Ancient
Weddings
by Jennifer
Goodall Powers, SUNY Albany
Original text
© 1997 Jennifer Goodall Powers
Catullus and His
Wedding Songs
Carmen
62: A Marriage Hymn
While the pseudo-epithalamium,
Carmen 62, was not intended to be sung at a wedding, it is a
dramatic choral ode that was sung back and forth between a chorus
of maidens and a chorus of boys. It is very different from Carmen
61 in its lack of names, specifics and marital priorities. There
is no reference, for instance, to the begetting of children.
Instead, Catullus presents an old-fashioned view of marriage.
He does identify
parts of the wedding ceremony, though not as comprehensively
as in Carmen 61. He mentions the meal, "iam pinguis linguere
mensas" (3) and the songs to Hymen, "iam dicetur
hymenaeus" (4). The maidens also sing about the ritual
of ripping the bride from her mother's arms. The boys in the
poem in turn sing about the betrothal process:
qui
desponsa tua firmes conuibia flamma,
quae pepigere viri, pepigerunt ante parentes (27-8).
The subjects of
the respective songs show the contrasting priorities of the girls
and boys as they face marriage: the girls view marriage as the
amputation of one life, whereas the boys view marriage as a contract
between men.
Both choruses emphasize
the importance of the age of the bride, but again, the separate
perspectives are clear. The maidens compare the maiden bride
to a flower that is beautiful only until she is married. Once
married, though, she is no longer desirable, according to the
maiden chorus. The boys, on the other hand, compare the bride
to a vine that is ignored on its own and only acknowledged when
connected to an elm husband.
This poem does not
discuss the hope that the couple will have children, as Carmen
61 does. Instead, it looks backwards at the bride's parents.
Supporting tradition, the boys advise the bride to accept whomever
her parents have chosen for her to marry.
The maidens' attitude
towards marriage in this poem, and possibly that of Junia in
Carmen 61, seems to be one of reluctance and dread. Unlike the
girls who attended Sappho's school, these Roman girls were not
formally (emotionally) prepared to be snatched from their homes
and forced into a new life. The boys, on the other hand, seem
to relish the prospective power they will have over their brides.
This dichotomy is
clear in the two passages about the age of the bride. The maidens
discuss how a girl is cherished and desirable only until she
is ripped away by sharp nails when everyone she knows and loves
will reject her. Meanwhile, the boys see an unmarried girl as
something isolated and ignored until she is married, at which
time her husband and even her father will cherish her. Unlike
Sappho, who probably knew about the emotional turmoil of marriage
for girls from first hand experience, Catullus was male and never
even married. So he could not have truly known what it was like
to be a bride. And yet, he did know what it was like to give
up his entire life for a loved one.
