Today we're going to be looking at Catullus, especially his epyllion, carmen 64. As I was preparing, I came across the following thoughts I had written down about the poem about four years ago while teaching an Intellectual Traditions course on ancient epic for our Honors program here at the U of U. I recall that I started writing, (I only made may way through half the poem as you'll see), after reading Roger Travis post "Epic immersion, part 1: in medias res, not in mediis rebus" over at Play the Past.
I've read Catullus 64 in several different classes, in Latin and English translation, over the years using various commentaries, so I've no doubt been influenced by them as I wrote this off the cuff. But I decided I'd go ahead and post now it as I found it useful in preparing my thoughts and it's something I'd like to finish up at some point to use in classes. I'd welcome any feedback.
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Some Thoughts on Catullus 64
First, a little background on the poet. Gaius Valerius Catullus (84-54 BCE) was the
son of a wealthy family from Verona (a town later made famous by Shakespeare’s
Romeo and Juliette). Catullus spent his
adulthood in Rome, and had probably been sent to Rome as a young man to be
educated and perhaps participate in political life. We know from his own poetry that Catullus
served on the staff of the governor of Bithynia, in northern Turkey, in 56 BCE. This sort of posting was typical of young men
of elite status seeking a political life.
While in Bithynia, Catullus may also have travelled to the Troad, home
to Troy, to perform funeral rites for his older brother, who, if we believe
Catullus’ poetry, died in a shipwreck off the coast and was commemorated by a
cenotaph on shore. We know little about
Catullus beyond what can be gleaned from his own poetry. He had a circle of poet friends, he knew
Marcus Tullius Cicero, consul of 63 and a famous orator. He wrote numerous scathing poems about Gaius
Julius Caesar and made reference to Pompey the Great as well. Catullus is perhaps most famous for a series
of poems about his beloved “Lesbia.”
These poems cover the entire arc of his relationship with Lesbia from
the happy, sunny days of new love to the dark and venomous attacks, alternating
with pleading calls for reunion, that the poet makes as their relationship
comes to an end. One of Catullus’ most
famous poems (85) captures most vividly the pain and confusion at the end of a
romance: Odi et amo. quare id faciam,
fortasse requiris? / nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior. (I hate and I love. Why would I do this, you are perhaps asking?
/ I don’t know, but I feel it happening and I am torn in all directions.) Lesbia’s identity is not known for certain,
but she can most probably be identified with Clodia Metelli, a rather notorious
woman from a prominent Roman family.
Rumors of this woman abound, Clodia was accused of committing incest
with her even more notorious brother Publius Clodius Pulcher, of numerous affairs
with young men besides Catullus, of poisoning her husband, a former consul,
Quintus Caecilius Metellus Celer.
Carmen, or Poem, 64 is the longest of Catullus’ poems and focuses on mythological themes rather than daily life as does much of his poetry. 64 is typically identified as an epyllion, not unlike Callimachus’ Hekale. It is very short, relies heavily on the erudition of the reader to convey its meaning, and focuses more on the female helper-maiden than the male hero. At the same time, the poem also partakes of a genre of wedding hymns known as epithalamia. Catullus was known as a neoteric poet (i.e. a “new poet”) during his own lifetime, which implies a connection to the Alexandrian poets of the Hellenistic period, such as Callimachus and Apollonios Rhodios.
In a very short poem, Catullus covers a great deal of epic territory, from the voyage of the Argonauts, via the deeds of the Athenian hero Theseus, to the aristeia and death of Achilles at Troy. And yet, the heroes and their deeds are cast in a thin and foreboding light, overshadowed by the female characters, especially Ariadne and the Fates.
Lines 1-21
The first 21 lines of the poem require much of the
reader. Through a series of oblique
references, Catullus covers the story of the Argonautika: the pine trees brought down from Mt. Pelion to build
the Argo with the help of Athena, the
goddess of high citadels, especially Athens, home of Theseus. Even before the reader meets the chosen Greek
heroes and the goddess helps to build the ships, the journey to Colchis is
described as completed in the first three lines. Catullus makes it very clear, in contrast to
Apollonios, that the Argo was the
first ship ever built and that the sea goddesses, the Nereids, were amazed to
see such a craft. This aitiological
framing of the Argo’s journey is in
keeping with the erudition of Alexandrian poetry. It is not until the end of this description
that we have Peleus and Thetis named, the couple who are the ostensible focus
of the poem. But just as Catullus takes
his time in coming to them, he will just as quickly put them aside.
Catullus transforms the reader’s
expectation of the marriage of Peleus and Thetis, which was traditionally
depicted as a wrestling match, with an unwilling Thetis, forced to marry a
mortal, constantly shape-shifting as only sea divinities can do! Instead, he subtly indicates Thetis’
eagerness for such a marriage by use of litotes (“Thetis did not reject a human
marriage”), the use of two negatives to make an emphatic positive. The marriage is approved of by Juppiter (the
Roman equivalent of Zeus), and again Catullus glosses over other versions of
the myth in which Juppiter/Zeus is indeed eager to marry Thetis off because of
a prophecy about the goddess, that she will give birth to a son greater than
his father. Juppiter in fact goes to
great pains to learn this prophecy; he compels Prometheus to tell him by
chaining the Titan to a cliff in the Caucasus Mountains and has his eagle eat
out Prometheus liver every day. This
ominous scene was alluded to by the appearance of the eagle in Book 2 of the Argonautika as the heroes draw close to
Colchis.
Lines 22-31
Catullus does not invoke the Muses or Apollo to tell his
tale, instead his address to the early heroes stands as a substitute. And Catullus inquires of them about Thetis’
and her grandparents’ willingness to see the marriage happen. Catullus states that he will “often call
upon” the heroes, and especially upon Peleus, in the course of his poem. In the end however, he does no such thing, we
see very little of heroic action.
Lines 32-49
The day of the happy wedding arrives and all the people of
Thessaly, Peleus’ home territory, abandon their homes to attend the nuptials at
Pharsalus (we shall revisit Pharsalus in Lucan’s epic when Caesar defeats
Pompey). The guests are joyful and bring
gifts, but again Catullus’ language gives the reader pause. The people have “deserted” their homes, the
fields have been abandoned, the plow-oxen and farm implements fall into disuse
and even rust! On the other hand,
everything is gleaming gold, silver and ivory at Peleus’ palace. Particularly splendid is Thetis’ marriage bed, cloaked in deep purple
elaborately embroidered with the “brave deeds of heroes.” The allusion to Jason’s cloak in the Argonautika is clear, and like Jason’s
cloak, this coverlet is depicted with scenes that subvert heroic action, but in
a much less problematic fashion.
Lines 50-264
The long ekphrastic passage describing the myth of Theseus
and Ariadne focuses especially on the hero’s abandonment of the helper-maiden,
not on the “brave deeds of heroes” as Catullus claims it will. In the Argonautika,
Jason uses the story of Ariadne to win Medea over to his side. He, however, skips over all that Catullus
includes here, focusing instead on the fact that Ariadne is recognized by the
gods with a constellation in the end.
Apollonios also problematizes his use of the Theseus-Ariadne story,
because in fact Theseus was not even born when Jason tells the story to Medea.
In fact, Medea herself will attempt to kill Theseus as a young man when he
first arrives in Athens to claim his birthright. Medea sought refuge in Athens after she had
been brought back to Greece by Jason and abandoned by him at Corinth when he
attempts to make a more suitable marriage with a Greek princess (this story is
told in the 5th century BCE tragedy Medea by Euripides). Much of
Ariadne’s emotional reaction to her abandonment is similar or parallel to
Medea’s mental anguish as she decides to help Jason and then carries out the
deeds, and will be seen again in the figure of Dido in Vergil’s Aeneid.
Lines 52-70
The first image on the
coverlet sets the reader up to sympathize with Ariadne and to find Theseus to
be an ungrateful cad. Ariadne has woken
to find Theseus sailing away with nary a glance backward; she is abandoned on
the shores of Naxos (= Dia). The focus
is on Ariadne’s eyes as they follow the ship into the distance. This repetition creates an image of the
maiden with over-large and highly sympathetic puppy-eyes. This image is enhanced by the fact that she
runs about in the shallows of the sea, trying to get as close to the escaping
ship as possible, so much so that she has be undressed by the waves. Instead of being undressed by her lover, the
waves toy with her clothing. Not only
does this image suggest Theseus’ failure as a lover, but we are first
introduced to the hero as a breaker of promises to young women, promises that
can only be for marriage or love. In the
end, Ariadne’s whole being is focused on Theseus and will result only in dire
consequences. Vergil will use this same
image of the hero leaving on a ship under the highly focused gaze of his
distraught lover. Homer’s Odyssey introduces Odysseus in a
somewhat similar scene, the hero is found sitting on the shore of an island
where he is stranded in the midst of his journey home. Here, Catullus strands a young woman in the
middle of her story.
Lines 71-85
Catullus returns to the beginning of the Theseus-Ariadne
story. Upon Theseus’ arrival on Crete
from the Athenian harbor Pireaus, Ariadne was compelled to love the hero by
Venus (= Aphrodite; Venus had a famous sanctuary on Mt. Eyrx on Sicily and was
hence known as Erycina). Theseus had
come to right a long-standing wrong.
Years before, King Minos’ son Androgeos had gone to Athens and been murdered
by the Athenians after he had won numerous athletic contests held in honor of
the goddess Athena. Thereafter, Minos
demanded that seven young men and seven young women be sent to Crete each year
to be thrown to the Minotaur, a half-man, half-bull monster that lived locked
up in a labyrinth at Knossos. Theseus,
having come to Athens to claim his birthright, volunteered to go to Crete as
one of the seven young men and bring the tribute to an end. Notice the parallels between Medea and
Ariadne, both princesses bewitched by love, Aietes and Minos, both unjust,
arrogant and cruel kings, and Jason and Theseus, heroes out to right an old
wrong by “capturing” a “farm-animal.”
Lines 86-115
Having explained Theseus’ purpose for
coming to Crete, Catullus returns to Ariadne’s emotions and the reasons for
them. Ariadne is a young unmarried
maiden in the care of her mother, but she longs for the marriage bed, she is
tossed about as if victim of a shipwreck, and she grows pale with fear as she
contemplates the dangerous task Theseus must complete. Her passion is a burning flame and she is
driven to a frenzy of desire by none other than Cupid (= Eros) and his mother
Venus, who Catullus again refers to indirectly by two cities on Cyprus, one of
the goddess’ favored islands. Theseus’
success is ensured by the gifts Ariadne gives to the gods. His heroic deed is staged for the reader by a
simile in which the monster is identified with a tree ripped out of the ground
by a tornado. Although Theseus kills the
Minotaur, he only escapes the final danger of being trapped in the labyrinth by
following a thread. Catullus expects
that the reader will again know the mythic tradition: Ariadne, instead of
offering magical aid, provides Theseus with a gift that any young woman would
have access to, a ball of yarn, to help him escape the trap of the
labyrinth.
Lines 116-130
Catullus interrupts his story to put himself back on track,
ending the flashback, but at the same time completing the connection between
the two threads of the story through a series of questions. In this praeteritio (a refusal to address
something, which is then addressed through the refusal itself) Catullus makes
it clear that Ariadne abandoned her father, mother and sister for love of
Theseus, and that they had a marriage, on which he turned his back. Switching from his own authorial voice,
Catullus then falls back on the authority of traditional voices, “they tell
us,” to convey the frenzy of Ariadne rushing from mountain top to shore as
Theseus sails farther and farther away.
Lines 131-201
It is through Ariadne’s speech that we see how the
relationship between the hero and the girl developed. Again the emphasis is on Theseus’
faithlessness and failure to uphold his promises, especially promises of
marriage. Ariadne mourns for the brother
whose death she has facilitated, despite the fact that he was a cannibalistic
monster. In fact, she instead identifies
Theseus with the monstrous. He is the
offspring of a lioness, or of one of the hazards to sailors, the Syrtes
sandbanks, Scylla with her dog-headed tentacles, or the whirlpool Charybdis,
all referenced in the Argonautika. In a twist, Ariadne offers that she would
have gone with Theseus even as a servant, that is she would have been happy to
be a prize, the thing the women at Troy most feared. Ironically, Ariadne questions why she bothers
to speak, as no one but the unhearing and unspeaking breezes can hear her, when
in fact she is nothing more than a mute, frozen image embroidered on a
coverlet. Her plea that none of these
things had happened ends with the image of Theseus as a traitorous guest,
violating the laws of guest-friendship, like Paris and Jason.
Ariadne seems to come back to her senses as she explores
three possible escapes, which she will ultimately reject. First, she asks whether she should go back to
Crete (Mt. Ida); no, she’s stuck on an island with no way to get there. Second,
will my father save me; no, I ran off with the boy who killed my brother. Finally, can I rely upon my loving husband;
no, he has abandoned me here on this empty island. There is no escape for Ariadne, and yet
before she succumbs to death she will curse Theseus, calling upon the Furies to
avenge her, to leave Theseus alone in the world as she has been left.
