Catullus, Tibullus, and Propertius/Chapter 5
CHAPTER V.
HYMEN, O HYMENÆE!
Catullus has been presented up to this point rather as the writer of passionate love-verses to Lesbia, or vers de société to his friends, literary or light, as the case might be. There are yet two other and distinct aspects of his Muse. That which he borrowed from the Alexandrian school of poetry will demand the full consideration of another chapter; but in the present it will suffice to give some account of his famous epithalamia, the models of like composition for all time, and the loci classici of the ceremonial of Roman marriages, as well as exquisite pictures of the realisation of mutual affection. It has been seen how fully, notwithstanding his own blighted hopes, Catullus was able to conceive the life-bond between his friend Calvus and his helpmeet Quinctilia. A longer and more lively picture presents the ecstasy of Acme and Septimius in lines and words that seem to burn. The two doting lovers plight vows, and compare omens, and interchange embraces and kisses that inspire with passion the poet's hendecasyllables. The conclusion of the piece is all we can quote, and is given from a translation by the author of 'Lorna Doone,' but it may serve to show that Catullus was capable of picturing and conceiving the amount of devotion which his nuptial songs connect with happy and like-minded unions:—
Hand in hand on love's career,
Heart to heart is true and dear.
Dotingly Septimius fond
Prizes Acme far beyond
All the realms of east and west—
Acme to Septimius true,
Keeps for him his only due,
Pet delights and loving jest.
Who hath known a happier pair,
Or a honeymoon so fair?"
One image from the rest of the poem cannot pass unnoticed—that of Acme bending back her head in Septimius's embrace, to kiss with rosy mouth what Mr Blackmore translates "eyes with passion's wine opprest;" but the whole piece deserves to the full the unstinted praise it has met with from critics and copyists.
The Epithalamium of Julia and Manlius, however, is a poem of more considerable proportions; and at the same time that it teems with poetic beauties, handles its subject with such skill and ritual knowledge as to supply a correct programme of the marriage ceremonial among the Romans. Strictly speaking, it is not so much a nuptial ode or hymn in the sense in which the playmates of Helen serenade her in Theocritus, as a series of pictures of the bridal procession and rites, from end to end. The subjects of this poem were a scion of the ancient patrician house of the Torquati, Lucius Manlius Torquatus, a great friend and patron of our poet, and Vinia, or Julia Aurunculeia, one of whose two names seems to have been adoptive, and as to whom the poet's silence seems to imply that her bridegroom's rank was enough to dignify both. It was not so long afterwards that Manlius sought our poet's assistance or solace in the shape of an elegy (see Poem lxviii.) on her untimely death; but in the present instance his services are taxed to do honour to her wedding: and it may be interesting to accompany him through the dioramic description which his stanzas illustrate. The poem opens with an invocation to Hymen, child of Urania, dwelling in his mother's Helicon, bidding him wreathe his brows with sweet marjoram or amaracus, fling round him a flame-coloured scarf, and bind saffron sandals to his feet, in token of going forth upon his proper function and errand. Other accompaniments of his progress are to be song, and dance, and pine-torch,—each of them appropriate in the evening fetching-home of the bride from her father's house; and his interest is bespoken in one who is fair, favoured, and fascinating as Ida's queen, when she condescended to the judgment of Paris:—
Flourishing on Asian ground,
Thick with blossoms overspread,
By the Hamadryads fed,
For their sport, with honey-dew—
All so sweet is she to view."
It is this paragon, proceeds the ode, for whose sweet sake the god is besought to leave awhile his native grottos and pools, and lend his aid in binding soul to soul to her husband—yea, closer than clasping ivy twines meshy tendrils round its naked elm. To welcome her too, as well as to invite Hymenæus to his wonted office with the readier alacrity, are bidden the blameless maidens of the bride's train, with a series of inducements adapted to bespeak their sympathy—his interest in happy nuptials, his blessing so essential to the transfer of the maiden from one home and name to another, his influence on the prospects of an honoured progeny; and strong language is used, in vv. 71-75, of such nations as ignore the rites and ordinances of marriage.
And now the bride is bidden to come forth. The day is waning; the torch-flakes flicker bright in the gloaming; there is no time for tears of maidenly reluctance; the hour is at hand:—
No woman lovelier than thou,
Aurunculeia, shall behold
The day all panoplied in gold,
And rosy light uplift his head
Above the shimmering ocean's bed!
With flowers of every hue inwrought,
Stands peerless forth, with drooping brow,
The hyacinth, so standest thou!
Come, bride, come forth! No more delay!
The day is hurrying fast away!"
Then follow encouragements to the bride to take the decisive step over the threshold, in the shape of substantial guarantees of her bridegroom's loyalty; and of course the elm and the ivy are pressed, for not the first time, into such service. More novel, save that the text of Catullus is here so corrupt that commentators have been left to patch it as they best may for coherence, is the stanza to the bridal couch. All that Catullus has been allowed by the manuscripts to tell us is that its feet were of ivory, which is very appropriate; but if the reader's mind is enlisted in the question of upholstery, it may be interested to know that collateral information enables one critic to surmise that the hangings were of silver-purple, and the timbers of the bedstead from Indian forests. But anon come the boys with the torches. Here is the veil or scarf of flame-colour, or deep brilliant yellow, capacious enough, as we learn, to shroud the bride from head to foot, worn over the head during the ceremony, and retained so till she was unveiled by her husband. Coincidently the link-bearers are chanting the hymenæal song, and at intervals, especially near the bridegroom's door, the rude Fescennine banter is repeated; whilst the bride-groom, according to custom, flings nuts to the lads in attendance, much as at a Greek marriage it was customary to fling showers of sweetmeats. The so-called Fescennine jests were doubtless as broad as the occasion would suggest to a lively and joke-loving nation; and another part of the ceremonial at this point, as it would seem from Catullus, though some have argued that it belonged rather to the marriage-feast, was the popular song "Talassius" or "Talassio," said to have had its origin in an incident of the "Rape of the Sabine Women." Catullus represents the choruses at this point as instilling into the bride by the way all manner of good advice as to wifely duty and obedience, and auguring for her, if she takes their advice, a sure rule in the home which she goes to share. If she has tact, it will own her sway—
With loitering step and trembling knee,
And palsied head, that, ever bent,
To all, in all things, nods assent."
In other words, a hint is given her that, though the bridegroom be the head of the house, she will be herself to blame if she be not the neck.
As the poem proceeds, another interesting ceremonial, which is attested by collateral information, is set graphically before the reader. Traditionally connected with the same legend of the carrying off of the Sabine women, but most probably arising out of a cautious avoidance of evil omens through a chance stumble on the threshold, was a custom that on reaching the bridegroom's door, the posts of which were wreathed in flowers and anointed with oil for her reception, the bride should be carried over the step by the pronubi—attendants or friends of the groom, who must be "husbands of one wife." This is expressed as follows in Theodore Martin's happy transcript of the passage of Catullus:—
Lift lightly o'er the threshold now!
Fair omen this! And pass between
The lintel-post of polished sheen!
Hail, Hymen! Hymenæus, hail!
Hail, Hymen, Hymenæus!
On Tyrian-tinctured coverlet—
His eyes upon the threshold bent.
And all his soul on thee intent!
Hail, Hymen! Hymenæus, hail!
Hail, Hymen, Hymenæus!"
By-and-by, one of the three prætexta-clad boys, who had escorted the bride from her father's home to her husband's, is bidden to let go the round arm he has been supporting; the blameless matrons (pronubæ), of like qualification as their male counterparts, conduct the bride to the nuptial-couch in the atrium, and now there is no let or hindrance to the bride-groom's coming. Catullus has so wrought his bridal ode, that it culminates in stanzas of singular beauty and spirit. The bride, in her nuptial-chamber, is represented with a countenance like white parthenice (which one critic[1] suggests may be the camomile blossom) or yellow poppy for beauty. And the bride-groom, of course, is worthy of her; and both worthy of his noble race, as well as meet to hand it on. The natural wishes follow:—
Should be left ungraced by them,
To transmit its fame unshorn
Down through ages yet unborn."
The next lines of the original are so prettily turned by Mr Cranstoun, that we forbear for the nonce to tax the charming version of Martin:—
From his mother's bosom slip
Forth his tender hands, and smile
Sweetly on his sire the while
With tiny half-oped lip.
In his infant features see,
And may every stranger trace,
Clearly graven on his face,
His mother's chastity."
Of parallels and imitations of this happy thought and aspiration, there is abundant choice. Theodore Martin's taste selects a graceful and expanded fancy of Herrick from his "Hesperides;" while Dunlop, in his 'History of Roman Literature,' quotes the following almost literal reproduction out of an epithalamium on the marriage of Lord Spencer by Sir William Jones, who pronounced Catullus's picture worthy the pencil of Domenichino:—
Soon may a young Torquatus rise,
Who, hanging on his mother's breast,
To his known sire shall turn his eyes.
Outstretch his infant arms awhile,
Half-ope his little lips and smile."[2]
The poem concludes with a prayer that mother and child may realise the fame and virtues of Penelope and Telemachus, and well deserves the credit it has ever enjoyed as a model in its kind.
Of the second of Catullus's Nuptial Songs—an hexameter poem in amœbæan or responsive strophes and antistrophes, supposed to be sung by the choirs of youths and maidens who attended the nuptials, and whom, in the former hymn, the poet had been exhorting to their duties, whereas here they come in turn to their proper function—no really trustworthy history is to be given, though one or two commentators propound that it was a sort of brief for the choruses, written to order on the same occasion for which the poet had written, on his own account, the former nuptial hymn. But the totally different style and structure forbid the probability of this, although both are remarkable poems of their kind. This one, certainly, has a ringing freshness about it, and seems to cleave the shades of nightfall with a réveillé singularly rememberable. The youths of the bridegroom's company have left him at the rise of the evening star, and gone forth for the hymenæal chant from the tables at which they have been feasting. They recognise the bride's approach as a signal to strike up the hymenæal. Hereupon the maidens who have accompanied the bride, espying the male chorus, enter on a rivalry in argument and song as to the merits of Hesperus, whom they note as he shows his evening fires over Œta—a sight which seems to have a connection with some myth as to the love of Hesper for a youth named Hymenæus localised at Œta, as the story of Diana and Endymion was at Latmos, to which Virgil alludes in his eighth eclogue. Both bevies gird themselves for a lively encounter of words, from their diverse points of view. First sing the virgins:—
That canst from mother's arms her child untwine?
From mother's arms a clinging daughter part,
To dower a headstrong bridegroom's eager heart?
Wrong like to this do captured cities know?
Ho! Hymen, Hymen! Hymenæus, ho!"—D.
The band of youths reply in an antistrophe which negatives the averment of the maidens:—
Whose flame still crowns true lovers' unity;
The troth that parents first, then lovers plight,
Nor deem complete till thou illum'st the night?
What hour more blissful do the gods bestow?
Hail! Hymen, Hymen! Hymenæus, ho!"—D.
To judge of the next plea of the chorus of maidens by the fragmentary lines which remain of the original, it took the grave form of a charge of abduction against the incriminated evening star. If he were not a principal in the felonious act, at least he winked at it, when it was the express vocation of his rising to prevent, by publicity, all such irregular proceedings. But now the youths wax bold in their retort, and wickedly insinuate that the fair combatants are not really so very wroth with Hesper for his slackness. After a couplet which seems to imply, though its sense is obscure and ambiguous, that the sort of thieves whom these maidens revile, and whose ill name is not confined to Roman literature (for in the Russian songs, as we learn from Mr Ralston's entertaining volumes, the bridegroom is familiarly regarded as the "enemy," "that evil-thief," and "the Tartar"), speedily find their offences condoned, and are received into favour, they add a pretty plain charge against the complainants that—
Yet what they chide they in their souls desire."
This is such a home-thrust that the virgins change their tactics, and adduce an argument ad misericordiam, which is one of the most admired passages of Catullus, on the score of a simile often imitated from it. The following version will be found tolerably literal:—
Crushed by no ploughshare, to no beast exposed,
By zephyrs fondled, nursed up by the rain,
With kindly sun to strengthen and sustain:
To win its sweetness lads and lasses vie:
But let that floweret wither by-and-by,
Nipped by too light a hand, it dies alone;
Its lover lads and lasses all are flown!
E'en as that flower is lovely maiden's pride,
In her pure virgin home content to bide;
A husband wins her,—and her bloom is sere,
No more to lads a charm, or lasses dear!"—D.
The last line is undoubtedly borrowed from a fragment of the Greek erotic poet, Mimmermus; and the whole passage, as Theodore Martin shows, has had its influence upon an admired canto of Spenser's 'Faery Queen' (B. ii. c. xii.)
Will the boys melt and give in, or will they show cause why they should not accept this sad showing of the mischief, for which Hymen and Hesper have the credit? Let us hear their antistrophe:—
Lifts ne'er a shoot, nor mellow grape can yield,
But bends top-heavy with its slender frame,
Till root and branch in level are the same:
Such vine, such field, in their forlorn estate
No peasants till, nor oxen cultivate.
Yet if the same vine with tall elm-tree wed,
Peasants will tend, and oxen till its bed.
So with the maid no lovers' arts engage,
She sinks unprized, unnoticed, into age;
But once let hour and man be duly found,
Her father's pride, her husband's love redound."[3]
—D.
That bird which, more than all, with clinging beak,
Kiss after kiss will pluck insatiate—
Though prone thy sex its joys in change to seek,
Was all their passion, all their love to thine:
When thou to thy enamoured breast didst fold
Thy blooming lord in ecstasy divine.
Who is my life, and to my bosom clung;
While Cupid round her fluttering, arrayed
In saffron vest, a radiance o'er her flung."
—(C. lxviii.) M.
- ↑ It may interest some to know that this was an MS. suggestion of poor Mortimer Collins, a dear lover of Catullus.
- ↑ Dunlop's Roman Literature, i. 497.
- ↑ Compare the sentiment of Waller's "Go, Lovely Rose," particularly in the third stanza:—
"Small is the worth
Of beauty from the light retired;
Bid her come forth,
Suffer herself to be desired,
And not blush so to be admired."