"Walnut Boy" and the Tradition of "Fescennine Verses"

        This is one of the great, long-running controversies in classical studies.  The basic facts seem to be agreed upon by the early 20th century: the bawdy and insulting tradition of writing verses that attack one or more members of the audience have roots in rural, possibly Etruscan culture; their practice was suppressed in part because they tended to lead to violence; they persisted because they performed some important cultural functions, perhaps associated with ritual magic.  Beyond that, I leave it to your own curiosity.  A recent survey of JSTOR articles on the subject turned up these hits:

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    Horace, C. iv. 2. 49
    D. A. Slater
    The Classical Review, Vol. 23, No. 8 (Dec., 1909), pp. 252-253
    ...cheers' of a modern ovation, but also a potent charm against the evil eye.2 The same motive that prompted the soldiers to sing their Fescennine verses , led the people also to observe in their salute the number that religion (or superstition) enjoined.3 We may translate: 'And as the Emperor passes...
  • Dramatic "Satura"Free content
    B. L. Ullman
    Classical Philology, Vol. 9, No. 1 (Jan., 1914), pp. 1-23
    ...se iocularia fundentes versibus coepere, nec absoni a voce motus erant. accepta itaque res saepiusque usurpando excitata (?? 5, 6): amateurs imitated the Etruscan dancers and bandied coarse jokes made up on the spur of the moment in alternating verses...
  • Horace on the Nature of SatireFree content
    B. L. Ullman
    Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association, Vol. 48 (1917), pp. 111-132
    ...in two similar passages. In Epist. II, I, I45 ff., the history of the satirical Fescennine verses is described: Liber- tas . . . lusit amabiliter donec iam saevus apertam in rabiem coepit verti iocus et per honestas ire domos impune minax.2 In A.P. 28I f., successit vetus his comoedia non...
    Journal
  • The Present Status of the Satura QuestionFree content
    B. L. Ullman
    Studies in Philology, Vol. 17, No. 4 (Oct., 1920), pp. 379-401
    ...satura stage and not to the second stage.4' This belief grows out of the view that these two stages were not very different. The argument against this would seem to be convincing. Livy says that the professionals who put on the saturae abandoned the Fescennine -like verses (of the amateurs of...
    Folkloristic Elements in Roman Wedding Customs
    Lucy Hutchins
    The Classical Weekly, Vol. 36, No. 21 (Apr. 12, 1943), pp. 247-248
    ...employed in all the great events of life in order to drive away the evil spirits which threaten especially at those times. The ribald Fescennine verses and the throwing of nuts serve the same purpose. The bride must not step on the threshold of her new home when she enters it...
  • Tradition and Personal Achievement in Early Latin Literature
    J. H. Waszink
    Mnemosyne, Fourth Series, Vol. 13, Fasc. 1 (1960), pp. 16-33
    ...the root of Livy's much discussed account of the evolution of dramatic per- formances at Rome, a description which is now generally acknowledged as a curiously abbreviated statement of the relevant theory of Varr? x). According to this theory, a combination of the very old and very 'Roman' Fescennine verses...

    • Review
    Il Carme 61 di Catullo by Paolo Fedeli
    Review by: D. F. S. Thomson
    Phoenix, Vol. 28, No. 2 (Summer, 1974), pp. 264-266
    ...from a judgment of Eduard Norden's that what Catullus essentially does in the poem is to blend the traditional Greek epithalamium with the traditional " fescennine " badinage of an Italian wedding. Closely examin- ing Catullus's predecessors in the genre, and the literary legacies he in- herited from other sources, and...
  • Shameless Interests: The Decent Scholarship of Indecency
    Kenneth J. Reckford
    The American Journal of Philology, Vol. 117, No. 2 (Summer, 1996), pp. 311-314
    ...and powerful, and we were right. To lose that fascination is to mis- understand the past: to forget how integrally obscenity belonged to the Dionysia or the Floralia; how " Fescennine verses " graced Roman tri- umphs, and Roman weddings; and conversely, how an orator's standing might have been ruined, as...

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