Catullus’ famous poem on the death of Lesbia's pet sparrow needs no introduction. Ostensibly, it begins as a light-hearted epitaph for a pet bird but ends with a twist in the last two lines in which the poet seems to be more concerned with the effect on his beloved of the sparrow's death than with the death itself. The parodic character of the epitaph is obvious to a reader familiar with the Hellenistic tradition of laments for animals, which are usually non-serious in character.Footnote ² In addition, even before the final twist, when it becomes clear that the poet's grief for the bird is not to be taken too seriously, the parody is signalled by the incongruous application to a small bird of sentiments more appropriate to a human subject: the hyperbolic address to the Veneres Cupidinesque as chief mourners; elements borrowed from the epitaphic tradition, such as the enumeration of the deceased's virtues or the description of the bird's journey to the underworld and the curse on the shades.Footnote ³ In the last two or three lines of the poem, commentators have frequently noted a change from mock pathos to genuine love and distress at the suffering of the puella, some even regarding the whole piece as essentially a love poem (the chief mourners are, after all, Veneres Cupidinesque).Footnote ⁴ But this perceived alteration of tone seems awkward: moreover, if lines 17 and 18 are a serious expression of love, why does the most overblown language in the poem occur in these very lines?

I would argue that the piece as a whole is ironic and that this is signalled by the use of language in the last three lines. Especially striking here is the accumulation of diminutives – miselle, puellae, turgiduli and ocelli. The diminutive form puella is not, of course, remarkable in itself (the positive puera being obsolete), but it retained affective resonances (erotic or pathetic depending on the context)Footnote ⁵ and so contributes to the overall effect. More importantly, two out of the four diminutives noted above (miselle and turgiduli) are adjectives – a form used much less frequently than diminutive nouns. In Augustan poetry, they are extremely rare, which is why Dido's wish for a paruulus Aeneas (Verg. Aen. 4.328) has an especially emotive impact.Footnote ⁶ Even in Catullus, whose frequent use of diminutives in the polymetrics and the longer poems is well established, diminutive adjectives are considerably less common than diminutive nouns (24 different adjectives used 30 times as opposed to 44 nouns used 79 times).Footnote ⁷ Moreover, not only are diminutive epithets more striking because of their comparative rarity, but their use, in comparison with diminutive nouns, is significant in another respect. Often the nouns have lost their diminutive force, replacing, or becoming more common than, the corresponding positive form (e.g., flagellum ‘whip’ or catulus ‘pup’ ousted their positive forms flagrum and catus): in other words, the diminutive form has no particular affective connotations. In the case of diminutive adjectives, by contrast, there is no semantic difference between the diminutive and positive form, so that if the former is preferred, it is usually to produce some special effect. In Catullus, this effect is frequently one of irony or sarcasm, for instance mocking someone suffering from the pangs of love (very commonly), expressing mock sympathy, and so on.

Catullus’ use of misellus is a good example. Ronconi points out that the word for ‘poor, unhappy’ in serious contexts in Catullus’ time was miser, and he cites Cicero's Tusculan Disputations:Footnote ⁸

Catullus also uses miser in serious contexts, for instance in the poem on the death of his brother:

or of Ariadne, abandoned by Theseus (64.57), or several times of his own hopeless lovesick state, for example:

Compare 8.1 (miser Catulle, desinas ineptire), or 76.17–20:

Misellus, on the other hand, which Catullus uses five times, always seems to have some sort of ironic force, whether expressing mock sympathy or gently ridiculing the misery of the lover.Footnote ¹⁰ For instance, poem 40 is directed against a rival lover:

Here we could describe the tone as ‘mock sympathetic’,Footnote ¹¹ and the same applies in the obscene 80, an attack on Gellius for fellatio which makes use of mock high style and in which the description of Gellius’ male lover Victor as misellus fits in with the sarcastic, invective tone:

In two poems misellus is used to gently laugh at erotic passion (contrast 8, 50 and 76 where miser is used, and the same emotion – on the part of Catullus himself – is treated much more seriously). The first is 35:

In this poem, Catullus begs a fellow poet Caecilius to visit, since a mutual friend has criticisms to make of his unfinished poem on Cybele. He seems to be detained by a girl who is madly in love with him: since she fell in love when she read his poem, surely she must be a better literary critic than Sappho herself. A possible explanation of the pieceFootnote ¹² is that Caecilius thinks his poem finished and is ready to publish it; the girl is his excuse for not visiting; Catullus urges his friend to come because he has some suggestions which would improve the work. He pardons the girl and her pretensions as a literary critic because the poem is good, but it needs more work. All the allusions to the girl are ironic or overblown: she appreciates poetry better than Sappho herself; the description of her love is presented in hyperbolic terms – her constant entreaties to Caecilius to stay, and the description of her lovesick state with its echoes of Comedy.Footnote ¹³ In this context misella is mock pathetic rather than expressing real sympathy for a lover's condition.

Similarly, in the Septimius and Acme poem, the description of the lover Septimius as misellus is part of the generally light-hearted treatment of the two lovers:

To return to Catullus 3, at line 16 miselle carries the implication that the poet's expression of grief is ironic, reinforcing the parodic nature of the epitaph, but it also effects a bridge to the final two lines, where the appearance of two further diminutives in 18 continues the tone of parody. Although ocellus (17) is commonly used by Catullus with serious emotional overtones (affectionate, for instance of Sirmio (31.2) or his dear friend Calvus (50.19); pathetic (64.60 of Ariadne), it can also be parodic, as in the case of the lover Septimius, where its effect is one of mock pathos (in line 11 Acme kisses the ebrios ocellos of her lover whom she addresses as Septimillus). I suggest that ocellus produces a similar effect in poem 3.

But the ironic tone for which I have been arguing is established above all by the use of the diminutive adjective turgidulus (a word which draws particular attention to itself by its paradoxical nature, since turgidus suggests augmentation rather than the diminution implied by the termination -ulus).Footnote ¹⁴ Most translators, having difficulties finding an English equivalent, have tended to ignore the nuances of the word, treating it as merely equivalent to turgidus. Footnote ¹⁵ Quinn and Fordyce ad loc. both comment on the affective use of diminutives (without distinguishing between substantives and adjectives) but the former's ‘a little swollen’ fails to capture the tone of the epithet here, while the latter, though pointing, in an excellent note, to the various emotional overtones that can be conveyed by diminutives (including affection, amusement or contempt), does not specify which of these is relevant in this case.Footnote ¹⁶

Turgidulus certainly has an emotional colour, but in view of the fact that, as mentioned above, Catullus tends to use diminutive adjectives with ironic force, the emotion is not to be taken seriously. (In my translation above I've tried ‘are all swollen’, to suggest mock pathos).

To summarise, the accumulation of emotive language from 14 onwards, the final line containing two diminutives including an ironically charged diminutive adjective, produces a hyperbolic, parodic tone which continues to the end of the poem. Lines 17–18 are best taken as an expression of pseudo-sympathy rather than an expression of genuine concern for Lesbia's grieving condition.Footnote ¹⁷

Given this premise, the question arises, at whose expense is the irony in the last two lines? Is Catullus parodying his own persona as lover, in a sorry state because his poor girl is overwhelmed by tears? Or is the satire directed rather towards Lesbia herself and her unrestrained grieving for her pet?

The second of these hypotheses gains support in the light of a tendency found in both Greek and Roman writers to pillory those who are overly sentimental towards pets (both pet animals and pet slaves).Footnote ¹⁸ This is part of a more general disapprobation, in particular on the part of the Stoics, of extravagant emotional display, especially of grief, which should according to Seneca be restrained in public and kept within bounds even in private.Footnote ¹⁹ In respect of pets, many examples could be cited,Footnote ²⁰ but two poems of Martial are worth looking at.

The poet justifies his love for a pet slave, Babyrtas (a sufferer from a physical and/or intellectual abnormality),Footnote ²² by listing other monstra – both human and animal – in which their owners take pleasure, but with less good reason. The keeping of exotic pets was often attacked as symbolic of luxury and extravagance,Footnote ²³ but in this epigram the mockery is directed more at the owners’ excessive and unexpected love for their unusual pets: this is emphasised by a succession of verbs (gaudet, fruitur, flagrat amore, amat, delectat, tibi . . . placet). The incongruity between the abnormality of the pets and their owner's fondness for them is further emphasised by giving nearly all the delicia an epithet describing striking and/or unpleasant characteristics – the long ears of the fennec (1), the ugliness of the ape (4), the viciousness of the mongoose (5), and so on – and is underscored by the juxtaposition monstra placere in the last line. By contrast, although Martial's pet is a monstrum, he is agreeable both facially and temperamentally (blanda Cupidinei . . . ora).

Martial's ridicule is aimed, however, not only at owners whose fierce attachment to their pets cannot be justified by any attractive qualities possessed by these pets, but as well, he targets excessive love for pets per se. This is clearly the case with the lapdog (3) and the nightingale (8), neither of which is intrinsically unworthy of their owner's affection. Here, the point must be that the owners are overly enamoured of these tiny insignificant creatures.Footnote ²⁴ Publius is said to ‘burn’ (flagrare) with love, a verb often used of strong emotions, such as anger, hatred, or human passion (OLD s.v. flagro 3). The dog, Issa, had been the subject of a eulogistic epigram (Mart. 1.109)Footnote ²⁵ in which scholars have detected a note of irony or humour.Footnote ²⁶ In the case of Telesilla (8), affection for her pet is translated into disproportionate sorrow at its demise, so that she gives it a funeral monument.Footnote ²⁷

Another epigram in which excessive grief for a pet – in this case a pet slave – plays a part is Mart. 5.37:

The epigram, this time on a pet slave, is a good example of the idea that it is inappropriate to mourn too much for the death of a pet. The poem begins with a eulogy of the dead delicium Erotion, the exaggerated character of which leads a surprise interlocutor, Paetus, to reproach the poet for his immoderate display of distress at the death of a mere uernula. He himself has been able to go on living (21) despite his loss of an exemplary wife. The unrestrained nature of Paetus’ mourning (line 19)Footnote ²⁸ prepares for a typically Martialian surprise twist, in which the poet points out sarcastically that Paetus certainly bears up bravely, having benefited financially from his wife's death. Obviously, Paetus’ avowal of restraint is, in the context of the poem, a means of setting him up for the final revelation of his hypocrisy. But it has its genesis in the idea that grief, especially for a slave pet (uernula) is not something to be indulged in to excess.

In Catullus 3, the poet, I suggest, is mocking Lesbia's immoderate show of grief for her pet bird.Footnote ²⁹ The strength of her attachment to the bird was suggested earlier in the piece by plus illa oculis suis amabat (5), an expression used elsewhere by Catullus of strong passion, and, it will be noted, in contexts which are light-hearted or parodic: for instance, at 14.1 ni te plus oculis meis amarem / iucundissime Calue the tone is jocular and when the poet uses it of his love for Lesbia in 82 it is in the context of a complex word-play.Footnote ³⁰

One further point. The keeping of pet animals was associated in particular with children, especially females.Footnote ³¹ Similarly, weeping over a pet was regarded as a childish thing: Valerius Maximus (1.5.3) for instance, relates the story of little Tertia, mourning the death of her pet puppy Persa, whose response to her father Paulus’ inquiry as to her sorrowing state produced the memorable ‘Persa has died’, an omen of her father's defeat of King Perses. Even more pertinent is one of the Hellenistic epigrams on the deaths of pets, where the little girl Myro sheds girlish tearsFootnote ³² for her pet locust and cicada:

In poem 3, then, Catullus could be hinting that Lesbia is not merely displaying immoderate distress but in so doing, is behaving in a childlike, girlish manner. Lines 6–7 (suamque norat / ipsam tam bene quam puella matrem: ‘and he knew his mistress as well a girl knows her own mother’) might carry the suggestion that, like a young unmarried girl, Lesbia's main relationship of intimacy is with her mother rather than a husband or lover. This would tie in with the depiction of Lesbia in poem 2 as a young girl playing with her pet.Footnote ³⁴

In this piece, Catullus suggests that Lesbia's games with her bird are a solace for the as yet unfulfilled passion that she feels for him (et solaciolum sui doloris, / credo, ut tum grauis acquiescat ardor 7–8). But the poet's confidence is undermined by the use of credo,Footnote ³⁵ which I would see as ironical:Footnote ³⁶ in other words, ‘I'd like to think that Lesbia's playing with her pet is compensation for a strong desire for me, but this is mere wish-fulfilment; if only I could relieve my own passion so easily.’ The poet has good reason, then, to resent, or even feel jealous, of Lesbia's affection for the bird, so it no wonder that when it dies his sorrow is insincere. But the mock-serious lament in 3 could also be seen as a parody of Lesbia's own feelings for the sparrow, which, whether rightly, or in a piece of self-deception, Catullus regards as a displacement onto an unworthy object of feelings which Lesbia ought to be entertaining for himself. In other words: here you are, Lesbia, this is the sort of lament you would have me write, but for goodness’ sake stop behaving like a child weeping so much for a mere bird. Such extreme affection is more appropriately bestowed on your lover!