Behind Lesbia`s Door: Her Slave-Girls` Shocking Revelations, Catelli Gaetano

Clodia is also the object of a lifelong obsession of the greatest love poet of ancient Rome, the emotionally volatile Gaius the Puppy Catullus, whose term of endearment for his inamorata is Lesbia - an allusion to the poetess Sappho of the Isle of Lesbos. And, during the final decades of his life, the Golden Age of Roman literatures greatest writer of prose, conservative stalwart Marcus Tullius Chick-Pea Cicero, also, is preoccupied with Clodia - in his censorious (and envious) fashion.

In addition to her activities as poetess, playwright, and patroness of younger men of various talents (Austin), Clodia is involved in radical politics, via promoting the career of her youngest brother, Clodius Pretty-Boy Pulcher, an effete demagogue who is not above employing his mob of plebeian followers to influence political outcomes. According to Cicero, Clodia has enjoyed a special relationship with her pretty little brother since their youth.

Even by the standards of ancient Rome, Clodia is controversial; and the controversy continues to the present day. In contradiction to the testimonia of both Cicero and Catullus, Skinner, the leading authority on Clodia, writes: T]he Clodia of history turns out to be the direct antithesis of the Clodia of myth; and, It is hard to think of her as the victim of unruly passions; she seems, on the contrary, firmly in control of her own life.

Based upon the extant record, it does appear that Clodia is not the victim of anyone or anything. Rather, it seems that her cuckold-husband, Swifty Celer - a military commander and Consul of the Roman Empire; Catullus the febrile New Poet; the tall, temperamental russet-haired Caelius; and Cicero, the great orator and former Consul (driven into exile for a time by Clodias brother Clodius), in one way or another, are her victims.

At all events, the irreducible fact is that however much either or both of Cicero and Catullus may be exaggerating the sensational elements of Clodias conduct, no other woman of the ancient West has inspired so much rousing prose and arousing poetry, by two authors who know her personally.

Catullus begins Carmen 5, the first in which he addresses Clodia as Lesbia:

Lets live and lets love, my Lesbia / and prize the prattle of all the / prudish prunes at a penny

Alas, Catullus: Be careful what you wish for. Rusty Caelius, Catulluss boyhood friend as well as Ciceros prodigal former protege, eventually supersedes Catullus in Lesbias affections, concurrently with her husbands mysterious death. Three years later, Clodia is in the Roman Forum accusing Caelius of having attempted to poison her.