Response to Newman Alma Mazer

2/28/02

CLAS 114

Newman’s exploration of the character of Agathon takes an effective three lens approach in deciding whether he is seen as laughable or honorable. By observing him through the comic lens of Aristophanes, the personal lens of Symposium’s Aristophanes, and Plato the author’s view, she creates a balanced and well-supported analysis of the reaction to Agathon by his contemporaries. In order to do so, she also looks at the institution of homoeroticism on the whole, and diverges from my opinion in that she believes the Aristophanes in Symposium is making a satirical speech as opposed to an honest one. This debate of whether homoeroticism was seen as laughable or noble brings to mind the elusive nature of Catullus and his poems regarding Iuventius and other aspects of male-male relationships.

In Poem 48, Catullus writes: "If someone would let me keep on kissing/ your honeysweet eyes, Iuventius,/ I’d keep kissing up to three hundred thousand,/ and never feel close to satiety..." (Bing and Cohen, 207). This poem is startlingly close to Poem 5, in which Catullus also demands thousands of kisses, with the noteworthy difference being that one was addressed to Lesbia. Because Lesbia seems to be the focal point of Catullus’ affection, what was the meaning of the similarity in Poem 48? As he was a master of constructing and presenting himself, he makes his work challenging to confidently interpret, not unlike his predecessor Aristophanes. Was the similar construction of Poem 48 to Poem 5 indicative of an equal appreciation for love within heterosexual and homosexual spheres, or was it in fact ironic, perhaps to show either complete sexual insatiability on his part or to show his feelings for Lesbia could in fact be easily transferred onto any passive partner?

Catullus’ Poem 16 also reveals a less tolerant attitude: he aggressively asserts that he will demand two of the most humbling sexual acts, irrumare and pedicare, because Furius and Aurelius have attacked his masculinity based on his love poetry. This coarse language is remarkably similar to that of Aristophanes’ Kinsman, who delights in making crude jokes that Agathon should allow him to perform anal sex. As Newman highlights the different portrayals of Agathon through different filters, we can see he, and by extension homoeroticism, is fraught with contradictions and inconsistencies. In the same way, Catullus affirms these inconsistencies by exposing both a vulnerable side when writing to Iuventius, and a harsh, defensive one when he feels his masculinity is being attacked. Newman does an excellent job of raising the issue that homoeroticism was unmanly and laughable to an average Greek citizen, yet also that the upper classes did not subscribe so thoroughly to those stereotypes. My paper, Newman’s, and the poems of Catullus all highlight the difficulty in gauging people’s reactions to homoeroticism, which have never been completely clear or concordant with one another, and likely will continue to remain a point of confusion.