genuinely fascinated by everything Bethesda had to say. 'I've never been to Egypt myself,' he wheezed, 'but of course with all this debate and controversy of late, one has to wonder what all the fuss is about.' Even Trygonion and Catullus began to converse in fits and starts, if only because neither of them could keep his mouth shut for long. They traded barbs and competed at casting aspersions on various people in the room. They kept silent about those within earshot-the chief advantage of sitting next to them, I decided.
At length the dinner ended, or at least the first dinner of the evening; there would be more food and wine later. The time for entertainment had arrived. The guests moved to the garden, where folding chairs and couches had been placed in front of the little stage. I was happy to take my leave of Catullus and Trygonion, but the senator stayed close to Bethesda, with his courtesan following behind. Slaves continued to move among the guests, offering tidbits and delicacies to those with bottomless stomachs and making sure that no cup stayed empty for long.
The entertainment began with a mime show, one of those performances with a single unmasked actor speaking all the roles. The performer was new to Rome ('Just arrived in town,' announced Clodia, 'after spreading laughter from Cyprus to Sicily'), but the little playlets he performed were the old standards, raunchy skits about a slave talking back to his master, and a matchmaker trying to convince a husband he needs a second wife, and a doctor accidentally treating the wrong patient with a series of hilariously painful cures. The actor suggested costume changes in an instant with the barest theatrical devices-a scarf transformed him into a bashful young maiden, a hideously exaggerated bracelet made him a rich lady, a child's wooden play-sword turned him into a swaggering general.
The crowd tittered at every obscenity, groaned at the terrible puns, and roared with laughter at the climax of each skit. The actor was quite extraordinary; Clodia knew how to choose an entertainer. In the gaps between skits, Bethesda informed the old senator that mimes had originated in the streets and squares of Alexandria, where wandering actors would set down their boxes of props and put on impromptu shows for whatever coins the crowd might toss their way. That was still the only real way to see a mime, Bethesda insisted, though she supposed that the man Clodia had found was clever enough for a Roman audience.
The actor concluded his final skit to great applause. Clodia stepped onto the stage.
'And now, something very special,' she said. 'An old friend has returned from his wanderings in the East-'
'Like Odysseus?' said someone. I looked around and saw that it was the young man with the bad haircut.
'If Catullus is Odysseus, does that mean Clodia is Penelope?' said one of his friends.
'I hope not,' said another. 'You know what Odysseus did to Penelope's suitors-he crashed a party and killed them all!'
'As I was saying,' said Clodia, raising her voice above the laughter, 'an old friend is back. Wiser, one presumes; certainly older, if only by a year; and with new poems to share with us. I mean our dear friend from Verona, Gaius Valerius Catullus, whose words have touched us all.'
'And wounded a few of us!' yelled someone.
'While he was in the East, Catullus tells me, he took a journey to look at the ruins of ancient Troy. He climbed pine-covered Mount Ida, where Jupiter sat to watch the Greeks and Trojans do battle on the plain below. He saw the place where his beloved brother is buried, and performed a funeral rite. And while he was there, he saw something that few men have ever seen. He was invited to witness the secret rites at the Temple of Cybele, including the ceremony by which a man becomes a gallus in the service of the Great Mother.'
I expected to hear more lewd comments at this point, but instead a hush fell over the crowd.
'This experience, Catullus tells me, moved him to compose a poem in honor of Attis, the consort of Cybele, the lover who gave up his sex in her worship, the inspiration of all the galli since. On the eve of the Great Mother festival, what could be more appropriate than the first public recitation of this poem?'
She left the platform. Catullus took her place. His lids looked heavy, his eyes bleary and he seemed to barely avoid falling as he stepped onto the stage. I held my breath, wondering how he could possibly perform before an audience. He was too drunk, too bitter, too unsure of himself, too weak. He seemed to be thinking the same thing. For a long time he stood completely still, his shoulders slumped, staring first at his feet, then at something above the heads of the audience. Was he bemused by the giant Venus behind us, or simply gazing into space?
But when he finally opened his mouth to speak, the voice that emerged was unlike anything I had ever heard before. It was light and airy yet strangely powerful, like a glittering net thrown over the audience, like a whisper in a dream.
I have heard countless orators in the Forum, listened to many actors on the stage. Their voices are their tools, skilled at shaping utterances suitable to the occasion; words emerge at their decree like slaves suited to a particular task. But with Catullus, everything seemed reversed. The words were in control; the poem ruled the poet, and used not just his voice but his whole body for its delivery, shaping his face, gesturing with his hands, causing his feet to pace the stage all to the poem's purpose. The poem would have existed with or without the poet. His presence was merely a convenience, since he happened to have a tongue which the poem could use to deliver itself to the ears of Clodia's guests on that warm spring night in her garden on the Palatine:
'Attis sailed his swift vessel through the deep waves
And set his eager feet upon the Phrygian shore.
He entered the sunless forest, where his mind became
As dark as the dense woods around him.
Moved by madness, he picked up a sharp stone.
He sliced off his manhood. He rose up transfigured:
A woman, the blood dripping from between her legs
Giving life to the dank, pungent earth.
Attis snatched up a drum and beat it, making music
To the Great Mother and her mysteries,
Singing rapturous falsetto to the servants of Cybele:
'Come galli, all together, to the groves on the mountain.
Sea salt stings the wound-turn away from the sea.
Turn away from Venus. Rid yourselves of manhood.
Leave that loathsome sort of love behind you,
Embrace the ecstasies of unsexed passion…' '
It was a long, strange poem. At times it became a chant, and the poet a dancer, moved to sway and stamp his feet by the poem that possessed him. The audience watched and listened, spellbound.
It was the story of Attis, and the madness of Attis, which moved him on a dark night, in a dense forest, far from home, to castrate himself and consecrate his existence to the Great Mother, Cybele. Still bleeding from his wound, he summoned the followers of the goddess and led them in a wild, ecstatic procession up the slopes of Mount Ida to her temple. They sang shrill chants, beat on drums, clanged cymbals, whirled about in frenzied, delirious dances with Attis leading them, until at last they fell exhausted into a deep, dreamless sleep.
When Attis woke, his madness had passed.
He saw what he had done.
He was horrified.
He ran to the seashore and gazed at the horizon,
sorry that he had ever left his homeland.
As a boy he had been a champion of the games,
a decorated athlete, a wrestler.
With his beard he became a man of the city,
known, respected, called upon.
What was he now?
A shipwrecked soul unable ever to return to his home,
neither man nor woman,
a fragment of his former self, sterile,
miserable, terribly alone.
