Sermo and Techne: Septimius and Acme in Catullus c. 45

Heather A. Woods (University of Minnesota)

Poem 45 of Catullus presents a vignette of two lovers exchanging vows while Cupid judges the scene from nearby. Though the story of Acme and Septimius is variously considered wholly heartfelt, somewhat ironic, or completely artificial, its presentation is universally regarded as masterful because of the balance and complexity achieved in so short a poem. In fact, Catullus is able to introduce a great deal of detail in a very concise text, with the result that this 26-line poem resembles a highly-crafted miniature—richly detailed and completely contained within a small frame.

In this paper I will integrate Singleton’s cogent identification of the form as amoebic based on its balance, symmetry and the responsion between two contestants (the lovers) that is adjudicated by a third party (in his analysis, Amor)(1) with the complementary contrasts between the characters that critics have long noticed. By doing so, I will show that poem 45 is concerned with the melding of two disparate literary cultures and that the contrasts between the words and behavior of the two amatory “contestants,” Septimius and Acme, are present not just to distinguish them from one another, but in fact to characterize them as two distinct elements of Neoteric poetics. The expansive worldview and powerful rhetoric of the Roman tradition are presented through the characterization of Septimius, and the appealingly delicate and more individual forms of Greek verse, particularly those employed by the Hellenistic poets is presented through the depiction of Acme. Septimius (like the poet’s native Latin language and culture) is portrayed as honest and straightforward, and his affection for Acme (the Greek poetic aesthetic) is clear. Acme, on the other hand, is the height (as her name perhaps is meant to suggest) of grace and delicacy, exotic and soothing. By presenting these two literary and cultural aethetics in the carefully controlled format of the amoebic song, they can be seen to complement one another without the “bombast” of one or the calculated delicacy of the other remaining dominant—a perfect Neoteric balance.