Exploring Catullus and Lesbia's Relationship

The relationship between Catullus and Lesbia is one of immense variation that Catullus chooses to document in the form of poetry. It changes from a relationship of warm love, to one of uncertainty, to one of pure sorrow and disappointment. These changes can be seen through poems 51, 72, and 11.  Through it all, it seems that Catullus longs for Lesbia, but Lesbia may not return the same amount of affection.

In poem 51, it appears that Catullus and Lesbia are near the beginning of their relationship. The poem is based off of Fragment 31 by Sappho, in which she discusses how she feels when she looks at a woman. In Catullus’ poem, he chooses to change, delete, and add words in order to describe how he feels when he sees Lesbia. He tells of how “dumbness grips [his] voice”, “[his] tongue goes torpid”, and “night curtains both [his] eyes into darkness”. The darkness here may be the “blind” love that many experience when they are madly in love with someone to the point that they do not see their faults. He also warns himself against leisure, for he knows that brooding over her will only lead to “extravagant behavior”.  However, he cannot stop the inevitable as their relationship persists. Later, the “darkness” that “curtain[ed] both [his] eyes” comes back to haunt him as he opens his eyes farther into the relationship, like he begins to do in poem 72.

In poem 72, we can tell that Catullus and Lesbia have been in a relationship for a while, however it is on a downward spiral. Catullus alludes back to the beginning of their relationship when Lesbia said “that Catullus alone understood [her]” and that she “wouldn’t choose to clasp Jupiter rather than [him]”. Jupiter in the Roman world is the equivalent to Greek Zeus, the King of Gods. However, now Catullus “know[s] [her]”, meaning that he is aware of the acts she does behind closed doors and in dark alleys. So we can begin to see the Lesbia is not returning the same affection that Catullus is giving her. He begins to open his eyes and begins to forcibly “love more, but to cherish less”, for he knows that his Lesbia isn’t solitarily his.

In poem 11, we can begin to see the sorrow and disappointment from Catullus toward Lesbia. He begins with four stanzas asking Furius and Aurelius to search everywhere and “just find [his] girl, [and] deliver her this short and blunt little message”. The purpose of those lines is to show his ambiguity of the location of Lesbia. She left him and did not tell him where she was going. Although Catullus showed great affection for her, she did not return the emotion. He compares her treatment toward him as “some flower at the field’s edge, after the passing ploughshare’s cut a path through it”. He asks that she doesn’t “look for [his] passion”, showing that he is thoroughly done with the relationship.