a lion chases him into the woods;he never comes home again (Catull. 63). Finally: A poet is relegated to the marginsof the civilized empire where he is deprived from any company and exposed to ahostile nature and beast-like inhabitants; little by little he loses his ability to speakand is isolated and oppressed by fear; he never comes home again (Ovid’s Tristia).

If we had the impression that Bowles’ plot is typically modern, are the lasttwo less or equally modern? If Greek and Roman philosophies could think ofthe human being as a cultural artifact, where do we have to put Roman literaturewhen constructing a history of literary concerns about the self? Which particularfeatures of concepts of the human being do we have to note that were not yetavailable to ancient or that are not any more available to later poets or writersof prose? Such historiographical concerns about notions of the self seem to haveno marginal impact on what scholars in literary studies think their task in dealingwith the self should be4. Not few contemporary accounts deal with somethingwhich is sometimes called ›history of the self, of subjectivity, of individuality‹, and

3 (2001), 31–32.4 Which is perhaps different in the history of thought: The magisterial volumes of Gill (2006)

and Sorabji (2006) both present thoroughly grounded theses about historical development(see notes below); see also the survey on Greek notions of the human person (covering

Identity, identification and personae in Catull. 63 51

try to pinpoint the birthplace of special or all related notions within an epoch,a discourse, or even a single author. My following observations intend to showsome difficulties arising from a particularly reductionist historiographical approachto literary texts, and doing so I will concentrate on notions of personal identity andacts of identification in Roman poetry, considering these notions simultaneouslyas subject-matter of texts and as relevant condition of everyday reading practices.I won’t try to engage in a discussion of what Catullus, Ovid or Lucretius may›already have seen‹, but I would like to call for a wider approach to the issues ofthe self by including literary perspectives, and by paying attention to literature’sown agenda concerning philosophical, social, or religious concepts of the self.

1. Preliminary remarks:Personal identity and acts of identification

Personal identity in philosophical discussion is often related to metaphysical andlogical problems concerning the possibility of being the same through time, whilein literary and cultural studies a wider notion is common which refers to a set ofattitudes, properties, and life conditions someone holds indispensable for being theperson s/he senses s/he is5. The philosophical tradition is not only much more elab-orate and structured than some parts of the discussion on related issues in literarystudies6, the latter also refer to quite different (very young) traditions, mainly eth-nological, psychological, sociological, and cultural studies whose mixture broughtforth the many histories of subjects and subjectivities that claim Michel Foucaultone of the new city’s founding heroes. In literary studies we may be content withterms that are somehow midway between highly specialized (and equally contro-versial) definitions of philosophy and the obscurities of ordinary language, well

also identity, identification, and individuation) in Teichert (1999), 15–89 (with convincingobjections against Snell’s claims of discontinuity).

5 E.g. Searle (2004), 192–194 distinguishes three »families« of problems related to the self:criteria of personal identity, the subject of attribution of psychological properties, and whatmakes me the person I am, the last being related to character and personality while the firsttwo concern »the metaphysical problem of the existence and identity of a self across time«(ibid. 194). On the distinction between logical notions of identity as relevant for persons(numeric, qualitative, and diachronic) from the wide identity covering relations of someoneto himself, how one represents oneself, acts and lives in accordance with what is suitable andwished for by an individual, see Teichert (1999), 4. A verdict on the loose notion of identityin social sciences in contrast to philosophy is Henrich (1979), 133–137.

6 A short historical overview on related ideas and terms in Sorabji (2006), 32–53; a helpful listof issues in modern and ancient discussions of personal identity is in Gill (2006), 72–73.


knowing that the terms thus circumscribed are provisional and ideally open tolater refinement7.

Self and identity are collective terms that are constituted by a variable set ofaspects and ideas. For pragmatic reasons it seems legitimate to take the collec-tive terms when referring to a previously established set of features, for examplecoherence, continuity, autonomy, individuality, uniqueness, sameness or person-hood. These features, interrelated with each other and constituting themselvesfields of inquiry, can be subordinated to self and identity, but they are not neces-sarily included or explicit8. We may single out some particularly unhelpful uses ofthe collective terms that tend to obscure their meaning when referred to literarytexts: abbreviated expressions without previous specification (talking about ›theself‹ instead of a particular concept of a particular aspect related to the self), expres-sions lacking limitations in time, place, regard etc. (›the Roman/Greek/ancient self‹instead of a concept of self documented by a specific text, tradition, author etc.),unexplained complex terms (›subjective‹, ›individualistic‹), and references to morethan one person or individual involved (›collective self‹, ›cultural identity‹).

The last claim is connected with the first and second, but needs some explana-tion, as it is common to talk of identities of nations, communities, and groups. Ashared interest in a specific property or pattern to describe one’s personal identityis not conclusive for stating that the single descriptions of a similar type form onedescription or involve a new entity such as a collective identity. Individual acts ofidentification may be concordant or discordant, but the acts remain separate and donot amount to one and the same act carried out by several people. The shortcut alsois misleading about the number of possible items, their selection and combinationaccording to changing circumstances, and it ignores the large area of evidence thatmay be dealt with in a single case, but even then are rarely accessible to the observer(attitudes, beliefs, mental states, psychic experiences, private notions, intentions,experiences). Therefore I doubt that it is meaningful to talk about a Roman self ora Roman identity to be recovered from Ciceronian speeches or Vergil’s Aeneid9.Instead, we have single texts with specific contexts dealing with specific aspects ofthe concepts of self or identity, and we may study the specific conditions, aims, and

7 On the idea of later refinement see Parsons (2000), 174: »We have in mind ideals of completelyprecise concepts. When we use a word, it is to be taken as if it were expressing a preciseconcept, one which is a refinement of the imprecise one we actually express«.

8 Specification within philosophical studies and schools reinforces this problem, see e.g. Sorabji(2006), 157 on prominent approaches to identity: »I now move from the sort of subjectdiscussed by Derek Parfit to the sort treated in Charles Taylor’s Sources of the Self , from thequestion of what constitutes personal identity and difference to the rather different idea ofpossessing an identity in ethical contexts«.

9 Syed (2005) for example is quite difficult to understand for the generalizing, abbreviatedapproach to the field that is not structured according to the texts and concepts involved.


outcome which in literary texts is far from being easily transferred to another textand even less so to one or more individual persons behind. Finally, a last discom-fort concerns generalization of the historiographical type (mentioned above): Thesingle texts with specific contexts and dealing with specific aspects from the field ofself and identity cannot be pressed into the scheme of chronological development,but form an array of different approaches in different times and places where thefirst inventors of thoughts and concepts remain obscure. Recent scholarship in phi-losophy has refuted many long-established opinions about the (modern, even latemodern) inventions in the thought about the self, and the lack of scholarly traditionwithin literary studies advises avoiding the trap of historiographical reductionism10.

Having set these preliminaries, I would like to confine the following obser-vations to a small part of the questions related to personal identity which is (asannounced above) the acts of identification. An act of identification may be under-stood as a means to differentiate single entities from each other which belong tothe same species, as is the case with human beings and literary characters alike11.Performing this act goes along with an act of individuation (which person outof a group?), and makes use of different categories and attributions that may beascribed to several persons but either allow for sufficient identification within aconfined group of possible candidates (the one named Aeneas, or if there aretwo of this name: Aeneas who is sitting on the left to Anchises), or are appliedin a different sense (the wisdom of Socrates being different from the wisdom ofPlato)12. Another type of acts of identification, and perhaps a more frequent onein literary texts, is not so much referred to differentiating one from the other,but simply to showing who one is, thus delivering information on name, status,descent, preferences, behaviour and so on in order to make a character a character .

But the interest in literary acts of identification may begin earlier: Vergil’sAeneas famously introduces himself to Dido by saying Pius Aeneas sum, thusidentifying himself by a quality of his character he may assume to be especiallyappealing to the queen. Whether this is meant to be a reliable account of what he isor what he thinks about himself, is open to inquiry and depends on what we mayinfer from the context (as it may also be a deceptive speech such as the one utteredby Sinon in book 2 of the Aeneid). The sentence contains an element of persuasionand exhortation not expressed by grammar: »Believe me, I am Aeneas and I ampius«, or: »Identify me as Aeneas who is pius«. This element of exhortation iseasily recognized within a direct speech, but it is also present when the speaker or

10 E.g. See Sorabji (2006), 95–111 on John Locke’s return to ideas of memory in Epicurean andStoic texts, explicitly Lucretius (esp. Lucr. 3,843–64).

11 Teichert (1999), 47 (on Aristotle); on differentiating individuals within the Stoic tradition, seeSorabji (2006), 144–151 (on distinctive qualities, place, and matter).

12 The example and some ideas are from Teichert (1999), 45 (on Aristotle).


narrator of a literary text utters a statement. Every sentence of the type ›The personx is z‹ may be read as ›Believe me that x is z, Imagine that x is z‹. Once a readerhas agreed to dealing with literary texts, s/he will want to follow the proposals andtake them as literary facts, even if the fact is not the proposition, but the utteranceitself (›Imagine …!‹). Propositions within the text are meant to be measured againstother propositions and contexts (structure, composition, affiliation to a genre ormode of speaking, mythographical traditions etc.).

Thus the texts may provide a successive series of proposals to identify a char-acter (by name, qualities, behaviour, descent etc.), and it is up to the reader toconstruct a unified or contradictory image, relate it to other images from litera-ture (e.g. other characters named Ulysses) or historical and political record (e.g.Caesar). Especially characters known from literary tradition and reappearing indifferent texts pose interesting (and not solved) puzzles to the reader: How can wethink of Ariadne as being the same e.g. in Catullus and Ovid? What is her identitythat makes her the same despite all modifications?13 Many readers will take it forgranted that the proper name may be sufficient to relate the texts one to the other,but presupposing an identical character with changing properties seems to draw aconclusion before the arguments have been found14. Debates about the results ofthese and similar acts of identification are due to several factors, one surely beingthat we are not confronted with (logical) cases of strict identity where (accordingto a possible definition) every property of person A is equally present in person B,but asked to fill gaps, argue in favour of or against a certain identification, compareour own patterns with those applied in the text or by other readers15.

Acts of identification may be displayed on the level of narrated events (charac-ters being introduced or describing themselves or others, recognition or anagnorisisor confusions of persons [e.g. as parts of plot arrangement, with doubles and mis-takes of identities], discussion of relevant or irrelevant features of a person etc.),they are carried out by characters describing others and narrators introducing and

13 As we will see later on, the selection (and awareness) of criteria is a subject-matter of poetictexts as well as it should be of literary critics; Searle (2004) 196 proposes rightly to look atthose criteria »people employ in ordinary speech for deciding which person today is identicalwith which person in the past«

14 Ariadne in Ovid and Catullus may be referred to as the same (character) in that sense thatwe refer to other people’s beliefs (it is the same, but we have different images in mind, cf.Henrich [1979], 156–158), but I would think it is a misleading homonymy.

15 Another one may be that we are dealing with a strange entity when referring to literarycharacters, having biographies, families, and long literary lives, yet no substance we couldrefer these properties to. Some may interpret divergence in results of identification as adeficiency of the text or an inability of readers to do it »right«, but as it is probable that weare confronted with deliberate distortions of common identification practices, the objectionmay be dear especially to those whose beliefs in established patterns of identification ischallenged by the literary text.


defining conditions for identification. Inasmuch as writers want readers to partici-pate in proposed acts of identification, they will pay attention to common modelsand rules available to their readers, in order to use or modify them, the latter espe-cially for the fact that unreliable or misleading acts of identification are creative toolsthat literature can use without regard to moral or legal constrictions. Identificationcan be described in terms proper to literary studies, by analysis of conditions,means, methods, structure, presuppositions, circumstances, and representations,in the stage of production as in reception16.

2. Attis’ failure to identify her self and its reasons

Mary Beard in an insightful assessment praises Catullus’ poem 63 thus:

»Catullus’ Attis poem goes right to the heart of Roman society and values, questioningthe very nature of the ›Romanness‹ that those values entail. […] In short, it is a poemthat confronts and questions every notion of the subject, and of subjectivity«17.

This impression is shared by many readers of the poem, and it may serve as a start-ing point for observations on how exactly self, identity, and acts of identificationare employed for literary purposes.

The poem is neatly, even simply structured in its use of stock elements of nar-rative and composition (a quasi-mythical figure, a sea travel, adventures in a foreigncountry, direct speeches, the lament at the beach, a set of characters introduced,an abrupt ending)18. Dichotomies and sharp oppositions structure the poem inorder to convey the notion of incompatibility between civilization, rationality,light, social (ethnic, cultic) order on the one hand and loss, darkness, frenzy andbeast-like existence on the other. Highly artistic employment of metre, style, andvocabulary as well as the interest in cult and aetiology, the small scale of eventsnarrated, the length of the text, the interest in the characters’ intentions, feelings,and reactions all are elements that show the text affiliating with contemporary andearlier literary concerns. Its richness in content and its reworking of various fieldsof Roman culture has brought forth an equally rich number of fruitful approaches:The use of ritual and cultic material has lead to propose a cultic function of thetext itself, it has been related to the scholarly interests of Hellenistic poetics, it hasbeen read as a discussion of gender issues, of politic and social disconcertment, asa document of religious-historical value, as a political comment, as a poetological

16 I have tried to show the complexities of the process that makes us perceive characters andnarrators as eminent elements of a text in Arweiler (2006), e.g. 4–8, 37–48, 52 (on Lucan).

17 Beard/North/Price (1998), vol. I, 165.18 On symmetrical patterns in the monologues see Fedeli (1978), on Hellenistic composition

Fantuzzi/Hunter (2002), 550.


enterprise, as an erotic metaphor, as an allegory of the love poet – and, neces-sarily, as a biographical document19. As our interest is directed mainly on acts ofidentification within this poem, we can start with the central monologue:

Catull. 63,50–5520

›patria o mei creatrix, patria o mea genetrix,ego quam miser relinquens, dominos ut erifugaefamuli solent, ad Idae tetuli nemora pedem,ut aput niuem et ferarum gelida stabula forem,et +earum omnia+ adirem furibunda latibula,ubinam aut quibus locis te positam, patria, reor?

›My country, who gave me birth, my country, mother to me,That I left in my misery, as slaves who flee their mastersLeave their owners, and carried my step to the groves of Ida,To be amid the snow and the chilly haunts of beasts,To visit the [?] lairs of [?] in my madness,Where or in what location should I think of you lying, my country?

Attis had addressed her companions (v. 11), now turns to the patria (v. 49) andlater to her psyche (v. 61 miser a miser anime). Her speeches thus are addressedto institutions often mentioned as relevant to developing notions of one’s self,and these institutions are, perhaps unlike some later conceptions, not seen asoppressive: There is no stress on a separation between perception of the self from›inside‹ and ›outside‹, because the self is accused of not having modelled itselfaccording to the needs of the community (we will see later that this is a particularinterest the narrator himself displays)21. It may be important to note that we do notread an introspection in the familiar sense of searching for a true, inner, secret selfas opposed against the pressure of social patterns and demands. Attis is presentedas voluntarily using the community’s patterns and language to create a perceptionof what she is and what she is meant to do (cf. the Ciceronian notion of res publicaas »common thing« that has no meaningful existence independently from the

19 The best starting-point is Harder/Nauta (2005) where all articles have extensive bibliogra-phies; against Wiseman’s idea that poem 63 was meant for ritual performance at the Megalesiasee Fantuzzi/Hunter (2002), 563 n. 74. On religious-historical aspects of the cult see esp.Lane (1996); Nauta (2005), 109–116 has convincingly connected the Cybele cult in Catull 63with the (re)new(ed) interest in Rome’s Trojan origins. Discussion of the proposed relationto the Bithynian experience of the historical Catullus e.g. in Perutelli (1996), 264 (cf. theconvincing objections expressed ibid. 269).

20 Texts and English translations here and afterwards are Stephen Harrison’s, published inNauta/Harder (2005), 2–7.

21 Reydams-Schils (1998), 35 points to the Roman development of Stoic doctrine to bring out a»self as a mediator between philosophical norms and the demands of society, ranging fromthose of spouse, children and kin to those of the political community«.


participants, while the latter’s existence ceases to have meaning when separatedfrom the »common thing«)22.

As to the exact questions she asks about her self, it is clear that individualityor uniqueness of the experience are not prominent, and metaphysical interest isprobably small23. Attis does not doubt the sameness of the agent before and afterthe decisive change she has suffered, yet the text conveys the notion of a seriousconflict acted out in the stammering search for words to describe what happened(e.g. 63,58–60). But this conflict bears rarely features of what to us seems thefamiliar ›turn inwards‹ for inspection, not rarely connected with Hellenistic ideasand with Catullus, too24. The text is explicit about the conditions that allow Attisto perceive this conflict, and it indicates the properties the ego under review owns:The me feels pain and remorse (63,73 dolet, paenitet), recollects through memorywhat she has done (63,45 sua facta recoluit), observes rationally (63,46 liquidaquemente vidit) and experiences passions such as grief and misery (63,49). The innerconnection of body and ›soul‹ is covered by mentions of the breast (our ›heart‹) asplace where the recollection of the deeds is located (63,45 pectore), of the mens inconnection with rational sight, the tears from her eyes (63,48 lacrimantibus oculis),the voice, and twice the animus, once as experiencing the turmoil of passions (63,47animo aestuante) and once as addressee of lament (63,61 miser a miser anime). ThisAttis is having her moment as (perhaps Stoicizing) self that »is rational, unified andsubjective consciousness that is reflected in a discourse of explicit self-examinationand -assessment«25, but as we will see later on, she has scarcely anything to sayabout an inner conflict between passions and reason, or diverging passions26. Herproblems seem to lie somewhere else.

22 E.g. in regard to morality Long (2001), 30 reminds us: »As construed by ancient philosophers,morality is not obedience to God as distinct from following one’s own inclinations […]What the ancient philosophers in general take morality to be is the self-imposed rule ofgood reasoning – called orthos logos by Aristotle and the Stoics, and best translatable […] as»correct ratio« or »correct proportion«.

23 The fact that Attis (in some traditions of the cult) was a name of all priests of Cybele maystrengthen the aetiological dimension of the narration and thus make of Attis an archetypicalfigure. That the galli in the cult itself were no priests is stressed by Thomas (1984), 1526; cf.ibid. 1527–28 on the difficult questions and sources; cf. Lancellotti (2002), 91 n. 157: »culticappointees« (following Razzano [cited ibid.]).

24 Cf. instead Sorabji (2006), 52: »[…] there will not so much have been an inward turn. rather,from the beginning some philosophers, not all, will have been attracted by the idea that truthlies within.«

25 Reydams-Schils (1998), 35.26 Perutelli (1996), 261 is different: »L’individuo, e solo quello, si lacera per la sua unicità perduta,

dibattendosi in un turbinio di sentimenti non lontano da quello dei gesti rituali del culto diCibele.«


The narrator seems almost eager to assemble every feature that could com-monly be held as distinctive of human beings: memory, rationality, language,perhaps also sensing remorse and pain. This is the precondition for the speechwhich accordingly does not show an entire collapse of the person or mind (and nometaphysical crisis). Rationality provides the distance Attis takes to observe herself, as it enables ethical observation famously theorized in the concept of the curasui, but she sees just what everybody else in her community could see (there areno mental states besides remorse now, there are no questions about her intentionwhen leaving her home country). The self has not only survived the break of herconsciousness, but also retains the memory of the past, as she recounts her formerlife in retrospect, carefully structured by civic categories and permitting to identifythe precise place within her former social community27. What is enacted on thepoetic level is, I think, very similar to the observation made by Sorabji:

»The thicker descriptions we give of ourselves may be extremely important to us. Wecome to feel that, in an everyday sense of identity […] we would lose our very identityif the descriptions ceased to hold; if, for example, we changed our gender, profession,nationality, and culture. But there is no suggestion that we would cease to exist withoutthem. And indeed we could come to see a new overarching identity and unity thatembraced the new characteristics along with the old.«28

The last point, a new identity (in the loose sense), is not part of the speech or thenarrated events, but, as I will argue later, its omission may be due to the narrator’sspecific objectives. Nevertheless, the text’s grammar and style in the speech of Attisare depicting the intensity of the experience, and the asyndetic structure producesa disconnectedness of the words that repeats the separation of Attis from herself. The idea is reinforced by the insistent repetition of ego (probably the highestfrequency of the pronoun in Latin literature). The reader follows Attis through thelist of properties and states of being that all once belonged to the ego, but now arestripped off, and leave him with the question what may be this ego after all is gonethat could be said about it (as the new properties are described as alien to it). Therepetition furthermore seems to be self-assuring, hoping that the one called for isreally still there. An interesting shift is made after the recollection of social stateswhen, still not doubting the psychic continuity through the course of events, Attisshortly mentions the physical change and immediately gives an outlook on the(threatening) future.

27 Social orders (63,59 patria, bonis, amicis, genitoribus) are followed by civic (urban, Hellenistic)institutions (63,60 foro, palaestra, stadio, guminasiis) and ritually defined stages of the civiclife (v. 63 ego adulescens, ego ephebus, ego puer ), the latter in reverse order.

28 Sorabji (2006), 22; ibid. he explains »thicker descriptions« as those used in decision makingand reacting emotionally »as a person with a certain standing, past history, culture, andaspiration«.


Catull. 63,69–7229

ego Maenas, ego mei pars, ego uir sterilis ero?ego uiridis algida Idae niue amicta loca colam?ego uitam agam sub altis Phrygiae columinibus,ubi cerua siluicultrix, ubi aper nemoriuagus?Shall I be a Maenad, a mere part of myself, a sterile man?Shall I haunt the chilly regions of green Ida, clothed with snow?Shall I spend my life under the lofty peaks of Phrygia,Where the hind lives in the woods, where the boar wanders the grove?

We will come back to the outlook on life in the woods below30. The sex change,central to the perception of many modern readers, is described mainly in physicalterms as Attis fearfully asks how she can be herself while being just a part and aman without procreative power (63,69). Measuring pars mei by the psycho-physicalholism amply documented for Hellenistic philosophical schools31, we may inferthat the expression also indicates a mental dimension and Attis is actually referringto her self as being reduced to a part. Another term of considerable interest is thedifficult genus figurae (63,62) which Attis employs to introduce the list of stages insocial and biological development she has gone through. In Lucretian philosophicalterminology figura is the form (of living beings or inanimate objects) which thesingle semina bring forth by assembling and temporarily being a living being oran inanimate object, and in another sense it denotes the way things and personsappear to us physically as well as as being a person with characteristic attitudes orbehaviour. Both meanings point to a notion of inseparability so that appearance tothe others (outwards) and the self (inside) are neatly interwoven. Attis has no senseof a contrast between me and an oppressive set of rules, norms, and constraintsimposed by the society, as the model she applies is based upon an interactionbetween individual and community32.

As indicated by the quotation given at the beginning of the chapter, this partof the poem has appealed to many readers and has often been seen as depicting acrisis of identity or a tragedy of the soul, but as my preliminary remarks probablyhave already suggested, I would refrain from most of the terms involved in thesedescriptions (especially ›subjectivity‹ or ›individuality‹), and I think the text pointsinto another direction. While the situation of Attis is definitely one that causessympathy, her monologue is not only less emotional than one may expect (aswe will see below, this is the narrator’s fault), it also displays no great interest in

29 Texts and English translations Stephen Harrison’s, published in Nauta/Harder (2005), 2–7.30 On dancing in the woods in the cult of Cybele cf. Pachis (1996), 216–218.31 A full account is given by Gill (2006), 3–73.32 Famously, George Herbert Mead has analysed these interactions at detail, for a sketch of

consequences for historical studies (medieval in this case) see Von Moos (2004), 4–8.


questions of the self as discussed in contemporary philosophy33. We may start withour use of the term of identity when referring to a situation of crisis. Even a decisivechange may not cause someone to question the whole of his or her identity, but mayseem as natural, necessary, or just happened, demanding appropriate reactions. Agreat number of changes occurring in one’s life may be serious, but may still bedealt with separately and according to what precisely is at stage (fortune, home,love etc.), and notions of something being indispensable may be overcome beforeone calls for a crisis of identity (this being sometimes the consequence, sometimesthe cause of remaining inactive).

In any case, the notion of incompatibility is decisive, and I would shift attentionfrom the contents held to be incompatible (Attis being a male or a supposed female)to the framework that conditions the perception of incompatibility. Attis (probablywith good reason) is presented to rank sex change and loss of civic communityhigh on her scale of events relevant to the notion of herself, while changing fromboy to adolescent has no such status for her. The actual problem then arises froman incommensurability between the events and the patterns and criteria she uses inher attempt to deliver a narrative of her self. She addresses the cultural communitythat provided her with patterns to narrate herself in biographical terms, and herfailure is due to the circular relation between the patterns and the events theyare applied to: developed for life within the community, they fail to apply to lifeoutside. If we are right in paying attention to this conflict between what has tobe said and which schemes are available to fulfil this task, the reason for stating acrisis may be less the content of an act or event, but the inability of (establishedor stable) models of expression and thought to integrate unforeseen or hithertounknown elements into the narrative the individual wants to give of his or herself.

The state and capacities of a community’s language, participating in the for-mation of the individual and enabling him or her to develop a sense of interactionand one’s own being, can limit the individual’s ability to cope with change, loss, orany incident considered relevant to one’s identity. Attis is equipped with narrativepatterns that do not permit her to integrate time, change, and contradiction, andshe is limited to dealing with regular cases, while hers is not regular. That it is notso much a problem of contradictory items to be integrated, but one of the patterns

33 We may refer to Sorabji (2006), 50 who distinguishes four aspects in the development ofancient discussions about the self: »[1] the idea of a true self, [2] the interest in personalidentity over time, [3] the interest in individual differences in decision making, [4] and theidea that one must look within oneself for the ultimate truths or realities.« (my numbering).According to Sorabji (ibid.), 50–52 [1] goes back to Homer, [2] discussed in the 3rd century BCor later, [3] at the beginning of the 1st cent. BC, [4] goes back (through Cicero and the Stoics)to the Presocratics. Attis could be interested in all four, but if at all, only touches them, andthe absence of [4] is telling.


available, may be illustrated by problems that in some respects are common to aself-narrative and the much-vexed puzzles of identity, most prominent in the para-dox of Theseus’ ship34. As a ship may be replaced, rearranged, or original, andmy notion which one to claim the original one, depends upon my interpretationof which element I think may be the special one that, when taken away, causesthe ship to cease to be the same, a person may struggle to find the one elementthat makes her herself, and this person probably would either vote for the wrongitem, or would give up in despair, much like some of the ship theorists35. Attisdoes not solve the puzzle, but it may be interesting to think about possible ways todo so, and one would be the notion of narrative identity which does not separatetwo identities at definite moments in order to reintegrate their relation afterwards.Instead, the narrative concept perhaps could conceive of a person at time z to bethe person at a previous time x because the memory not only covers the two statesbut also the time between x and z, or because the change is only one of the items,or because the semantics of me at a time x do not need to be the same at a time zwithout me remaining the same.

Diachronic identity then may have been a concept helpful for Attis to succeedbetter with the narrative of her self, and I finish this chapter with some remarks onthis type of concept, starting with narrative identity. What may have had an impacton Catullus’ composition of the monologue of Attis is the rhetorical tradition ofdescribing persons through a checklist of properties (attributa personae) which havebeen prominent in Roman as well as in later conceptions of identification36. In itsunspiritual application (criticized by Cicero and Quintilian), this scheme does notallow to integrate change and time into the description of a person and a biography,as every stage, trait of character, or event is to be fitted into a coherent picture of aquasi-static person that from beginning to end displays her qualities or deficiencies,depending on the aim of praise or blame. Stability, coherence, and unity therefore

34 On ancient discussion and some evidence that the puzzle was seen as partly parallel topersonal identity see Sorabji (2006), 62 with quotation of Plutarch, Life of Theseus 23; Searle(2004), 194 dismisses the problem: »It seems to me there isn’t any further fact of the matter.It is up to us to say which is the original ship«; extensive discussion in Parsons (2000), 1–5(and throughout the book) and Gallois (1998), 16–25 (and throughout the book), again e.g.190–91.

35 As is the case with the schematical employment of attributa personis (see below) this approachfails for its inability to define how a self is different from the pile of isolated qualities; onancient and modern discussion of such »unique bundles of characteristics« see Sorabji (2006),138–143.

36 Von Moos (2004), 13 (in regard to medieval studies) distinguishes common categories whichneed to be combined to allow for an identification, and those that directly allow to individ-ualize, such as the face, the voice, scars or our fingerprints; the first may be further dividedinto collective and ›participative‹ features, the latter indicating for example social rank andstatus (through haircut, clothing, name etc.).


prevail. But the interest Catullus has in his character’s situation is based upon thenarrative abilities needed to survive as a self, and this may be referred to whatAnthony Giddens (himself referring to Charles Taylor) stated about the role ofnarrative within the construction of an identity: »A person’s identity is not to befound in behaviour, nor – important though this is – in the reactions of others, butin the capacity to keep a particular narrative going«37. Before we have a closer lookat some of the implications of this approach to narrative identity, it may be notedthat celebrating memory and narrative as if they were an alternative to rationalanalysis, the first being reliable, the latter deceptive, is a naivety definitely alien toRoman writers, and not apt to distinguish a literary world view from a so-calledscientific or rationalistic one – narrative, as we will see later on, is a rational devicein itself and used in a highly artistic way to question the readers’ notion of reliableand ›simple‹ telling one’s identity38.

The diachronic change is, according to this description, not a problem in itself,but generates a problem only when the narrative patterns available to someonecease to work. This may be the case, in narrative identity as well as in literarynarrative proper, when notions of coherence and continuity are too narrow tocope with the range of possibilities. Both are expected to be coherent in orderto be reasonable and comprehensible to recipients and community, which in caseof literary narrative does not mean that a text has to be linear, or chronologicallyordered, or coherent in content and reference, as the expectations of a reader arepart of the subject-matter of literary texts, which in turn may be interested inruptures, time lapses, or other devices of reversing expectations. The meaning ofcoherence would then not be confined to a particular aesthetic choice, but referredto being coherent within literary conventions. The case with coherence in personalidentification outside of literary texts is at the same time quite similar and quitedistinct from that. A community displays particular interest in the reliability ofits members’ identifications, as an understanding of one’s behaviour and a certaingrade of predictability are indispensable for the other members. This is why in

37 Giddens (1991), 54. It is a special pleasure to quote this work as it is entirely devoted tocreating a distinct ›modern‹ self.

38 Cf. Sorabji (2006), 176 on Plutarch’s concerns with memory (first: bad memories obstructtranquillity, second: planning future projects is more important than having past memories):»Third, there is the danger of self-falsification, if identity is allowed to depend on memory. Infact, in its earliest version with Epicharmus in the 5th century BC, the Growing Argument’sfragmentation of the self was designed to disclaim responsibility for what was done by selvesfalsely deemed to be other. If the fragmentation is to be repaired by weaving a narrative, theweaver must not be allowed to weave a narrative that equally falsifies by wrong inclusionand exclusion of data.«


everyday life people questioning their diachronic continuity are less welcome thanin philosophy or literature39.

The failure of Attis to produce coherence in her own narrative is, as we haveseen, deeply linked to the demands her community uttered when providing thestandard scheme for an account of a citizen’s self, and the observation of thisgeneral problem may have been an interesting starting point for Catullus to thinkabout a poem like 63. The obligation to have a coherent story of one’s own, and tobe able to give an account of it, is not confined to specific historical times, and thetexts of poets like Catull. or Ovid, or Cicero’s explorations of how an individualnarrative may successfully be adapted to standard narratives that were incompatiblewith his own, show that incongruities were likely to promote and extend linguisticpatterns and literary conceptions. Amélie Oksenberg Rorty, when discussing theuse people can make of conceptions of personhood in order to serve their ownpurposes, has convincingly drawn her conclusion in literary terms: »The emphasisshifts: the person is first identified as the author of the story, then by the activity ofstory construction, and then simply by the emergent content of the narrative«40.

But coherence in regard to one’s identity narrative is open to redefinition as itis with literary narratives. An interesting proposal is made by Manfred Frank in hisdiscussion of deconstructionist attacks on the notions of identity and subjectivityas a whole41. An individual, according to Frank, does not only ascribe differ-ent predicates to himself, but also ascribes these predicates semantically changed,accepting possibly different meanings from one time to another42. The aporeticview that the self is never able to be present to itself, because the necessary timegap causes equally necessary misrepresentations and forbids a signifier to touchthe signified, becomes less attractive if we distinguish the continuous sequence oftransformations from the accompanying sequence of interpretative acts. These actsdo not rely on objective meaning (›sense‹), but on the participants’ acknowledge-ment that their interpretation is based on the hypothetical judgement that and howtwo successive states of being are linked one to another43. The relation between

39 Teichert (1999), 76–86 gives a convenient survey of some problems concerning personalidentity as discussed in ancient philosophy, one of them from Plutarch, De sera numinisvindicata (in: Lacy [ed. 1959], Moralia VII , 244–247) who paraphrases a scene from acomedy of Epicharm: A debitor says as everything changes he is not the same man whoborrowed money, the debtee then punches him, excusing himself with the same argument.

40 Oksenberg Rorty (1990), 30 (with reference to J. Bruner, Actual minds, possible worlds,Cambridge 1986).

41 Frank in id. (1988), esp. 22–28.42 Frank (1988), 22: »Ein Individuum legt sich im Laufe seines Lebens nicht nur verschiedene

(semantisch invariante) Prädikate zu, sondern es legt sie sich auch auf verschiedene Weise,nämlich in wechselnder Semantik, zu.«

43 Frank (1988), 26.


two states of self-conceptions could be understood by Peirce’s notion of abductionas one state motivating another, thus establishing a connection that is neither causalnor evolutionary44. To hint finally at yet another promising approach, the logicalargument for »occasional identities« may be mentioned, as these also allow theintegration of time as part of the conception of identity (not its counterpart) andmay be fruitfully related to a discussion about literary identities when it comes tosingle text units whose speaker may be under debate (see below)45. Whether it isthe abductive coherence, the occasional or indeterminate identity, most of thesediscussions open the horizon of literary studies that often make use of the samepatterns of identification that lead Attis into failure. That Catullus himself did notstop with a failed act of identification, may now be proposed.

3. The poetic autobiography of Attis

The acts of identification carried out by Attis have failed because she could notapply the narrative patterns she was used to. In the following chapter, I would liketo propose that despite this failure on the level of the narrated events, there areother acts of identification that succeed on the level of narration. One successfulidentification is carried out by the narrator who uses the failure of Attis for his ownpurposes, and another successful act takes place on an intertextual level, as poem63 uses the account Lucretius gives of human development. Lucretius is broughtin as (reversed) subtext to invite the reader to further (literary) identifications, andestablishes a literary biography of Attis that is imbedded into her own retrospection.Let us start with the latter contention.

In course of the narration Attis is isolated from her comrades and made todo what tragic heroines used to do when left alone and in grief: She runs to theshores and recites a monologue, preparing for her fellow-heroine Ariadne in poem64 and enriching the scene of the lamenting female at the shores by a new variant.The motifs of sea travel, reversal of past and present, the crossing of geographical,social, and figurative borders are common to Catullus 62, 63, and 64 (among

44 Frank (1988), 27: »Auf diese Weise würde zwischen zwei aufeinander folgenden Stadiendes Selbstverständnisses der Person (…) sich eine Kontinuität einspielen« (…), »die keine imevolutionären Sinne wäre, sondern eine von einander motivierenden abduktiven Schlüssen«.

45 Gallois (1998), 34 describes his understanding of occasional identity as »the view that anidentity can hold at some time without always holding«.


others)46. The indication of the galliambic metre in 63,2 (citato pede)47 may wellbe a marker of poetological concerns as it is in the later, well-known play on pedein Ovid am. 1,1,3–4. The beginning is linked especially to the epicising elementsin Catull. 64 and 101, encouraging the reader to engage in generic discussion48.Even the act of emasculation is transformed through the metaphorical use ofpondera ili that describes the testicles cut off as the »hanging warp threads from afinished loom«, as David Wray has convincingly argued49. Attis carries out an actof reshaping herself (earlier material) into a work of art, and she thus takes partin a Hellenistic metamorphosis, dear to many literary predecessors of Catullus50.When addressing her companions Attis compares them with exiled citizens (63,14–16 aliena quae petentes uelut exules loca / sectam meam executae duce me mihicomites / rapidum salum tulistis truculentaque pelagi). She is leader of a failed (epic?)expedition and has turned from a dux of people (like Ulysses, Jason [Catull. 64],Aeneas) who may have looked for a new home or wanted to fulfil some heroictask, to a female leader of Maenades who aimlessly wander around (see 63,15; 32Attis dux; v. 34 ducem).

But the most important datum of her literary past is given by Attis within herspeech while recollecting what she did (this time reaching back to the time beforethe events of the poem): She was an eromenos of love poetry, courted by hopefullovers lingering at his door. A parallel reading of Catull 63,65–67 and Lucretius’mockery of the exclusus amator allows for a complementary picture of the situationseen from inside and outside the door:

Lucr. 4,1177–79at lacrimans exclusus amator limina saepefloribus et sertis operit postisque superbosunguit amaracino et foribus miser oscula figit;

46 Fantuzzi/Hunter (2002), 557 underline that the galliambic metre as tetrameter ionicus catalec-tic can take the same words and groups as the dactylic hexameter and may be read as aprovocative pendant to the latter, especially when confronted with Catull 64. The sea travelmay also be linked to the idea of the nefas argonauticum as discussed in Catullus 64 and inte-grated into Lucretius’ account of the descendant elements in human cultural development(5,1006 improba navigii ratio tum caeca iacebat).

47 Cf. Perutelli (1996), 262: »La propensione ossessiva per la velocità è presente nel ritmo delrito riflesso nel metro del galliambo. […] personaggi, che si conformano alla velocità.«

48 On vectus (Catull 101,1 multas per gentes et multa per aequora vectus), the swift ship and otherelements (as in Catull. 64) see e.g. Perutelli (1996), 255 (referring the instances not to epic, butcarmina docta with personal notes). Another indication may be given by the iuvenis-themethat despite differences in reference connects the openings of Catull. 62, 63 and 64 (see 62,1iuvenes, consurgite; 64,4 lecti iuvenes). See Fantuzzi/Hunter (2002), 554–55 on parallels to theepic narrative of Apollonios.

49 David Wray, »Attis’ groin weight«, in: CPh 96 (2001), 120–126.50 Perutelli (1996), 260.


Catull. 63,65–67mihi ianuae frequentes, mihi limina tepida,mihi floridis corollis redimita domus erat,linquendum ubi esset orto mihi Sole cubiculum.

My doors were crowded, my thresholds were warm,My house was clad with flowery garlands,When I came to leave my bedchamber at sunrise.

The reader of Catullus may have already been prepared for some love connectionwhen reading Attis’ repeated lament of being miser (see above, 63,51 und 61), itselfa coinage found since Lucretius51. Both poets draw on the established traditionof the motif, and it is not only probable that readers of Catullus were remindedof the Lucretian passage, but also that they added Attis’ memory of having beencourted not to the list of social facts, but put it on their list of literary items.Attis is furnished with a biographical fact drawn from her literary tradition, havingonce been an eromenos of love poetry, and now being Cybele’s follower in aCatullan poem52. Attis, much as Ovid’s Ariadne in Stephen Hinds’ reading, isa character referring to her own literary biography and reminding the reader ofher textual existence relevant to identifying her on her own, literary terms. Thepoetic descent is included into the set of features that permit a description of theself, so that at an important point within the character’s lament for having lostthe former framework, the poet offers a distinctive quality of poetic existence thatcomplements the memory of Attis by the memory of the readers53. In accordanceto what we have lined out above (a literary act of identification being a proposalto imagine things happened as narrated), the character’s biography is not confinedto the level of narrated events, but reaches beyond the level of narration: ›Imaginethat the character x has been a character y in another text‹. Attis as a narratedcharacter is given a past within other texts, and in order to remind readers of thisfact, the poet makes her witness to how her self is textually produced. We do notneed, as I will argue later, to worry about a loss of authenticity in accounts of theself if we detect such artistic features, or conventional ones, linguistic formulae,

51 On Lucretius and miser as conventional attribute of the »lover whose will and reason havebeen senselessly subjected to passion« see Selden (1992), 469.

52 Another hint towards love poetry (Catullan as well as traditional) can be detected in the useof erotic language when Attis addresses the patria (see v. 56 cupit ipsa pupula ad te sibi dirigereaciem and Morisi [1999] ad loc.).

53 The interaction with other characters is not far from social interaction as part of an identifica-tion of one’s own or another one’s person, as the concepts of personhood have connectionswith life on stage, cf. Oksenberg Rorty (1990) about the social function of identities (ibid.28): »Social persons are identified by their mutual interactions, by the roles they enact in thedynamic dramas of their shared lives«.


quotations and adaptations of earlier writers (on the self or other topics), becausewithin Roman literary history the existing work of predecessors is seen as a regularand authentic category where from an identity can be built.

Besides Attis and biography, there is a second character whom we have totake into consideration when reading the acts of identification within the poem,and we may try to identify him through his behaviour. According to the narrator,Attis is not struck by frenzy when arriving at the exotic place, but has already beenin a state of haste and excitation before he landed54. The attention both Attis andthe narrator pay to constructing a hostile nature awaiting Attis, may convincinglybe explained by the well-known device of employing the ›subjective‹ perspectiveof the character involved55. But we could also put this the other way round andmake the narrator, who reports the speech and arranges it according to his ownintentions, construct a balance between her (supposed) crime and the punishmentshe deserves in his eyes (himself trying to see with Cybele’s eyes in order to pleaseher). The interaction between narrator and character, described by Perutelli56, maythen be dependent on the leading voice of the poem that has been identified byRichard Hunter with a Gallus57. I am entirely convinced that this is the rightquestion to ask, but it seems safer to assume a narrator whose main aims areexpressed in the text: convincing the goddess to spare him, and trying to convinceher, as being the Roman imported version of Cybele58, by stressing Attis’ treason

54 See 63,1 celeri rate and the grammar in v. 2, where citato cupide pede denotes circumstanceswhen »touching the Phrygian wood«. This is confirmed by her ignorance about where tolook for the geographical position of her patria (63,55 ubinam aut quibus locis te positam,patria, reor?), as in her clear moment we could expect her to remember from what directionshe was coming before landing (instead her memory seems to end with the circumstances inthe city and does not extend to the circumstances of the sea travel). Cf. the constant mentionsof haste (as opposed to rational thought): 4 furenti rabie, vagus animi; 8 citata cepit; 18 citatiserroribus; 19 mora mente cedat; 23 capita vi iaciunt; 25 volitare vaga cohors; 26 citatis tripudiis;30 citus properante pede chorus; 31 furibunda anhelans vaga; 34 rapidae properipedem; evensleep is ›hasty‹ when leaving Attis (42 somnus fugiens citus abiit), yet its coming slowed downmotion and opened the path to rational reflection (63,19 mora tarda mente cedat; 35 lassulae;36 somnum capiunt; 37 piger sopor, labante langore).

55 Perutelli (1996), 265–66.56 Perutelli (1996), 266: »Non v’ è dubbio che il narratore tracci il suo percorso attraverso le

sensazioni di Attis […] il racconto sia condotto dal punto di vista del giovinetto e che quindivi sia un’interazione tra narratore e personaggio.«

57 Fantuzzi/Hunter (2002), 550–51.58 The fate of Catull. 63 and Lucretius as supposedly documentary evidence for the cult of

Cybele is quite similar; helpful is Summers (1996), 337–338 about two basic assumptions»1) Lucretius has taken his description in toto from Greek writers, […] 2) Lucretius can beused as evidence for how the cult was practiced throughout the Mediterranean world at alltimes. Both of these assumptions, I argue, are wrong. […]«; on the Romanness of Lucretius’account ibid. 365.


of virile values. The narrator’s intentions are prepared for in his direct address of theGreat Goddess in v. 9 (tympanum tuom, Cybebe, tua, Mater, initia) and confirmedby the final plea to spare himself and take others instead:

Catull. 63,91–9359

dea magna, dea Cybebe, dea domina Dindymi,procul a mea tuus sit furor omnis, era, domo:alios age incitatos, alios age rabidos.

Goddess so great, goddess Cybele, lady goddess of Dindymum,May all your madness stay far from my home, mistress:Drive others in frantic speed, drive others to madness.

The contrast between undeserved freedom and imposed domination is stressed byall characters alike, and it seems that Attis has the same knowledge as the narratorwhen, despite framing her worries by a question, she views the final picture of herfuture existence60. The closure, not surprisingly an apopompe, makes the readerlook back for previous indications that the narrator deliberately selects and reportsfacts that suit his particular objective, and indeed, we do find several indications thathelp to convey the narrator’s intentions to side with the Goddess, to persuade herof his submission, and to back up his final plea: »Take her, not me!«. The apotropaicmode is used to structure the narration, focalizing the readers’ attention on thelegitimacy of Attis’ punishment, and the mode is enhanced by the employmentof conventional patterns of frenzy narratives: people do wrong, are punished bydivinely imposed frenzy, do even more wrong, are relieved from their frenzyand ideally given the chance to re-establish former order by acts of purification.As frenzy does not interrupt responsibility for one’s deeds, the confession ofguilt uttered by Attis (63,51–52 and 73) fits into the scheme, and the poem’s endis impressive for cutting out the element of purification and restoration of theprevious order, leaving Attis with a cold »and lived unhappily ever after«.

Further indications may be detected in the narrator’s largely detached way ofspeaking about Attis, making little use of devices to evoke pity and sympathy,and by thoroughly constructing the allegations against Attis as being shared by allcharacters alike. We will discuss the allegation of treason and the address of thepatria below (as probable allusions to Lucretius), and just note that the narrator’sfinal plea is also neatly modelled on Attis’ address to her home country61. Theprevailing standards that are used by the characters to judge the behaviour of

59 Texts and English translations Stephen Harrison’s, published in Nauta/Harder (2005), 2–7.60 Attis in 63,68 ministra, famula; Cybele (63,80) mea libere nimis qui fugere imperia cupit; the

narrator (v. 90, conspicuously detached and not revealing sympathy) ibi semper omne uitaespatium famula fuit; cf. the verbal parallels in 63,70–72 and 89–90.

61 Cf. 50 patria o mei creatrix, patria o mea genetrix (…) and 91 dea, magna dea, Cybebe, deadomina Dindymi (…).


Attis are all related to the narrator’s interest of pleasing the Goddess, and this is(curiously) carried out by using exclusively Roman elite patterns of evaluating itsmembers62. The emasculation is decisive because it causes a loss of visibility, asAttis has become invisible to the eyes of fertile free citizens who notoriously do notsee females, eunuchs, servants, and definitely not a combination of all three63. Evenemasculation itself is deprivation only to Attis and her Roman narrator (the formerarguing from the standpoint of the latter), but obviously was not for adherers ofCybele’s cult and many others64.

As we have seen, the attempt of Attis to use narrative patterns of her formercommunity failed, but the narrator’s use of his own patterns succeeds: Attis is seenas cast out, deserving to be chased into the woods, and having lost any adherence tothe civic community of free, fertile males. So we find another story of identification,this time a successful one, on the level of narration, where the narrator is shownto have firm intentions, acts consistently in order to achieve his aim and tries toestablish a safe relationship with the Goddess. While the narrative patterns of Attislose their value, the narrator’s patterns seem to continue to work, and he employsdevices from his own literary biography (e.g. Hellenistic beginning and end, directspeeches, interest in emotional life of the protagonist etc.). The tension between afailed and a successful attempt to narrate identity enriches our reading of Catullus63: It is the narrator who is able to maintain his narrative patterns in order to tellabout someone who has lost his own patterns, thus pointing to the superiority ofliterary narrative over social models of identification and covering the interruptionin Attis’ life who has passed from the domina patria to a domina dea.

62 The Roman character of the narrator’s perspective is stressed by religious-historical research:The Cybele of Rome was entirely different from the Phrygian one, see Thomas (1984), 1504on the unacceptable features of the former, and ibid. 1506: »It was a Roman and nationalgoddess that Cybele entered Rome and occupied her niche in Roman politics.«; anotheraffiliation may be his adherence to some of the public voices current in Rome which triedto limit too much interest of individuals (esp. philosophers and writers) in their self, cf.Reydams-Schils (1998), 54: »A strong notion of the ›self‹ would run counter to the ideal ofthe mos maiorum and the common good, to which this ›traditional‹ Roman, as he presentshimself, adheres.«

63 Cf. Skinner (1997), 142: »a contemporary narrative of political impotence is retold as a mythof self-destructive estrangement from the male body.«

64 On emasculation as »a bond of eternal fidelity to the Great Mother« see Lancellotti (2002),91 with a list of various scholarly explanations in n. 158.


4. The Lucretian account of cultural developmentand the answers of Catull. 63 and Ovid

In the following chapter I would like to argue that the narrative of Attis in Catullus63 is imbued with echoes of Lucretius, whose account of human developmentfrom beasts to civilization provides a constant backdrop65. According to Lucretiusinvention of metal working is the turning point in the relation between humansand beasts, as the latter lose their role of hunters and become hunted, while beforemen were not hunters, but the hunted prey (cf. Lucr. 5,984–85 eiectique domofugiebant saxea tecta / spumigeri suis adventu validique leonis), which is now thefate of Attis (already hunted by a lion at the end of the poem). Attis’ fear ofa life in the woods where wild animals threaten her echoes the fearful cries ofearly mankind (5,992 et nemora ac montis gemitu silvasque replebat). The repeatedmention of woods (in contrast to urban settlement)66, the lack of shelter fromthe weather67, and constant wandering (esp. vagus) as opposed to having a stableplace to inhabit68 converge so to embed the story of Attis into Lucretius’ pre-civilized world69. Attis in her monologue twice devotes two verses to her futurebeing in company of wild animals and suffering from the hostile nature, both atbeginning and end of her speech (63,52–54 and 70–71, see above). This attentionto nature, beasts, and beast-like existence is astonishing, because the coincidencewith elements of the rituals and cult of the Great Goddess does not explain thepoetic decision to put so much weight to it. Attis seems to remember what we weretold by the narrator who described the orgiastic dances by pointing to the loss ofarticulate language, comparing the worshippers’ utterances with noises of animals,and explicitly terming the lot »the sheep of the Goddess«70. The combination of

65 Many features are documented for the cult of Cybele (see esp. on the religious-historicalevidence Pachis [1996], e.g. on music 212–213), but this seems not convincing motivation forthe composition of Catull. 63.

66 Cf. 63,2 Phrygium nemus; 3 opaca, silvis redimita loca; 12 alta Cybeles nemora; 20 Phrygia adnemora; 23 Maenades ederigerae; 30 viridem Idam; 32 opaca nemora; (41 umbras noctis); 52nemora Idae; 58 in nemora; 79 reditum in nemora; 89 nemora fera. Contrast the lost domusas organized household (63,58) and cubiculum denoting civilzed (erotic) privacy (63,67)

67 A humorous application of Lucretius may be the stress of the delicate nature of Attis, asLucr. 5,1014–16 states that the invention of fire and clothing made human beings less apt tostand heat and cold; cf. 5,929.

68 Cf. vagus in v. 4, 13, 25, 31, 72 nemorivagus, 86 (Cybele’s lion) pede vago; the notion of flight(fugit) is also connected with (civic) instability (see erifugae).

69 Cf. Lucr. 5,929 nec facile ex aestu nec frigore quod caperetur (sc. genus humanum); Lucr. 5,955sed nemora atque cavos montis silvasque colebant; Lucr. 5,932 vulgivago vitam tractabant moreferarum (see Catull’s vitam agere and nemorivagus); 5,948 vagi silvestria templa tenebant.

70 Cf. 63,8–9 typanum / typanum tuom, Cybebe; 10 quatiens terga cava taurei; 11 canere treme-bunda; 21 cymbalum sonat vox, tympana reboant; 22 tibicen Phryx canit; 23 acutis ululatibus;


landscape and imagery of savage beasts has little in common with the Romanversion of the cult presented in the poem, but finds its background in the Lucretianlandscape where it is not the existence of a priest, but the threatening life of earlyhumans that Attis awaits71. The detailed description of the new daylight that marksAttis’ return to reasoning (63,39–43) may be related to Lucretius’ idea that earlyhuman beings suffered during the frightening nights when beasts threatened themuntil the sunlight brought relief and they could leave their retreats (Lucr. 5,976 dumrosea face sol inferret lumina caelo).

Another matter to consider is the deliberate use of archaistic words that aremostly related to Cybele’s world of pre-civilization, present also in the accountof the developing human culture by Lucretius72. The hapax erifugae is coinedin accordance with archaizing epic style, which sometimes meets with Lucretianinterest73. The stylistic features of Catull. 63 (including repetitions, vocabulary)may reinforce the idea that as the narrative deals with relations to earlier stages ofhuman culture, the language may be one of the poetic past as well as of the earlystages of language development itself74. We will come back to this relation between

28 thiasus linguis trepidantibus ululat; 29 tympanum remugit; 29 cava cymbala recrepant; 82cuncta mugienti fremitu loca retonent . It is possible that some literary traditions saw lan-guage in the Golden as common to animals and humans alike (but lacking the »designative,propositional, and symbolic powers« of later human language, see Gera [2003], 42–43).

71 Cf. 63,13 Dindymenae dominae vaga pecora; 33 veluti iuvenca vitans onus indomita iugi; 77pecoris hostem (the lion as opponent of Attis); sounds: 63,21 reboant; 24 ululatibus, 29 remugit;dwellings: 63,53 ferarum stabula; 54 latibula. Frenzy as opposed to rationality is describedas rabies fera (63,57) thus signalling the backslide into pre-human existence. The same mayapply for 63,78 fac ut hunc furor [agitet] and 89 demens fugit where Attis is again the huntedbeast.

72 See 63,23 ederigerae, 34 properipedem, 41 sonipedibus, 51 erifugae [Attis on herself], 72 silvicul-trix, nemorivagus). Lucretius has the term montivagus as technical term for animals’ existence(Lucr. 1,404 ut montivagae persaepe ferai; 2,1081 invenies sic montivagum genus esse ferarum);cf. furibundus in Lucr. 5,367 (as Catull 63,31) und tremibundus in Lucr. 1,95. On the archaicelements in 63,50–55 see Fedeli (1978), 47–48 who sometimes mentions Lucretius but seesolder (lost) formulae employed, especially of ceremonial and solemn character. The link toLucretius may be added to other relations, cf. on neoteric interest as well as (when archaisticflavoured) to the language used in describing chthonic deities and their cults Perutelli (1996),263.

73 Fedeli (1978), 47 mentions the Hapax erifugae and comments on genetrix as solemn andepic (since Ennius); he thinks (ibid. 48) Catull’s ferarum gelida stabula to be derived from anarchaic model (following Eduard Norden on Verg. Aen. 6,179), but Catull could well be animmediate model for Vergil, and the first half of Vergil’s hexameter itur in antiquam silvamattracts attention not only for its poetological meaning, but for the relevance this metaphorhas for both the account of Lucretius and Catullus (the woods referring to the prehistory ofmankind, as they refer to the prehistory of epic accounts of the past).

74 On (later) concepts relations between ideas of poetic and original language see Gera (2003),42–46; on simplicity as a feature of original language ibid. 44.


the (individual) story of Attis and the (universal) development of human civilizationwhen showing how (probably) Ovid used the same subtext to frame his narrationof the exiled poet, who inhabits a world that synchronically offers all those featureswhich in the diachronic account of Lucretius were left behind step by step in orderto achieve civic organization, rationality, safety, control of violence, commerce,and language. Before, I would like to point to another Lucretian text relevantfor Catullus 63, which has been variously noted (with different attitudes towardspriority), but perhaps not yet valued for its actual impact on the composition ofour poem.

All characters involved (Cybele, Attis, and the narrator) agree in accusing Attisof treason. Attis seems to be her own fiercest persecutor when employing the imageof a fugitive servant who escaped his master (63,51–52 dominos ut erifugae / famulisolent), while Cybele, somehow complementing the argument, does not drawon the bonds of the household (domus), but applies a notion of wider politicalorganisation, being addressed by the narrator as domina and stating an unduewish for freedom in Attis (63,80 libere). There may be a juridicial background here,combining an allegation of private law with an allegation of public interest, violatingreligious and statal order, but the interesting point is the attention given to chargeAttis of treason. This motif alleged by all characters alike can be, I think, linked tothe choice of the patria as addressee and both referred to a Lucretian idea, proposedwithin his account of the cult of Cybele. Even if both texts may be independentlyrelated to a common background, namely the eminent relevance attributed tofamily, community, and the cult of one’s own city’s deities (a relevance stressedby Fustel de Coulange in his eminent study Cité antique published in 1864)75, thecontext makes it probable that Catullus was interested in the explanation Lucretiusgave: The Galli of Cybele were punished by emasculation for having betrayedtheir home country and families76. The ungratefulness towards their parentes (Lucr.2,615 ingrati genitoribus) condemns them to remaining childless themselves, thussuffering the same pain they caused in their parents77.

75 This notion is also employed by Ovid who seems to frame his lament on the loss by anaccusation of the one who has denied him his natural right to worship his penates (trist.5,11,18 nil nisi me patriis iussit abesse focis).

76 Lucr. 2,614–617 Gallos attribuunt, quia, numen qui violarint / Matris et ingrati genitoribusinventi sint, / significare volunt indignos esse putandos, / vivam progeniem qui in oras luminisedant. See Craca (2000), 51 on the connection of Lucr. 2,614–15 numen violarint with the firstof the Galli which is supposed to be Attis.

77 Sharples (1985) notes the rareness of Lucretius’ explanation and relates it to the theme ofparenthood developed in a previous passage on Ceres (2,652–660) and to (scarce) Greekevidence of a custom that young man collected stones they devoted to the »mother of theGods«, thus trying to avoid »going astray because of impiety and remain loyal to their


The idea of treason is not common at all and probably only in Lucretius78, atleast within the texts available to us, and it permits to read Catull. 63 as a responseto the poetical decisions made by Lucretius, who explored the poetical qualityof the cult of Cybele by integrating it into a didactic mode, while Catull extractsthe general idea of treason into the narration of one Gallus who is persecutedby a narrator himself applying the allegation of treason for its own persuasivepurposes. While the didactic poet discusses the false opinions of those who donot accept nature as sole creatrix and genetrix (and does so not only by referringto philosophical reason, but also in accusing religions as themselves being an actof treason against the truth), the poet in Catull. 63 singles out one character andmakes him become victim to the incompatible demands of those who propose thepatria as creatrix and genetrix and those, who propose an exotic Goddess79. Thereare several notions within the narrator’s conception in Catull. 63 that may also berelated to Stoic or Stoicizing concepts of the human being as opposed to beasts byreason, and to the social role granted to the self80.

It seems that Catullus has artfully constructed a Lucretian background, draw-ing on the two different passages that permit to contrast different notions of natureand social community, both present in Lucretius but developed into a narrativeby Catullus. The single character’s fortune is embedded into and contrasted toa poetic history of civilization, thus complementing a tale of humanization by atale of decay and reversal. Ovid, whom we turn to now, seems to have seen asimilar potential in the confrontation of a single character’s tale with the Lucretianaccount, and the sketch of what Ovid does may shed light on our leading questionof how literary acts of identification may have been used by the poets. Within theaccount of Lucretius in 5,925–1457 we may discern a part concerning the originalstate of almost beast-like existence before the establishment of settlements andcommunities (5,925–1018) and the time of development in civic life, based upon theinvention of housing, clothing, and fire (5,1018–457). The first concentrates on con-

fathers« (which in Catull 63 does not seem to fit into the narrative); on the pietas argumentbeing ›unique‹ see Craca (2000), 52 (citing the relevant literature).

78 On different allegorical readings of the Cybele cult and their publicity in Roman worlds,see Summers (1996), 340–341 who mainly relies on archaeological evidence. On the galli inLucretius see Craca (2000), 49–54 (the discussion of the lack of parental pietas argument ibid.51–54)

79 Cf. Lucr. 1,629 rerum natura creatrix; = 2,1117; 5,1362 primum natura creatrix / ; genetrix inLucr. 1,1 Aeneadum (= Venus); 2,599 Magna mater (= terra); again 2,708 (no more instances);for Catullus see abouve (63,50 creatrix, genetrix).

80 On Stoic opinions of the relation between human nature and reason, grounded on thedistinction from beasts, see Reydams-Schils (1998), 39–41; see ibid., 44–50 on Stoic doctrineson the relation between individual and community as based on »tension, involvement anddistance, the linking of an awareness of oneself with the need for self-improvement« (ibid.50).


ditions mainly affecting all single human beings, the second on the communities,and respectively we find more echoes of the first in Catullus and of the second inOvid.

As Attis has been cast into a foreign world, the exiled poet travelled the seato arrive in a country and faces a kind of existence entirely alien to his formerlife: Not voluntarily (iussus) the poet faces foreign shores without civilized beauty(deformia litora), he is besieged by hostile nature (gelido, frigore, gelu) and barbarianinhabitants, captured within narrow walls (cinctus finitimo Marte, brevis murus), hisperception is overwhelmed by threatening instability (pacis fiducia numquam) andconstant pressure (10,69 cinctus premor )81. As in trist . 5,10 the poet uses a spatialstructure to convey his perception, separating two synchronic worlds one fromthe other, while tales of cultural development such as the Lucretian account relyon chronological patterns to distinguish civilized and uncivilized forms of humanexistence82. In the Ovidian poet’s world the diachronic stages of history are presentat the same time and beset each other, so that in the imaginary Tomis of exile poetrythe borders between them are constantly under pressure and sometimes alreadycollapsed83. The fact that half-humans are direct neighbours of the poet, havinginvaded the town and are riding down the streets, may be a direct reversal ofthe treaties and friendships among neighbours that Lucretius saw as importantachievement (Lucr. 5,1019f. Tunc et amicitiem coeperunt iungere aventes / finitimiinter se nec laedere nec violari; cf. Lucr. 5,1022–23 and 1028–32). Political and socialorder as enacted through division of the public space and property are decisive forthe Lucretian account of civilization (5,1108–1112). Magistrates and laws are meantto repress atrocity, hostility, and violence the human beings were exposed to whencultivating their land, while the exile poet of Ovid is exposed to this violenceas contemporary (see Lucr. 5,1143–46 and 1152 circumretit enim vis atque iniuriaquemque).

The exiled poet turns the Lucretian picture of pre-civilized life into one of alife not civilized any more. The people seem to him like the beasts that huntedmen before they invented iron and arms (e.g. 5,7,9–20 with fera and vulnera dare),they are barely human and did not entirely cross the border separating humanbeings from the beasts (vix hoc nomine digni). They are wolves (lupi) and even

81 See Ovid, trist. 5,2,63–72.82 The parallels to Skinner (1997), 142 about Catull. 63 are interesting: »Attis’ tragedy is the

triumph of chaos, in which male civic virtue, exhibited in the ordered activities of foro,palaestra, stadio et gyminasiis […] is swept away into the furor sething outside the civilizedenclave.«

83 Cf. minari, nihil tutum, hostis advolat, intra muros venire, intus metum facere, discrimennullum; the walls are meant to separate but seem weak to the poet: 5,10,17 extra, 10,21 intramuros, 10,22 per medias vias, 10,27 intus, 10,29 simul , 10,29 discrimine nullo, 10,44 in medioforo.


worse (plus saevae feritatis), as they refuse to be bound by law and institution (nonmetuunt leges) and let violence prevail over the just (v. 5,7,47 cedit viribus aequum,a variation of cedit armis forum). The organisation of justice (iura) is defeated bythe sword (victa sub ense iacent), and consequently clothing and outlook furtherassimilate these quasi-humans to the beasts, wrapped in furs and covered withhair (pellibus; laxis bracis; ora horrida, longis comis). As the aper nemorivagus is thenew threatening companion of Attis, the exiled poet finds himself in companyof beast-like men whose appearance has just slightly passed the time when earlyhumans did not yet know how to use furs to cover their bodies (Lucr. 5,953–54neque uti / pellibus et spoliis corpus vestire ferarum).

The lack of urban settlement and legal institution points back to the stagebefore their invention marked a decisive progress (see Lucr. 5,1108–10 and 1143–46).The stable exclusion of violence from civic community fails and rape, as standardthreat of early cultural stages, prevails (praeda, rapere). There was no respect ofthe right to property, and humans (as Getans ›today‹) did not even know howto use laws and morals to order civic life (Lucr. 5,958–59 nec commune bonumpoterant spectare neque ullis / moribus inter se scibant nec legibus uti; 5,960 quodcuique obtulerat praedae fortuna). Violence outdoes laws, and it throws the poetback into the time when human beings were lacking protection and felt trappedby universal violence84. The exiled poet’s view that there is no culture within thishostile nature is in accordance with Lucretius’ idea that mild nature taught mentheir first steps into the fine arts and music (5,1379–87), which definitely cannotbe the case in a freezing Tomis85. The language of the inhabitants is not muchmore refined than the animals’ way of communicating through different sounds atdifferent occasions (Lucr. 5,1081–82), and the poet himself has to draw on gesturethat in the beginning of human history paved the way towards language (Lucr.5,1043f. cuncta notare / vocibus et varios sonitus emittere linguae). Inarticulate soundand noise was, as we have seen, also linked in Catullus 63 with beasts and anexistence linked to early stages of human development.

According to historical standards, Ovid distorts the prosperous Hellenisticcity Tomis with Greek and Latin speaking inhabitants and an unfriendly, but notdesperately hostile climate (with exception of the latter a city quite similar to theone Attis may have left), but within the biography of the poet who once identifiedhimself by his relation to love poetry and now constantly tries to adjust epicmaterial to his world of exile, the picture allows for yet another reading: Tomisis conceived as the Lucretian landscape of a civilization »yet to come«, with the

84 Lucr. 5,1145f. Nam genus humanum, defessum vi colere aevum, / ex inimicitiis languebat; 5,1152circumretit enim vis atque iniuria quemque.

85 On the softening effect of the arts themselves see Ovid, Pont. 1,6,7–8 with the commentaryof Gaertner (2005), ad loc. who quotes Lucr. 5,1014 as probable subtext to Ovid.


slight alteration that time is reversed and the poet falls back into a civilization »notany more«86. The exiled poet shares his narrative patterns with the poet of love,as both build their identities upon the separation from social, political, and civicpatterns (one deliberately, one seemingly forced), which gives the poetry of exilea similar perspective of playful resistance and opposition that the poetry of lovedisplayed from within the imagined community. The negation of civic existencekeeps it constantly in the reader’s mind.

To conclude the survey I would like to point to the poet’s perspective onlanguage as this is, as I have indicated above, a decisive means of assessing one’sidentity, enabling the individual as well as limiting in its constraints. In the lastchapter of this paper, I will extend this notion to the necessity of a poetic, orlarger: literary language that allows for modifying the standard narratives of theself within a community. Language, as the account of Lucretius as well as otherancient texts propose, constituted human beings as a community and distinctfrom the beasts, but the refined language of poetry is (both to Attis and) to Ovid’sexiled poet a necessary basis of their individual existence. Ovid imagines the exiledpoet witnessing an epic war between languages and sounds and suffering constantattacks carried out on his own abilities to speak, think, and write (e.g. trist . 5,7,51–64). The barbarian utterances (lingua) do not contain Latin (civil) words and voices(vox), the Greek way of talking (loquela) is defeated (victa) by the Getan sound(sonus). There are hardly traces of Greek language (vestigia linguae), and even thesehave been made Barbarian (barbara facta) because of the Getic pronounciation(Getico sono). As hardly anyone is able to repeat Latin words (reddere verba), theformer seer of Roman greatness (Romanus vates) is forced to surrender to theSarmatic way of communicating (Sarmatico more loqui), suffers from the fadingof his own abilities (desuetudine longa) and experiences trouble in finding the rightwords (subeunt verba), all of which is the fault of his being out of place (culpaloci). The poet integrates his own voice (mea vox) into the common sound that heshares with the community (patrio sono), thus building a part of his being himselfupon being able to share the sound with an audience, whose loss leads to his fallingsilent (muta). As language loses its function of establishing a social existence, thepoet turns to a dialogue with himself (trist . 5,7,63–64 mecum loquor ), which iscomplemented by his continued poetic endeavour that he is not able to stop (trist .5,12,59–60)87.

86 A succinct account of geographical and historical information on Tomis in contrast toOvidian pictures is provided by Gaertner (2005), 16–24. On the presence of epic and lovepoetry see e.g. Gareth Williams (1994). With regard to the professed intentions of an exiledpoet to be rewarded forgiveness by the princeps, it may be an awkward way to re-establisha world the bringer of the Golden Age was supposed to have overcome.

87 E.g. trist. 5,7,21–22 vivit in his heu nunc, lusorum oblitus amorum! / hos videt, hos vates audit,amice, tuus; 25–28 stress that a poet without an audience ceases to be himself.


What both texts, Catullus’ poem on Attis and Ovid’s poetry of an exiledpoet, seem to envisage is the notion of irreversibility of culture and civilization,and both link this notion to the fortunes of a single character who experienceswhat happens if s/he is, despite all optimistic accounts of ascendance, deprived ofwhat he relies on to narrate his identity88. With regard to the distinction betweena failed act of identification by Attis and a successful one of the narrator, we couldpropose the same for the exiled poet whose narrated identity is built upon loss andfragmentation, while the narration itself successfully constructs the poetic past andengages the reader in its narrative puzzles. The personal identity of the charactersis not treated as an isolated problem – we could infer, not as the problem of anindividual whose main point of reference is his very identity –, but it is related totwo other narratives, one of the poet himself, in his relation to poetic past, and oneof the community that allows or denies the person suitable patterns for narratingthe self.

5. Identifying personae and poetic authenticity

As we have seen, literary texts pay considerable attention to issues of personalidentity when related to decision making and acting of characters or readers. Bothare summoned to compare their own narrative patterns with what the text proposesto use as new or modified patterns, e.g. through the inclusion of poetic past andliterary history as meaningful categories. In these concluding remarks, I would liketo sketch some consequences for reading practices and relations between artisticlanguage as developed in literary texts, and notions of truthfulness and reliabilityas conditions of reacting to (acts of) identification. I will start by pointing to thediscussion of persona, understood as a point of view which enables the text topresent a perspective that is different from the autobiographical perspective of ahistorical author. The latter is seen as opposed to the persona’s identity as beinga true personal identity of the author-poet, whose authentic feelings, intimateconfessions, or individual beliefs are held more valuable than invented ones. I donot intend to repeat the discussion as I haven’t seen any conclusive argumentagainst the separation, and perhaps Paul Veyne has already found the solution,namely that readers with hopes to meet the author are people who do not listen

88 To be clear, Lucretius’ account is not at all simplistic in terms of optimism (in contrary, thefatal descendance through weariness of nature’s creative power and moral decline prevail),but his summary of cultural achievements provides a checklist for anybody who like theexiled poet of Ovid wanted to picture the world after civilization (see Lucr. 5,1448–1453),reversing its time structure and decomposing everything »little by little, step by step« (seeLucr. 5,1453 paulatim […] pedetemptim).


enough to pop music89. But the opposition between a true, authentic, and presentauthorial self and one hiding behind false feelings and untrue statements is linked toour questions about identification, and it may be seen as a neo-romantic distortionof the aesthetic device Romanticism was interested in when putting up a contrastbetween nature and originality on the one hand, art and deception on the other.As the decision for a perspective is fundamental for writing, it is inevitable anddeliberate, but not irrevocable or stable, neither for one text nor for a corpus likethe collection of Catullan poems: Every text may be put into quotation marks,and is meant to make the reader ask »Who is speaking?«90. Catullus may be seenas the same person in different stages of a biography, or in different moods, orin different perspectives on himself, being a temporary or occasional self91. Thepersona’s biography then is one within the chosen genre, detectable in its affiliationwith or detachment from other personae, and it enables the reader to compare theinformation he regularly employs to create an idea of a person’s identity with theinformation given about the persona (including aims, method, motivation, beliefs,emotional participation).

But this is not a game of hide-and-seek, as the identification through poeticalpast and linguistic choice is a serious one, and the theatrical background of thepersona-metaphor may be one reason for some readers to fear that they lose theimmediacy of contact with the author, and makes them relate the acknowledgementof a speaker not identical with the author to the (morally ambiguous) interest ofan actor in being hidden behind a misleading mask92. Probably Catullus or Cicerowould not have understood the problem, and this may be illustrated by pointingto another notion of persona that exceeds the theatrical metaphor. The famousaccount of the four personae, to be found in Cicero’s De officiis93, describes acitizen’s identity as constituted and accessible by ›dimensions of visibility‹ equally

89 (English quotation from Selden [1992], 476 [taken from Ariès/Duby, History of private life,vol. 1, 231]): »No ancient, not even the poets, is capable of talking about himself. Nothing ismore misleading than the use of ›I‹ in Greco-Roman poetry. When an ancient poet says ›Iam jealous, I love, I hate‹, he sounds more like a modern pop singer … and makes no claimthat the public should be interested in his own personal [condition].«

90 This is the appropriate title of the first chapter in Niklas Holzberg, Catull. Der Dichter undsein erotisches Werk, München 32002.

91 Cf. (from a different perspective) Diskin Clay and Roland Mayer.92 It may be noted that some ideas about a mask and the author are quite simplistic in

comparison with the theatrical reality: If we put away a mask, we do not have an author,but an actor out of charge, who in turn would be assigned a new role by the director, againnot the author (the director, in terms of ancient theatre practices often participating as anactor himself). We can even push the idea further by considering the fact, that in ancientperformance the same actor could be assigned more than one role, changing his masksaccording to scene and act.

93 Cf. Gill (1988), Möller (2004), 158–161; Reydams-Schils (1998) 51–53.


conditioning the community’s point of view and the personal one. Cicero’s concernis less with masks, but with the distinction of dimensions that allow the descriptionof a person by combining the different places she maintains in relation to theseorders of time, community, memory (personal as well as historical), experience orphysical existence. The model is formally concordant with approaching a personthrough biographical and rhetorical topoi as ›places where arguments can be found‹,where a list of qualities allows for denotation and characterization of a person andwhich lead at least partially to the failure of Attis’ account of her self (see above),but it differs in its attention to the relation between the various categories94. Thepersonae come together not just to form layers of the person (with a secret selfhidden inside), but to constitute the social self as a position within various orders,and permit to conceive it as being the crosspoint of different relations.

If we conceive perspectives of a text, and the persona in literature in general,as another of these dimensions that permit the description of a person (as fromthe inner perspective as from outside) by her relative position, the textual memoryof poetic texts may be seen as a distinct feature added by literature to the canonof structuring acts of identification. We may further illustrate this with regard tothe above mentioned discussion on persona as being false inventions, and take asan example the poetic engagement with supposed autobiographical data, which isone of the prominent battlefields for issues in identification of person and persona.Horace’s account of military experience in Philippi (carm. 2,7,9–14) is a well-known case, as we may try to discern the elements referred to historical truthand those referred to literary past95. We may try to entangle the neatly wovencarpet of allusions to historical, perhaps biographical, and poetical traditions, butthe identity of the poet won’t become clearer from one than from the other areas.The authenticity of the text is not guaranteed by historical verification, as it enactsan identification of the poet through textual past, whether it be Archilochos (theshield left behind) or an epic past of mythical figures being rescued by divineintervention96. As with Attis or the exiled poet, the intertextual dimension (thepersona) serves to integrate the scattered elements which historical or social modelsof identification provide, into an overarching identity (Sorabji’s term, see above)that is able to make sense of the otherwise meaningless data (cf. Horace’s sensi)97.

94 Gill (1988) discusses the lack of interest in possible contradictions between the four personae,which may be caused by the protreptic interests of Cicero’s text.

95 Horace, carm. 2,7,9–14 tecum Philippos et celerem fugam / sensi relicta non bene parmula, /cum fracta virtus et minaces / turpe solum tetigere mento; / sed me per hostis Mercurius celer /denso paventem sustulit aere […].

96 Parallels are assembled in Nisbet/Hubbard ad loc., for epic past esp. their comments on2,7,12–14.

97 What intertextual genealogies of characters and personae allow to think about identity maybe related to the interesting observation of Sorabji (2006), 240 on relevance of other persons


The extension of the canon of identity criteria in order to include poetic mem-ory is, in contrast to some readers’ perception, not a step towards less credibility,but extends the set of tools. A poetic statement such as the one that Attis hasa poetic past within former literary traditions and therefore relies on a particularbiography within texts, is meant to strengthen its reliability: The poetic act of iden-tification claims to be entirely truthful and real. The social (philosophical, scientific,religious) patterns available to her are not sufficient and fail to give an account ofher self, but the narrator’s perspective on literary tradition succeeds because hisis a wider canon of possible criteria and narrative strategies. The same is true forsuch devices as lexical, metrical, or syntactical choices, which according to otheraccounts of the self are to be neglected and excluded from having any impact onthe true proposition, while literary texts put considerable attention to these regionsof the language in order to test their potential for gaining, retaining, or testingknowledge that may or may not hold in narratives of identification98. Finally, bypointing to intertextual memory (and reality) characteristic of literary texts (inthe Roman period), we may already see, that the literary notion of individualityand uniqueness is highly important for any text (indeed, every text cannot be butindividual), but contradicts most of the philosophical (or everyday) notions (notthe same place, time, characteristic features, matter etc.)99.

While philosophical language developed its own standards of reliable language,and still does, poets could only be serious about issues like the self and its prob-lems, if it was conceived of in terms of the poetic project. If language is a »modeof perception« (Donald Davidson) that is necessary to make data delivered bythe senses meaningful to us, the language of literature is a highly developed toolfor transforming otherwise unavailable notions and facts into meaningful expe-rience. There are no authentic objects that are distorted by artistic language, butmeaningless objects made authentic through art and thus made relevant in actsof identification100. If we understand artistic language as a necessary mode ofperception of otherwise unavailable facts, we are not only able to overcome the

in thinking about a self: »Other persons may thus enter into one’s very identity, if we takeidentity in the sense in which a persona or a woven narrative gives one an identity.«

98 E.g. on mutual interference of syntax, semantics, and content in Catullus, sometimes result-ing in severe contradiction see Selden (1992), 466.

99 Möller (2004) has explored several aspects of the complex relation between ›man‹ and textin ancient literature, with special attention to textual existence (being one’s style), see e.g.on Ciceronian thought 137–165 and Roman satire 263–96.

100 While Romantic constructions partly revived Lucretian ideas of language and combinedoriginality with notions of natural, spontaneous (true) and emotional (see on Vico undRousseau Gera [2003], 45), it was not common in Greek and Roman texts (Gera ibid. 46).This may be a starting point for searching the origins of some readers’ claim that simplelanguage is more reliable to provide truth and insight than the distorted poetic diction.


standard interest in distinguishing real from fictitious elements in a text, but mayalso embed the successful claims on truth, authority, and reliability put forwardby discourses other than literature, into an open framework that may or may notcontain promising narrative patterns that allow making personal identity a pointof reference in decision making and acting. The reality of poetic facts may be thusgrounded in its capacity to select, evaluate, and extend available criteria, and tomake available those experiences or truths within the social world that are notcovered by this world’s own criteria. This, I think, is one of the main points inthe above mentioned account of Ovid’s exiled poet who contradicts the narratedeffects of his exile by narrating them, and again we may look back to Lucretius whorefused to acknowledge one primus inventor of (poetic) language by employing aclearly military imagery (as did Ovid with his epic war between sounds), and byemploying contemporary political language:

Lucr. 5,1050f.Cogere item pluris unus victosque domarenon poterat, rerum ut perdiscere nomina vellent .

Obviously, language can not be usurped like conquered Gaul or imposed liketriumviral legislation, for the users of language, not the least the poets, saw thefreedom of choosing the right words for what was happening as the decisive factin their own narratives and as their own tool within the acts of identifying theirself.

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Sektion 2

Autobiographische Genesen des Selbst undErzählungen vom po(i)etischen Ich

Die zweite Sektion vereint Beiträge, in denen Erzählweisen des Ich und Konzepteeines (literarischen) Selbst analysiert werden, das sich als Dichter oder Künstlervon seinem Werk absetzt und in dieses einschreibt. Von der aristotelischen Poetiküber hellenistisches, römisch-republikanisches und spätantikes Schreiben führt derWeg bis in die epischen Erzählweisen vom Subjekt bei Ariost und Tasso. Dieuntersuchten Texte lassen sich teils über die Nutzung der Prosaform komplementärlesen, teils über das Interesse an narrativen Modi, wie sie insbesondere mit Blickauf eine Genese des Selbst in autobiographisch lesbaren Textformen auftreten.

Thomas Schirren (Salzburg) untersucht unter dem Titel »›Techne liebtTyche und Tyche Techne‹ – Aspekte poetischer Kreativität im Denken des Ari-stoteles« die zentrale Frage poetischer Subjektivität anhand der Überlegung desAristoteles zur Rolle der Techne im Schaffensprozess. Die neuzeitlichen Kreati-vitätskonzepte haben insbesondere in den Geniemodellen entscheidend zur Auto-nomiedebatte über das künstlerische Subjekt beigetragen, das sich über Selbst-bestimmtheit konstituiert. Eine detaillierte Nachzeichnung der Faktoren, die denProzess künstlerischen Handelns nicht nur strukturieren, sondern in seiner Bedeu-tung für die Theorie des handelnden Subjekts deutlich werden lassen, führt zuraristotelischen Konzeption eines Telos der poetischen Gattungen, das sich sowohlmit einer inkohärenten Entwicklung der poetischen Vollkommenheit wie einemnaturgegebenen Talent eines großen Dichters in Einklang befindet. GlücklichesGelingen und regelgeleitetes Handeln lassen sich im Blick auf die Autonomie desKünstlers nur als sein Selbst konstitutierende Faktoren verstehen, wenn der aristo-telische Gedanke von einer Psyche der Gattung selbst berücksichtigt wird.

Vor dem Hintergrund einer umfassenden Neubestimmung der Funktionenautobiographischer Schreibweisen liest Gyburg Radke-Uhlmann (Berlin) einender Schlüsseltexte der hellenistischen Literatur, den Aitienprolog des Kallimachos,als eine originelle Erkundung der Aitiologien des Selbst als eines poetischen Sub-jekts: »Aitiologien des Selbst – Moderne Konzepte und ihre Alternativen in antikenautobiographischen Texten«. Die Forschungsdiskussionen über die mögliche Iden-

86 Sektion 2: Autobiographische Genesen des Selbst

tifikation der beteiligten Personen sind als Erfolg einer autobiographischen Strategiedeutbar, die sich über die Textkonstitution mit Traum- und Narrationslementenvollzieht. Gegen die verbreitete Deutung in Legitimations- und Rechtfertigungska-tegorien ist der Illusionscharakter der Situation auszumachen, der die Selbstwer-dung des poetischen Ich befördert. Die Autarkie des poetischen Selbst, die absoluteWürdigung der literarischen phantasia und damit der Verzicht auf eine Aitiologieim Sinne der platonischen Lehre von der Selbsterkenntnis erweisen Kallimachos’Selbstkonstruktion als entscheidendes Zeugnis gegen entwicklungsgeschichtlichgefasste Beschreibungen eines »(post)modernen« Selbst.

Die unausweichliche Verknüpfung zwischen politisch und literarisch konzi-piertem Selbst weist Michèle Lowrie (New York) an einem gleichermaßen zen-tralen wie kaum bearbeiteten Text nach, Ciceros Rednergeschichte mit dem TitelBrutus (»Cicero on Caesar or Exemplum and Inability in the Brutus«). Die ciceroni-sche Rhetorik der Unfähigkeit bleibt als einfache Bestätigung des Gegenteils unter-bestimmt, insofern die Dialektik zwischen Macht und Ohnmacht des Redners/Politikers als Teil einer komplexen Konzeption des Schreibens verstanden werdenkann, in der Stärke und Schwäche des Schriftstellers Cicero nur in Bezug auf dieHerausforderung des Selbstverständnisses durch Caesar einen Ort erhalten. ImKonflikt mit dem exemplarischen Caesar werden der Stil und seine Komponentenzum wichtigsten Katalysator der auktorialen Konzeption. Die Unauflöslichkeit derVerbindungen zwischen personae politischer und literarischer Provenienz führenzu einer Erweiterung des zu berücksichtigenden Belegfeldes auf die prinzipielleAuflösung des traditionellen Systems von Möglichkeiten der Selbstbestimmung.Darin wird Caesar gleichermaßen zum undenkbaren wie einzig denkbaren Ersatzder Exemplarität, die die Selbstkonstitution in der Literatur in eine unauflösbareAmbivalenz stellt.

Den einflußreichen spätantiken Dichter Sidonius Apollinaris stellt RainerHenke (Münster) ins Zentrum seiner Betrachtung des Eskapismus als eines glei-chermaßen literaturgeschichtlich wie produktionsästhetisch relevanten Modus derSelbstverständigung (»Eskapismus, poetische Aphasie und satirische Offensive:Das Selbstverständnis des spätantiken Dichters Sidonius Apollinaris«). Die Vorstel-lung von Epoche, Stellung und Werk des erst in jüngerer Zeit in seiner Bedeutungerkannten Dichters bietet einen Zugang zur Lektüre der poetischen Verfahren, diedie Selbstkonstruktion des Sprechers bedingen. Literarisch wie identitätspolitischwirksame Motive der Exildichtung und der Fremd- und Selbststereotypen erfahrenim Werk des Sidonius gleichermaßen eine Aktualisierung wie eine Ästhetisierung,die eine Suche nach dem Modus des Lebens in einer sich radikal transformierendenkulturellen Landschaft abbildet. In der Selbstverkleinerung und der Unterordnungunter gattungsimmanente Konventionen entstehen Bilder eines poetischen Selbst,das sich in der kunstvollen Transformation der Sprechweisen und der Spannungenzwischen Aussageinhalten und -formen konstitutiert und zugleich zurückzieht.

Sektion 2: Autobiographische Genesen des Selbst 87

Die Frage nach dem Unterschied zwischen historischer und dargestellter Wirk-lichkeit führt Therese Fuhrer (Berlin) in ihrem Aufsatz »De-Konstruktion derIch-Identität in Augustins Confessiones« zu dem Vorschlag, einen der Schlüssel-texte der Subjektsdiskussion, die Confessiones des Augustinus, mit Blick auf dieErzählstrategien zu lesen, die die autobiographische Deutung durch die Leser zueinem Teil der Überzeugungsarbeit des Textes machen und die Funktionalität derElemente einzubeziehen. Authentizität dient in einem religionspolitischen Kontextder Bekräftigung der orthodoxen Lehre, deren Bekenntnis der Sprecher aus seinerintellektuellen Entwicklung begründet. Selbst wenn Form und Thesen funktionalauf die Zeichnung einer dezidiert anti-manichäischen Position hingeordnet sind,lässt sich dies nicht als Beweis gegen die Authentizität der Ich-Aussagen insgesamtverwenden. In einer Gegenüberstellung mit Derridas Schrift Circonfession läßt sichzeigen, daß die Kategorie der Selbstentblößung in beiden Texten nicht nur Mit-tel, sondern auch Gegenstand der Darstellung ist. Fuhrer erkennt Parallelen inder Skepsis gegenüber der grundsätzlichen Möglichkeit, Selbstaussagen zu tätigen,zwischen Augustinus und Derrida, selbst wenn die Radikalität des letzteren nichtgleichzusetzen ist mit der Schreibweise der Confessiones, in denen ein theologischesMenschenbild illustriert werden soll.

Unter dem Titel »Wege in die Moderne. Von Ariost zu Tasso« führt PaulGeyer (Bonn) die Analyse narrativer Subjektsentwürfe weiter zu den Erzähltech-niken in Ariosts Orlando Furioso und Tassos Gerusalemme Liberata, in denen beidenVerarbeitung von Transzendenzverlust und Suche nach neuen Subjektivitätskon-zepten aufscheinen. Vor dem Hintergrund der Unterscheidung des allegorisch-exemplarischen vom parodistischen und personalen Erzählen erweist sich Ariostsepische Dichtung als selbstreferentielle Parodie, aus der sich ein Weg zur späterensubjekttheoretischen Reflexion ergibt. In einer transformierenden Lektüre Dantesentwickelt Ariost einen poetologischen Ansatz, in dessen Sinnzentrum das Dich-ter-Ich steht, und schafft die Voraussetzung für das stringent personale ErzählenTassos. In Tassos Verzicht auf die Zentralperspektive, aus der das Geschehenentwickelt werden könnte, kommt ein erzählendes Subjekt zur Sprache, dessenkomplexe Innerlichkeit weder in einer inneren Mitte noch in einer erfolgreichenSuche nach epischer Totalität aufgeht.

Identity, the self, and Catullan poetics in carm 63

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