metre, now in another, tit for tat amid laughing and drinking'); the very fact that he explains the details
shows that he is building up the occasion for a wider public. With the verbal and political licence of his
day he directs ribald fantasies at his enemies, even Julius Caesar and his chief-of-staff: 57.6fF. 'morbosi
pariter gemelli utrique,/uno in lecticulo erudituli ambo,/non hie quam ille magis uorax adulter, / riuales
socii puellularum' ('a couple of queers, both identical, two cognoscenti in one snug sofa, each an equally
avid adulterer, partners in competing with the girlies of the town'). Caesar "was not amused but knew the
rules of the genre, and on receiving an apology asked the poet to dinner.
Catullus did not address all his poems to men. Of the dozen pieces on the lady he called Lesbia we may
begin with one that is •written without disillusionment:
Quaeris, quot mihi basiationes
tuae, Lesbia, sint satis superque.
quam magnus numerus Libyssae harenae
lasarpiciferis iacet Cyrenis
oraclum Iouis inter aestuosi
et Batti ueteris sacrum sepulcrum;
aut quam sidera multa, cum tacet nox,
furtiuos hominum uident amores:
tarn te basia multa basiare
uesano satis et super Catullo est,
quae nee pernumerare curiosi
possint nee mala fascinare lingua. (7)You ask, Lesbia, how many kissings of you are for me enough and to spare. As many as
the grains of the Libyan sand that stretch in silphium-bearing Cyrenaica between the
oracle of sweltering Jove and the hallowed tomb of old Battus, or as many as the stars
that when night is hushed look on the stealthy loves of mortals: so many kisses are enough
and to spare for crazed Catullus to kiss you with, so that busybodies cannot count them up
or an evil tongue cast a spell on them.At a formal level this belongs to the same category as the poem to Asinius: basia is a colloquial word for
kisses, unsuited to serious literature; the repeated 'enough and to spare' keeps up the informal tone; the
pedantic formation basiationes and the mock-conventional 'silphium-bearing' or 'asafoetidiferous' are
humorously pretentious; though the poet claims to be crazed, he has not lost his sense of proportion. But
there is also a more serious note that raises the poem far above the level it professes. Sand and stars are
the tritest of models for the innumerable, but here they evoke an atmosphere that is more important than
the literal comparison: the ancient shrine in the desert heat and the dispassionate witnesses in the silent
night suggest the tranquillity that envelops the lover's passion. The last couplet adds a typically wry
assertion of self-sufficiency: if the kisses are too many to count, the gossiping tongue, like the evil eye,
will lose its power to blight. The poem has an emotional range that belies its informal manner, but unlike
the critics who write about him Catullus is content with fifty-seven words.