tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5730513615909994019.post820775614468988453..comments2024-03-18T07:44:25.387+00:00Comments on Pop Classics: Top Five Roman Murder MysteriesJuliettehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00203399623895589924noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5730513615909994019.post-32391200243647545732011-12-06T10:27:56.408+00:002011-12-06T10:27:56.408+00:00Not yet, but I have a volume of it (a middle volum...Not yet, but I have a volume of it (a middle volume I think) sitting on my bookshelf waiting to be read!Juliettehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00203399623895589924noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5730513615909994019.post-24990105969644052632011-12-06T06:26:11.358+00:002011-12-06T06:26:11.358+00:00Re the ending of "Roman Blood" (spoilers...Re the ending of "Roman Blood" (spoilers ahead): The murderer got away without being punished by official justice, but he was murdered in turn just after that. The quick investigation and solving by Gordianus of this murder is a sort of coda to the novel.<br /><br />I am a big fan of Saylor's novels and other works about this time period, so I am enjoying having discovered this blog.) I wanted to ask, have you read Colleen McCullough's Masters of Rome series? There are my favorite books set on this epoch, covering the whole period 110 - 30 BC with compelling, epic storytelling and an amazing amount of background research.<br /><br />AlejandroAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5730513615909994019.post-59983116752723837182011-12-04T04:58:33.171+00:002011-12-04T04:58:33.171+00:00If it is further accepted that Catullus is more in...If it is further accepted that Catullus is more interested in immortalizing himself by writing about Clodia than in disseminating to a Roman audience mere slave-girl gossip regarding otherwise obscure figures from Brescia and Verona, then it is obvious who is the ‘mystery woman’ of Carmina 67.Gaetano Catellihttp://gallerialesbia.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5730513615909994019.post-34096994158808191742011-12-04T04:53:44.192+00:002011-12-04T04:53:44.192+00:00Re: Clodia, Catullus, and Cicero.
[I've writt...Re: Clodia, Catullus, and Cicero.<br /><br />[I've written a book on the subject, which is now being prepared for print-on-demand by Amazon.com CreateSpace. An excerpt follows. It is directed in particular at Nicklas Holzberg's article “Lesbia, the Poet, and the Two Faces of Sappho: ‘Womanufacture’ in Catullus”, PCPS 46:28-44, which article takes the position that *both* Cicero *and* Catullus were simply making it all up:]<br /><br />"Whenever possible, substitute constructions out of known entities for inferences to unknown entities." (Bertrand Russell, 1924)<br /><br />If Catullus is writing of one of Clodia Metelli’s sisters, where is the evidence that either sister has changed her name from “Claudia” to “Clodia”? <br /><br />Where is the evidence that either of her sisters is married at a time when Catullus is already old enough to begin an adulterous affair? <br /><br />Where is the evidence that Caelius has an affair with either of Clodia Metelli’s sisters?<br /><br />What is Catullus praising Cicero for, in an epigram with obvious allusions to Lesbia, if not his success in Pro Caelio? <br /><br />If Lesbia has no real-life correlate in Clodia, why does Apuleius cite her as such in defending his own use of pseudonyms for real people in his writings? <br /><br />If Lesbia bears no more than a faint resemblance to a freed slave of Catullus’s acquaintance who happens to be named “Clodia”, why does Catullus hide her real identity behind a pseudonym – yet viciously attack the likes of Caesar by his real name?<br /><br />If Cicero’s Pro Caelio is the vicious sliming of the wholly innocent widow of an esteemed colleague of the Jurists themselves, why is not Cicero run out of Rome on a rail (permanently, this time) – as any defense attorney would be in like circumstances? <br /><br />If Catullus is merely ‘riffing’ on existing literary motifs, why is he savaging friends (or their relatives), not to mention Caesar and Mamurra, by name? <br /><br />If Clodia’s Caelius did not know Catullus in Verona when both were young men, why does Catullus not give this other “Caelius” a pseudonym? <br /><br />If the second prosecutor of Caelius is a “P Clodius” other than Clodia’s brother, why does Cicero style his name as he does the name of Clodia’s brother many times in his other writings, including private correspondence?<br /><br />If Catullus’s poems hostile to Clodia are merely versifications of Cicero’s accusations in Pro Caelio, whose orations is he versifying in his other hostile poems?<br /><br />Commentators and other readers alike are free to extract from the source documents whatever meaning may make the most sense to them. It happens, though, that the most unambiguous reading is that Clodia Metelli is substantially as Cicero describes her, whatever liberties he may have taken as a defense attorney, and that she is Catullus’s Lesbia, whatever poetic liberties he may have taken. This reading best fits the documents, requires the fewest extra-documentary assumptions, and raises the fewest unanswerable questions.<br /><br />From the perspective of poetic sense, the identification of Clodia Metelli as the real-life “Lesbia” illuminates Catullus’s artistic achievement. For, if “Lesbia” is Clodia Metelli, then the “Rufus” song-poems (69 and 77), the “Caelius” song-poems (58 and 100), the “Cicero” song-poem (49), Pro Caelio itself, and – it is my strongly held thesis – the “Caecilius” song-poems (35 and 67) together form a fascinating mosaic-in-verse, with Clodia Metelli at its center. But, if Lesbia is someone else, we are left with a pile of unrelated ‘tiles’. <br /><br />Ergo, “Lesbia” is beyond (reasonable) doubt the real-life Clodia Metelli, the learned Sapphic Muse whom Catullus loved, lost, and, as a result thereof, launched them both into literary immortality. Unless Catullus were to abandon the use of a pseudonym entirely, I do not know how he could make more apparent this identification. To be sure, the scholarly consensus that this identification cannot be made without at least some reservation demonstrates that Catullus’s objective in using a pseudonym for Clodia has been successful all along. QED.Gaetano Catellihttp://gallerialesbia.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5730513615909994019.post-58196857790124636562011-12-03T19:58:33.792+00:002011-12-03T19:58:33.792+00:00Totally agree, Juliette! We'll never know the ...Totally agree, Juliette! We'll never know the real Clodia but only see her through the smear campaigns of those who stood to benefit from them and/or her downfall. I wonder, has anyone ever written the story from HER point of view...? Hmmmm.<br /><br />At any rate, I love all the books you mentioned. Steven Saylor is a remarkable novelist. I also continue to think of SILVER PIGS as Davis's best Falco book. Gritty indeed. I loved her COURSE OF HONOR though and wonder if she will break away from Falco a bit and gives us more stories like that one.Vicky Alvear Shecterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17570828339389206203noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5730513615909994019.post-19137151153552075142011-12-03T15:07:51.975+00:002011-12-03T15:07:51.975+00:00Yes, she's usually assumed to be Lesbia, that ...Yes, she's usually assumed to be Lesbia, that goes back to antiquity (I talked about it when I reviewed Counting the Stars I think). But since Catullus is writing fictionalised poetry, that's not really much of a clue to her character. Perhaps she was horrible, we don't know - but the ancient evidence is so fantastically one-sided, whether it's coming from Cicero or anyone else (usually her brother's enemies who can criticise him by criticising her), that we can never really know what the woman was actually like.Juliettehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00203399623895589924noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5730513615909994019.post-44297983414501880062011-12-03T15:00:01.464+00:002011-12-03T15:00:01.464+00:00I can't remember either if the bad guy in Roma...I can't remember either if the bad guy in <i>Roman Blood</i> gets punished, but at least Gordianus gets his client off the hook. They even form a lasting friendship that results in Gordianus getting some property later in life.<br /><br />I've always just accepted Clodia's bad reputation without really thinking about it. Cicero's certainly not the only one to smear her. And isn't she generally accepted to have been Catullus' Lesbia? She probably wasn't having it off with her brother (who I think probably <b>was</b> almost as bad as he gets painted in the sources), but she likely wasn't entirely innocent either. She gets a really bad presentation in John Maddox Roberts' SPQR series, obviously heavily flavored by Cicero.DemetriosXnoreply@blogger.com