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Catullus 64: The Descent of Man

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 May 2015

Phyllis Young Forsyth
Phyllis Young Forsyth*
Affiliation:
University of Waterloo
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Extract

Editors and critics of Catullus, both recent and not so recent, seem content with viewing lines 384-408 of Catullus’ sixty-fourth poem as a ‘moralizing epilogue’ which contrasts the poet’s own time with that of the Age of Heroes as represented by Peleus and Thetis, Ariadne and Theseus. For example, E. T. Merrill in his venerable school edition of Catullus comments succinctly: ‘Epilogue, commenting upon the withdrawal of divine presence from the ceremonies of men after the heroic age, on account of the impiety of the race’.

Type
Research Article
Information
Antichthon , Volume 9 , 1975 , pp. 41 - 51
Copyright
Copyright © Australasian Society for Classical Studies 1975

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References

1 Merrill, E.T. (ed.), Catullus (Cambridge, Mass., 1951), p. 161.Google Scholar

2 Fordyce, C.J. (ed.), Catullus (Oxford, 1961), p. 322.Google Scholar

3 Quinn, K. (ed.), Catullus: The Poems (London, 1970), p. 347.Google Scholar

4 Italics mine.

5 Quinn, K.Catullus: An Interpretation (London, 1972), p. 263.Google Scholar

6 Wolfe, R.J. ‘Imagery in Catullus 64’, CW 62 (1969), 299.Google Scholar

7 Boucher, J.P., ‘A propos du carmen 64 de Catulle’, REL 34 (1956), 194.Google Scholar

8 Cf. Thomson, D.F.S., ‘Aspects of unity in Catullus 64’, CJ 57 (1961), 49–57.Google Scholar

9 Waltz, R., ‘Caractère, sens et composition du poème 64 de Catulle’, REL 23 (1945), 92–109.Google Scholar

10 Klingner, F., Cutulls Peleus–Epos (SBAW, 1956).Google Scholar

11 Wilkinson, L.P., in L’influence grecque sur la poésie latine de Catulle à Ovide (Fond. Hardt: Entretiens sur l’antiquité classique, Vol. 2 [Genève, 1956]), p. 54.Google Scholar

12 Putnam, M.C.J., ‘The art of Catullus 64’, HSCP 65 (1961), 165–205.Google Scholar

13 Herrmann, L., ‘Le poème LXIV de Catulle et l’actualitè’, Latomus 26 (1967),27–34.Google Scholar

14 Kinsey, T.E., ‘Irony and structure in Catullus 64’, Latomus 24 (1965), 911–31.Google Scholar

15 Curran, L.C., ‘Catullus 64 and the heroic age’, YCS 21 (1969), 169–92.Google Scholar

16 Williams, G., Tradition and Originality in Roman Poetry (Oxford, 1968), 171–249.Google Scholar

17 Quinn (above, note 3), p. 347.

18 Kinsey (above, note 14), 921.

19 Curran (above, note 15), 185.

20 The use of succumbens in poem 64 can also have sexual overtones, as Polyxena becomes a ‘bride’ to the dead Achilles.

21 Curran (above, note 15), 189.

22 Bramble, J.C., ‘Structure and ambiguity in Catullus LXIV’, PCPhS 16 (1970), 36.Google Scholar

23 Cf. Quinn (above, note 3), p. 337.

24 Cf. Bramble (above, note 22), 22–41.

25 Merrill (above, note 1), p. 162.

26 Fordyce (above, note 2), p. 324.

27 Cf. Iliad XX 39.

28 Kinsey (above, note 14), 928.

29 Quinn (above, note 3), p. 349.

30 Kinsey (above, note 14), 928.

31 Kinsey (above, note 14), 929.

32 Quinn (above, note 3), p. 350.

33 Herrmann (above, note 13).

34 Cf. Lucretius ii 22 and Suetonius, Aug. 68.

35 Wolfe (above, note 6), 300.