He says she says: From indirect speech to a voice of her own

Abstract We propose that Catullus’s literary character Lesbia derives much of her allure—evident in her long history of reception—from her characterization as indirect and enigmatic, in particular when Catullus reports what she says. Three examples from Catullus’ reception in the twentieth and twenty-first century literature are considered, each presenting a strikingly different Lesbia. We then contrast these modern interpretations that strive to give a literary character a voice of her own with Lesbia in Catullus’s poems to whom not a single line of direct speech is attributed. This observation is situated in a—partly quantitative—analysis of the overall prevalence of indirect speech and related forms of implied speech over direct speech in Catullus’ work. This analysis will expose the grammatical basis of the threat of (poetic) gossip central to Catullus’ poems. In c. 70, we identify a passage that is—due to the rudiments of a mimetic indirect discourse—sufficiently polyvalent to account for the strikingly dissimilar Lesbias encountered in the literary examples mentioned above.