The fifties bce saw an escalation of public disorder that by the end of 56 and the beginning of 55 had resulted in the paralysis of governmental process.Footnote 1 The situation would only deteriorate. Political corruption was – in traditional Roman thinking – coupled with moral degeneration. So it was in Catullus’ thought.Footnote 2 For all that the poet was ready to thumb his nose at conventional strictures (5.2; 7.8), he professes outrage. Quid est, Catulle? quid moraris emori? Footnote 3 One epigram (113) seems to me to distil that (righteous) indignation.Footnote 4 It is not as playful as it might first appear.
Debate has attached to the clause duo … solebant mecilia, not prompted by a conflicted textual tradition but the proliferation of editorial conjecture concerning the word mecilia.Footnote 6 Understanding solebant to be a euphemistic reference to carnal familiarity and Mecilia to be a name, the epigram can be seen to trace one woman's progression over a specific fifteen-year period (70–55 BCE) from two partners to a hyperbolic two thousand.
The content and point of the defamation contained therein has been the subject of less debate than the text itself, perhaps because the comic overstatement did not invite serious contemplation (the hyperbole of line 3 is possibly formulaic),Footnote 7 perhaps because of the unfamiliarity of the gentilicium. Footnote 8 In his Reference Lachmann1829 edition, Lachmann left Mecilia in the text but offered – in his apparatus criticus – the tentative suggestion that the name was Maecilia,Footnote 9 thus adopting a spelling sufficiently attested in the republican period (and, at the same time, affirming an individual's name as the object of solebant). But the woman remained virtually unidentified and prosopographical interest was rarely piqued in the modern reader. The Maecilii were respectable, but scarcely of historical significance, and the woman's misdemeanours, however prodigious, were insufficiently specific. The poem seemed garbed with an almost anodyne quality, uncharacteristic of Catullan epigrams.Footnote 10
Lachmann's quiet intervention, however, took the debate to a new plane. The name Maecilia was embedded in many texts (and/or translations),Footnote 11 and the only debate that continued has revolved around affirmations, rejections, or recreations of the woman's name.Footnote 12 A significant shift came in 1849 with Pleitner's proposal that the text read Mucillam and that Mucilla be understood as a diminutive of Mucia. The woman was to be identified as the third wife of Pompey whom the latter divorced in 62 bce on the grounds – according to the historical tradition – of her impudicitia.Footnote 13 The proposal was followed by Schwabe, offering one of the longest discussions of the poem (before, that is, the lengthy analysis by Agnesini).Footnote 14 The diminutive, it was suggested, followed the pattern of those found amongst the list of women (Tertulla, Terentilla, Rufilla and Salvia Titisenia) whom Antony jokingly imagined as possible distractions for the young Caesar beyond the arms of Livia, whom he calls in that very context Drusilla (Suet. Aug. 69.2).Footnote 15 If the diminutive emanated from Mucia's own family, it was affectionate (in the sense that Catullus addresses his sodalis Veranius as Veraniolum meum at 12.17).Footnote 16 There was, of course, nothing affectionate in Catullus’ assault here, and diminution might serve contempt just as well.Footnote 17
The identification brings an extra degree of drama to the epigram and the suggestion has proved understandably popular.Footnote 18 Mucia, who was, in all likelihood Lesbia's cousin, or perhaps half- (or step-)sister (discussed below), suffered from a reputation tarnished by virulent rumour (at least after her divorce from Pompey) and the poem was at any rate framed to diminish Pompey's name.Footnote 19 The poem is firmly and pointedly located; nunc in the second line firmly dates the diatribe to 55, the year of Pompey's second consulship.Footnote 20 The poem opens with his first. This is hardly coincidental – and he is as much the target as is the excessive libido or passivity of ‘Mecilia’. Even if he had not been personally associated with the woman, he would bear the shame by association with the degradation that has allegedly occurred within the framework of his honores. The other consul (Crassus in both instances) is not named;Footnote 21 the blot is on Pompey's record – and Pompey's alone.Footnote 22 But the attack could be seen as even more pointed. Morelli sees ‘an amusing (divertente) contrast’ between her former husband's triumphant cursus honorum – which the allusion to the iteration of his political positions underlines – and Mecilia's activity, ‘which does not duplicate, but multiplies (as in a parallel cursus) her lovers’.Footnote 23
The gossip, groundless or otherwise, was possibly ‘hot’. August/September 54 bce saw the trial on a charge de repetundis of Mucia's next husband, M. Aemilius Scaurus (praet. 56), on which occasion Pompey's lukewarm support for his erstwhile ally (sc. Scaurus) was put down in part to the latter's seeming disregard for Pompey's (implicitly) negative moral judgment regarding the woman when he divorced her.Footnote 24 Scaurus, on the other hand, was caught wrong-footed on that score, thinking that he had secured politically and socially advantageous adfinitas via the marriage (and, apparently, unaware of the offence taken by Pompey).Footnote 25 Perhaps carmen 113 re-ignited sensitivities.Footnote 26
Müller and Baehrens endorsed the identification with Mucia, but suggested a play on words, proposing that Moecilla was a vulgar pronunciation (forma plebeia) of Mucilla and that it allowed an allusive aural association with moecha.Footnote 27 We may suspect the siren call of earlier emendations (to which I allude in the Appendix). In 1928, Lenchantin suggested Moeciliam (allowing the proposed text to slide closer to the one transmitted),Footnote 28 and these variations have proved popular.Footnote 29 I believe that the identifications with Mucia are correct, but emendations of the text, no matter how attractive or compelling, must leave a question mark hanging over any hypothesis. Solutions that rely on them will, at best, be classified as more or less convincing.Footnote 30 As much as it is agreed that the text of Catullus might be ‘notoriously corrupt’,Footnote 31 alterations to the text will command only so much allegiance. Mucilla, Moecilla and Moecilia, as allusions to Mucia, remain vulnerable to challenge.Footnote 32 As it stands, variation prevails.Footnote 33
But is emendation necessary? The name M(a)ecilia stands, I suggest, as a portmanteau, a wordplay such as Postgate suspected – writing more than a century ago – but not in the strained way that he conjectured. In a defence of the transmitted text's integrity, Postgate discerned a biting allusion to both Mucia and Pompey's second wife Aemilia (the latter name corresponding, he emphasised, ‘syllable for syllable’ with Maecilia), recalling Pompey's callous readiness to engage in the dictator Sulla's marriage politics – and the rather distasteful circumstances in which Pompey became free to marry Mucia.Footnote 34 No-one, so far as I can see, has been ready to follow Postgate down that particular path, but in his bold attempt to read an allusive meaning into the word M(a)ecilia and reluctance to stray too far from the received text he might have been on the right track. The wordplay that Postgate offered, however, was not compelling and the contextualizing hypothesis stretched.
I would rather suggest that the two interlocked gentilicia were Mucia and Caecilia. Mucia Tertia was the daughter of a Mucius Scaevola (Ascon., p. 19C), whom most scholars presume was Q. Scaevola ‘the Pontifex’ (cos. 95).Footnote 35 With regard, however, to Mucia's most immediate kinship, there is certainty. Mucia was the ‘sister’ of the Metellan brothers, Q. Celer (cos. 60) and Q. Nepos (cos. 57),Footnote 36 being unambiguously referred to as such in a letter to Celer (Cic. Fam. 5.2.6: uestra sorore Mucia) and at Dio Cass. 37.49.3 (τὴν ἀδɛλφὴν αὐτοῦ [sc. of Metellus Celer]). The designations could mean that she was a sister (ruled out, it would seem, by the nomenclature), a half-sister or a cousin in the first degree. Perhaps, even a stepsister. (Again, we may pause to register the fact that – given the sons of Appius Claudius Pulcher [cos. 79] accounted themselves fratres of the Metelli and one of their sisters was married to Celer – a close degree of cousinage and/or adfinitas existed between Mucia and ‘Lesbia’).Footnote 37
In whatever particular familial circumstances Mucia was raised, she probably considered her Metellan brothers to be amongst her closest kin – and the relationship was strong. Modern prosopographers often regard the marriage of Pompey and Mucia as the former's political alliance with the Metelli.Footnote 38 When Pompey repudiated her in 62, Metellus Celer took it as a personal insult to his sister and to the family, becoming a vigorous opponent of Pompey ‘in all things’ (Dio Cass. loc.cit.).Footnote 39 Mucia was, then, to all intents and purposes, a Caecilia Metella. Would Catullus’ politically aware readership, given the opening cue of Pompey's consulship (consule Pompeio primum), have missed the reference to Mucia in the name ‘Maecilia’?Footnote 40
Why, laying aside the opportunity for a wordsmith's wit, might Catullus have chosen to disguise Mucia's name, however thinly? It was hardly timidity; poems 11, 29, 57 and 58 demonstrate his readiness to attack the politically powerful or a woman who might have felt entitled to deference.Footnote 41 Affecting the high moral ground (however scurrilous his medium), Catullus did not pull punches and his squibs were all the more venomous for his readiness to name names. His use of metrically equivalent aliases was, in fact, rare.Footnote 42 Catullus’ social standing gave him a certain licence – and women, as Wiseman notes, ‘were fair game too’. Some women, at least. With regard to this particular epigram, Wiseman (Reference Wiseman1985) 133–4 (assuming that no major emendation of the text is required but presuming that we are dealing here with an actual Maecilia) remarks that the woman came from ‘a family as respectable as [Catullus’] own’ – but that she was not on that score immune from his venom. By my understanding of the context, the target was more than a single notch above the poet. If we are dealing here with Mucia Scaevolae f. quondam uxor Pompeii, the epigram is instantly transformed – and becomes shocking. She was a woman of ‘quality’, with a standing that came close to that of her Claudian cousin (or soror) ‘Lesbia’, and it is conceivable that in these circumstances even the audacity of Catullus found some ‘cautious covering of tracks’, however disingenuous, advisable.Footnote 43 If so, Catullus steps back only by a fraction; if Mucia regarded herself as one of the Caecilii (and was so regarded by them), here was the most translucent of veils. But it seems equally probable to me that Catullus deliberately took aim in this fashion at her whole family. His targets were multiple.
While a precise parallel for this type of wordplay in Catullus escapes me, it does not seem alien to the times or to contemporary rhetorical practice. The author of the Rhetorica ad Herennium 4.29–34 defines adnominatio (paranomasía) as a figure in which the resemblance of a given word or name is produced by the change of a sound or letter – in particular, he says (4.29), the alteration, inter alia, of a word by the addition, deletion, or switching of letters. (He offers examples.) Of interest here is an example that Cicero (De or. 2.256), provides – while discussing ambigua – of ‘a slight change in spelling’ (paruam uerbi immutationem) where Cato referred to a Fulvius Nobilior as mobilior (In Fuluium Nobiliorem, fr. 151 Malc. = fr. 106 Cugusi), thereby replacing the claims to a superior nobilitas with, no doubt, the charge of fickleness and/or inconstancy, rather than agility.Footnote 44 And this form of the name (Maecilia) offered the ancillary advantage of having the resonance of a diminutive, allowing – despite the familiar tone of affection – a diminution of respect.Footnote 45
Nor is Lachmann's modest emendation (from Mecilia to Maecilia) strictly necessary.Footnote 46 Varro (Ling. 7.96) indicates that the slippage between the æ diphthong and e was relatively common, and – though clearly audible to Roman ears – slight. It has been characterized as a feature of the Umbrian language, though Varro suggests – more simply – that the shorter syllable was favoured by rustici.Footnote 47 More interestingly here, when he illustrates this point, Varro adduces a fragment of Lucilius, who clearly thought that the slippage may be common, but infra senatoria dignitate: Cecilius pretor ne rusticus fiat (1130 Marx = 5. 232 Warmington), ‘Let us not make the bumpkin Cecilius pr(a)etor!’. We know that Lucilius made attacks on one of the sons of Macedonicus (cos. 143),Footnote 48 and this item is thought to be an attack on C. Caecilius Metellus Caprarius (cos. 113), whose cognomen ‘Goat Man’, for reasons of which we cannot be sure, might suggest a certain rusticity. The peculiar spelling of the gentilicium and similarly countrified rendering of praetor further indicate a lack of urbanitas on the part of Caprarius or the Metellus whom Lucilius was pillorying.Footnote 49 Has Lucilius picked up on a verbal affectation of the clan and did Mucia refer to her brothers as Cēcilii?Footnote 50 If so, Mecilia may be allowed to stand (and Catullus seen to have enjoyed an additional exercise of wit at her expense).Footnote 51
In either case, I suggest that readers saw a distinct reference to Mucia.
Fecundum semen adulterio
I hope to have shown that there are good reasons for accepting both the manuscript tradition and for identifying the named target of carm. 113 as Mucia, one-time wife of Pompey, and – at the time of the poem's composition – the wife of consular aspirant, M. Aemilius Scaurus. But before leaving the subject, I would like to consider the sting in the poem's tail. The epigram is wrapped up with what seems to be a gnomic declaration (fecundum semen adulterio ), the last word confirming the theme which may have been suspected but which had not yet been technically articulated.Footnote 52 On the face of it, a sententious aphorism that can seemingly stand alone,Footnote 53 it has produced a rich variety of versions, those adhering more closely to Catullus’ text capturing, I believe, the message that the poet wanted to convey.Footnote 54 If we allow that, at one level, the last line served as a resonating adage,Footnote 55 it would be along the lines of ‘adultery breeds apace’, that is to say, that this moral delinquency had ‘gone viral’; it propagated itself, incongruously usurping marriage's role.Footnote 56 Possibly Catullus intended to plant that as the idea first coming to his readers’ minds (a reference to the excess underlined in v. 3). Yet on reflection, another thought beckoned. Read as affirming the point of the epigram, the line is pregnant (each of the last three words essential); the poem's theme (marital infidelity rather than licentious promiscuity) is tightly controlled, opening with consule Pompeio primum and closing with adulterio.
The charge was both gross and oddly specific. Mucia had been married in both 70 and 55 but to two different husbands, firstly (and most importantly) to Pompey from around 80 until 62, and then from sometime before 54 to Scaurus.Footnote 57 A wife's infidelity might cast doubt on the paternity of all children in the household – or so malicious gossip might insinuate (Plut. Cic. 26.6).Footnote 58 Mucia was the mother of Pompey's three children, all born within the two decades either side of 70 (consule Pompeio primum): the eldest, Gnaeus, in the early 70s; Pompeia and Sextus a good deal later. Was there something more specific underlying Catullus’ gibe revolving around Pompey's first consulship? The question of Sextus’ birthdate is vexing, the available evidence being contradictory, but one modern hypothesis put his birth in 69/68,Footnote 59 a calculation apt to send shivers down the spine of anyone reading this epigram in that light. Most recent scholarship, however, would be inclined – with good reason – to place the birth later.Footnote 60
I would suggest that, in 55, if readers of Catullus’ innuendo drew a sharp breath and reached for their abacus, it was likelier the teenaged Pompeia that sprang uncomfortably to mind. The evidence concerning her birthdate teases, but inferences may converge. In 59, Pompeia was promised to a certain Servilius Caepio though she was betrothed at the time to Faustus Sulla.Footnote 61 Faustus had been born c. 85 and was therefore, in 59, in his mid-twenties.Footnote 62 The marriage was not, then, being delayed on Faustus’ account; it is likely that Pompeia had been considered too young for marriage before 59. If under twelve, she was born after 71 (which is also the earliest appropriate date after Pompey's return from his prolonged campaign against Sertorius). Her engagement may, of course, have been further prolonged; the offer to Caepio does not prove she was nubile in 59.Footnote 63
An item in Plutarch's Moralia might be helpful. Upon Pompey's return to Rome from ‘the Great Command’ (sc. in 62), Pompeia's tutor had her read to her father some lines of Greek, as a display of proficiency (Quaest. conv. 3 [= Mor. 9.737B]). The incident was remembered because the didaskalos’ choice of a starting point fell on Homer's Iliad 3.428 (Helen's words of disdain to Paris, suggesting that it would have been preferable he had died on the battlefield); inopportune, to say the least. The story may well be apocryphal,Footnote 64 but it was predicated on Pompeia being of roughly a certain age. She is described as a pais and her level of education suggests to Hemelrijk a child around the age of eight or nine. That brings us back to a birthdate c. 70.Footnote 65 The coincidence remains conjectural but gives pause.
Chronology was not the only specificity in the poem's first line. The duo introduced here formed a shockingly exclusive club – or so, I believe, Catullus wanted his readers to think (and it is appropriate to reiterate that we are not dealing here with the disinterested record of the past, but with what was rumoured, or, perhaps even more to the point, with what Catullus wished to be rumoured). Pleitner spotted Caesar and Mamurra, the ‘abominable pair’ of carm. 57, morbosi pariter, gemelli utrique, their pathic qualities (as ascribed by the poet) belying their appetite for adultery.Footnote 66 From the allegation, however, that in 70 only two individuals ‘frequented’ Mucia, a very particular scenario materialises. One of the two was engaged in a legitimate conjugal exercise; the other, an illicit liaison.Footnote 67 For the latter, ancient testimony supplies a name (and Pleitner had rightly followed that clue); Suetonius reports that Caesar was, at one time during her marriage to Pompey, a paramour of Mucia (Iul. 50.1), and this is registered as common gossip; constans opinio est. Caesar is back in the frame, but in a distinctly contrapositive fashion.Footnote 68
Multiple targets of Catullus’ venom now emerge, all linked by close ties of political alignment and adfinitas (we can admit M. Scaurus and, by association, Mucia's brother Q. Metellus Nepos into this circle);Footnote 69 but it is Pompey's discomfort that Catullus is most likely to have savoured (as I have suggested above) and Pompey who is foregrounded in the poem's opening lines.Footnote 70 The latter's personal feelings can only be guessed, but he was diminished by the allegations of Caesar's liaison with Mucia. He had not published his reasons for divorcing Mucia (Pomp. 42.7) and – if infidelity was the reason for the divorce (which is not to be carelessly assumed)Footnote 71 – we can understand why; yet he was said to have ‘customarily’ made reference to Caesar's invasion(s) of his household, with accompanying groans (Suet. Iul. 50.2).Footnote 72 Far from exacting retribution (according to this derisory version of events), Pompey had forged a political bond and marriage alliance with the man, making his putative tormentor his father-in-law. This ‘fact’ was highlighted by those who wished him ill.Footnote 73
[T]here is no doubt that Pompey was taken to task by the elder and younger Curio, as well as by many others, because through a desire for power he had afterwards married the daughter of a man on whose account he divorced a wife who had borne him three children …
Suet. Iul. 50.1, trans. Rolfe [my italics].
This challenges – as noted earlier – the argument (by some who would dismiss the identification of Mecilia with Mucia) that the affair was (at the time Catullus composed this broadside) ‘an old story’ (or ‘a lampoon [that] could hardly hurt Pompey now’).Footnote 74 If considered potent in 59, four years after the divorce, we might presume potency in 55. It may, indeed, have been in (or later than) 59 that Mucia's delinquency – in the form that we ‘know’ it – was ‘created’.Footnote 75 The multiple incongruities in the marriage alliance between Caesar and Pompey clearly lay beneath Catullus’ coupling of the two as socer generque at carm. 29.24 (usually dated to late 55 or early 54).Footnote 76 More to the point, we have seen that the allegations of Mucia's liaison(s) were current in 54, and circulating gossip judged them (and Pompey's sensitivity on the subject) to have cost her second husband dearly.Footnote 77
Linking this scuttlebutt to the nativity of any particular child of Pompey might seem too adventurous, but the fact remains that the birth of Pompeia possibly fell in 70 or 69.Footnote 78 I would suggest that the apparent aphorism has a close link to the body of the epigram; it was not intended to stand apart.Footnote 79
If it was Catullus’ hope to seed doubts about the paternity of Pompey's children, there is no evidence that the idea gained any traction. Nor was the shaming of Mucia ultimately successful.Footnote 80 She lived on to be regarded, particularly as Sextus’ mother, as something of a senior stateswoman.Footnote 81 And her stature outlived her sons by Pompey – and saved another. We may close with Dio's report (51.2.5) that after Actium, ‘Marcus Scaurus, half-brother of Sextus [Pompeius] on his mother's side, had been condemned to death, but was released for the sake of his mother Mucia.’
Acknowledgements
Before presentation to the Catullus in the Treehouse Conference (University of Newcastle, 9/11/2018), this paper had been in local circulation for more than a decade; versions were read to colleagues at Macquarie University and the University of Sydney. I would like to acknowledge in gratitude the remarks made on those occasions and subsequently by Lea Beness, Bob Cowan, Trevor Evans, Edwin Judge, Elizabeth Minchin, Kit Morell, Leah O'Hearn, David Peterson, the late Martin Stone, Patrick Tansey, Lindsay Watson, and Kathryn Welch. Sincere thanks are also owed to the anonymous referees for both specific corrections and valuable suggestions. None of the above should be assumed to be in agreement with my particular arguments.
Appendix: duo … solebant mecilia
Some of the earliest modern readers struggled with this clause (presumably because of the unfamiliarity of the word mecilia and because solebant seems to beg, if not a clearer direct object, an elaborating infinitive); others found it a challenge to their ingenuity. For some, the uncertainty obfuscated the whole poem.Footnote 82
Uncertainty was not the product of any significant divergences found in the text's transmission, where the one variation of moment between the authoritative manuscripts is whether we have mecilia or meciliā at the beginning of v. 2 – a divergence that does not affect the argument advanced in this paper. One of our earliest surviving manuscripts, the Germanensis Parisinus 14137 or Codex Sangermanensis (G), dating to 1375, offers a stroke above the a (meciliā) thus rendering the word an accusative, meciliam, the direct object of solebant. That cue has been followed in many subsequent editions.Footnote 83
It is, rather, editorial speculation with regard to the reading of mecilia that has muddied the water.Footnote 84 Taking a cue from the last word of the poem (a reference to adultery), a number of variations on moechus and moechor/moechari (ushering in an infinitive after all) were offered as alternatives to mecilia, allowing such interpretations as ‘there used to be two adulterers’, ‘there used to be those two adulterers – shame! (moechi illi ah)’, ‘there were two born in adultery (moechidii, playing on the Greek moichidíos)’, ‘there used to be two little adulterers (moechilli)’ and ‘two used to commit adultery (moechari).’Footnote 85 The range of occasionally bizarre submissions is worth registering here because, as has been said above, one suspects that variations on the theme had an ongoing effect – even if in some cases subliminally – on hypotheses concerning mecilia even after that word was recognized as a name.
The verb soleo struck some readers as inadequate. Emendations were suggested (sedebant and molebant were both proffered), though these suggestions found no traction – and are unnecessary. The verb is ‘knowing’, but evasive; the sentence appears to pull up short to avoid an indelicate word. Various techniques were available for such a rhetorical manoeuvre, but Catullus eschews such a coy tactic as aposiopesis here – though his sidestep is labelled so by Lateiner (Reference Lateiner1977) 25 [= (2007) 275].Footnote 86 There will be no disingenuous affectation that the poet qua moralizing critic cannot bring himself to continue; that would run counter to the tone of proclamation being affected, and that proclamatory resonance is very much part of the epigram (as I hope to have shown). Elliptical euphemism is sufficient, allowing the word solere to say more than it technically does, the word having long taken on the secondary meaning intended here.Footnote 87 In Plautus’ Cistellaria, one of the meretrices whose dialogue opens the play observes that the women of Sicyon resent them for obvious reasons: uiris cum suis praedicant nos solere, ‘they declare that we are accustomed (to have our way)/are familiar with their husbands’ (39).Footnote 88 Catullus’ readership was in no doubt about the carnality embraced by that euphemism of familiarity and routine.
In registering the Plautine verse, Adams acknowledges the Ablative of Association in this context, and notes also the parallel of the graffito quoted in note 7. With duo … solebant mecilia in mind (if that is the correct reading of the text), we might ask: did such an ablative require the preposition cum? Not necessarily; see Gildersleeve and Lodge (Reference Gildersleeve and Lodge1895) 251–2 [392]. In military phrases, the troops who accompany a commander are put into the ablatiuus sociatiuus with or without cum. The question of whether the first word of line two in our epigram was in the ablative or accusative, important though it is in its own right, is as I have said above not germane to my argument. The meaning is clear.Footnote 89 The prose translation, supplied at the beginning of this article, offers neither more nor less than Catullus chose to write.
