Sapphic Echoes in Catullus 1–14

Abstract

This chapter argues that a pattern of Sapphic allusions in the first fourteen poems of Catullus’ poetry book constitute a hitherto neglected unity similar to that which scholarship now recognizes as a group of allusions to the Greek epigrammatist Meleager in the same Catullan corpus. This Sapphic pattern, inter alia, confirms the importance of Sappho as a model author for Catullus. The argument emerges from a close examination of Catullus’ first fourteen poems, particularly poems 2, 3, 6, 8, and 11, as well as Catullus’ epithalamial poem 62, in comparison with Sappho poem 1, her fragments 105b (Voigt), and 137, whose metrical form of Alcaics (uniquely among extant Sapphic fragments) paves the way for an investigation into the institution of ancient symposia and the theme of friendship in Greek and Roman poetry.