SOURCE: "The Miniature Epic, No. 64" and "Some Conclusions," in Catullus: A Reader's Guide to the Poems, University Press of America, 1983, pp. 135-52, 153-61.

[Below, Small examines Catullus's most ambitious work, "Poem 64," and draws critical conclusions about the poet and his view of the role of poetry as a vehicle of self-expression, self-understanding, artistic immortality, and power "to celebrate whatever may merit praise …, to punish the wicked, to expose the inept, to defend the helpless and to retaliate upon the ungrateful."]

No. "64" is Catullus' longest poem, perhaps his latest, certainly his most ambitious. It is an epyllion or short mythological epic. The epyllion was one of the more important literary innovations of the Hellenistic age. The genre was taken up and naturalized at Rome by the New Poets as part of their reaction against historical epic in the Ennian manner. We have already had occasion to mention in Chapter Two Cinna's epyllion, the Zmyrna, which is praised in no. "95." From other sources we know of an Io by Calvus, a Glaucus by Cornificius, and a few others. Of these works only a handful of tantalizing fragments survive. Catullus' 64th poem is the earliest Latin epyllion which has come down to us entire. In this masterwork the poet incorporates much of what is most characteristic in his previous writings. As Putnam says, it contains "reflections of almost every major subject which interested him." It expresses the essence of his experience in life and literature, the sum of his discoveries. Hence the old hypothesis that no. "64" is a mere translation or paraphrase of a lost Alexandrian original is extremely improbable and has for the most part been laid to rest.

The epyllion usually deals with a love theme and often includes a contrasting "digression." Catullus' poem adheres to this formula. The framework narrative tells of the happy wedding of the Argonaut Peleus and the sea-goddess Thetis. This encloses a contrasting digression of approximately equal length on the disastrous love affair of two mortals, Theseus and Ariadne. I shall try to explain the relationship of these two narratives later on.

Instead of plunging in medias res, Catullus begins at the beginning. He gives a brief account of how the ship Argo was constructed from the pines that grew on Mt. Pelion. This is a reminiscence of no. "4," 10-12, where the poet's phaselus was also traced back to a stand of timber on a mountain top. But there are differences between the two passages. The phaselus, for all its excellences, was but one craft among many, whereas the Argo was the first ocean-going vessel, an unprecedented monstrum and a marvel to all beholders. Therefore the building of the Argo is described in high epic style; no. "4," 10-12 on the other hand is a mock-heroic inset in an informal and conversational poem.

In addition, the opening paragraph offers a characterization of the Argonauts in general and goes on to tell us something about the hero Peleus in particular. The Argonauts were men of valor, outstanding among the Argive youth, bold pioneers who had the courage to sail to far-off Colchis. It was because of their heroic excellence that they were honored by the assistance of Athena, for it was she, the goddess of handicraft herself, who built the marvelous Argo for them. During the outward voyage they received another tribute to their surpassing worth when with mortal eyes they were privileged to gaze upon the divine beauty of the unclad Nereids as they rose from the gray waters. It was then that Peleus, the pillar and bulwark of Thessaly, fell in love with Thetis. Thetis accepted him, and Jupiter himself sanctioned their marriage. At this point, Catullus breaks with the convention of epic objectivity in a quasi-lyric outburst modelled upon the closing paragraphs of the Homeric Hymns. He cries out his praise of the whole race of heroes. He says he will often invoke these "excellent sons of excellent mothers." Born in an evil generation, he rejoices to escape, at least in fancy, into the glorious heroic age. The enraptured questions of vv. 25-30 sustain the lyric mood. Peleus' surpassing good fortune in being allowed to marry a goddess is almost too good to be true; Catullus can scarcely believe such a thing ever happened. Yet it did, for ancient tradition affirms it, and tradition does not lie.

In line 31 we leap forward in time from the first meeting of Peleus and Thetis to their wedding at Peleus' palace in Pharsalus. It is just before the meeting of bride and bridegroom. We have here a heightening and intensification of that magic hour which Catullus had glorified in poems "61" and "62". From all Thessaly the guests arrive with wedding presents, their faces shining with happiness. No one is envious or disaffected; all rejoice that the king is honored, for when he is honored, his subjects are honored as well. Indeed, the whole human race is exalted by Thetis' acceptance of Peleus. On this glorious day, field work ceases for ordinary folk, the curse of labor is lifted, and there is a temporary recovery of the bliss of the Golden Age. Within the palace, all is bright and shining. The color imagery of lines 43-48 matches the primary mood of festal joy. White predominates: this is the color of happiness and the color the Olympian gods love best. Associated with the whites of the palace interior is the sheen of silver, gold and ivory. These are beautiful, precious, and long-lasting materials. Gold and ivory have sacral significance: from these were fashioned some of the holiest and most revered images of the gods, e.g., that of Athena in the Parthenon and that of Zeus at Olympia. Peleus welcomes Thetis and the divine wedding guests with the best that man has at his disposal.

Why does Peleus play such a prominent role in no. "64"? It is difficult to be sure about the reason. One attractive possibility is that the Peleus story is related to Catullus' own experience. It has been well said that Catullus approaches myth empathetically, not objectively. He has to be able to see himself in it somehow; otherwise he does not need it. This is evident in the long elegy, no. "68"; it is equally evident in no. "64." Peleus' marriage to Thetis marks the perfect attainment of a bliss that the poet had imperfectly experienced at the beginning of his relationship with Lesbia. In the long elegy he exalts her as a radiant goddess and compares her arrival at the house of Allius to an epiphany of Venus. But she was a goddess only in the metaphorical sense and only for the duration of the mira nox. Thetis on the other hand is a true goddess and according to Catullus' account deeply in love with Peleus. She lived with him in perfect concord, and their union apparently lasted until Peleus' death As we shall see later on, the perfection of their happiness was eventually marred after the birth of their son, but apart from this their relationship is unflawed. Thetis' condescension to the hero Peleus is the nearly perfect actualization of an ideal approached in some degree and fleetingly experienced by Catullus at the house of Allius. It is because the poet once aspired to and partially attained a felicity analogous to that of Peleus that he chooses the marriage with Thetis as the principal subject of the epyllion.

In the midst of all the chryselephantine splendor within Peleus' palace, there is one object of contrasting hue, the crimson coverlet that is thrown over the marriage bed. This coverlet is embroidered with figures taken from heroic myth. Under the pretext of describing this coverlet Catullus launches into his second subject, the sad story of how Theseus carried Ariadne away from her Cretan homeland and then abandoned her on the island of Dia (Naxos).

He begins the story with a description of Ariadne on the shore of the island. She has just discovered that her lover has betrayed her. She looks out over the uncrossable sea, grieving for all she has lost. Her situation resembles that of Attis in no. "63." Both have been driven by passion to take an irreversible step. Ariadne had been impelled by Venus, Attis by hatred of Venus. Ariadne awoke from sleep to discover (too late) that she had been abandoned. Attis awoke from sleep to discover (too late) that he had lost all to Cybele. Ariadne in her distraction rushes to the seashore; so does Attis. At the shore they look out over the sea, Attis in the direction of his far-off patria, Ariadne in the direction of the far-off ship of Theseus. Both are surrounded and cut off by hostile nature. In front of them is the vast sea, the uncrossable gulf that separates them from all they love. Behind her Ariadne has the craggy bluffs of Dia. the dwelling place of wild beasts and birds; behind him Attis has the Phrygian mountain where wild creatures make their lairs. Both are alone. Ariadne, after a night of love on the beach, has been forsaken by Theseus. Attis at the shore has left his companions behind him on the mountain top; they are no longer human in any case. Finally, both break into impassioned and pathetic soliloquies by the seashore. The similarities between the two scenes are extraordinary.

However, there are also important differences. In Ariadne's case there is nothing to compare with the symbolic sunrise in the Attis poem. Conversely, the sea imagery of no. "64" is much richer in implication than that of no. "63." The literal and external sea around Dia cuts the heroine off from her past in Crete and from her hoped-for future with Theseus. It imprisons her in an intolerable present on a desert island (so Dia is conceived by Catullus) to die of starvation. But in addition she is lashed by a metaphorical, inward sea: not merely a sea of troubles as in no. "68a" but a high sea raised by Venus and Cupid, which is therefore a sea of passion. Ariadne is a helpless swimmer in this metaphorical sea. Like a person tossed by vast waves she has lost her autonomy, her power of self-determination. The metaphor, first used at v. 62, recurs at v. 97ff. in a heightened and intensified form. In these lines, unless the figure is mixed, she is no longer a swimmer but a ship, a ship on fire, driven by a storm at sea. These images establish her as a victim of the passion of love and as a pathetic figure.

As we said above, Catullus views myth empathetically, not objectively. In the light of that principle, we discerned an analogy linking the poet to Peleus. There is also a significant correspondence between Catullus and Ariadne. He goes out of his way to identify with her. At v. 61 he adds an eheu in order to sigh for her and with her. At v. 69 he adds the vocative Theseu, calling on Theseus by name, as she did; he is one with her in her affliction. The exclamations a misera in v. 71 and heu in v. 94 have a similar effect. He knows what she is going through. Her storm-tossed passion, her pathos, reflects his own sufferings as a victim of passion. Her rejection by Theseus is comparable to his own experience of rejection. The infidelity which destroyed her happiness resembles the infidelities that had darkened his life. Ariadne has been humiliated, mistreated, and Catullus' heart goes out to her.

Catullus not only identifies with Ariadne; he also justifies her. In his eyes she is misera, pitiable. She is pitiable because she suffers far beyond her deserts. It is true that she turned her back on her father, her family and her homeland. People in her society would say that she had done wrong in forsaking all other loves for one love (v. 120) and in presuming to choose her own husband. Nevertheless, it was impossible for her to do otherwise. She could not be expected to resist the maddening passion which had been visited upon her by the cruelty of Venus and Cupid (vv. 71f., and 95ff.). It was by their prompting that she fell in love with Theseus at first sight (v. 86), the moment he arrived at her father's palace. She was not drawn to him because of his inner qualities or character traits. In personality the two had nothing in common, were in fact direct opposites. She was drawn by his looks alone, his dulcis forma (v. 175). It was the sight of that splendid male animal that set Ariadne on fire: Venus willed that it should be so. She sowed in Ariadne's heart a seed which grew into a great thorn-bush (v. 72), signifying all the anxiety and pain (curae, luctus) which love inevitably brings, in Catullus' view. Ariadne is not to be condemned for falling in love, believing Theseus' false promises of marriage, and running away with him.

Once Cupid and Venus have done their work, Ariadne is totally transformed. Catullus emphasizes the extent of the transformation in the contrasting images of v. 87ff. Before Theseus' arrival she resembled the chaste unmarried girls of the wedding poems, secluded and protected, safe in her mother's arms. Like them she is compared to a flower, a myrtle that is refreshed by river waters and caressed by spring breezes. After she as gazed upon him she is a woman on fire, burning. Her love is described in terms which had been used to describe Catullus' love for Lesbia. Desire penetrates to the very marrow of her bones; line 93 is reminiscent of the imagery of liquid fire in no. "51," 9-10 (the Sapphic ode). The fire metaphor connotes pain, among other things. Love, to Ariadne, is far from being unalloyed bliss, delight and fulfillment. It is joy mixed with suffering (v. 95) as it had been in Catullus' own experience (cf. no. "68," 17-18). Ariadne's love for Theseus is as distressing and intense as Catullus' love for Lesbia had been.

A large part of her pain comes from humiliation, from the experience of being rejected. This is hard for any lover to bear, but it is especially hard for a royal princess like Ariadne, the daughter of proud Minos. Her pain is still further increased by Theseus' base ingratitude. Because she loved him, she helped him to escape from the labyrinth and return home a hero. Then, believing his false oaths of fidelity, she had given up all she possessed to leave Crete with him. Her assistance, her sacrifices and her trust are repaid with stony-hearted betrayal. Theseus is immemor, v. 135. Like the Alfenus of no. "30," he is unmindful of past benefits received, promises given, obligations incurred. In fact he has decided to destroy her. In exchange for the gift of life he gives her death by abandoning her on a desert island. He does this not so much because he hates her as because he hates her cruel and unjust parent. In other words, he carries her off and forsakes her in order to punish his enemy Minos. The innocent daughter pays for the sins of her father.

To Catullus, Theseus is a hero, but he is not a character with whom he can empathize. He does not identify with Theseus in any way. Perhaps that is why he is not given any speeches in the poem. He is known to us not by his words but by his actions and by Ariadne's attitude toward him. Naturally she heaps reproaches on his head, and they are richly deserved. Nevertheless the poet stops short of presenting him as a "villain" motivated by sheer malevolence. The malign and diabolical villain is on the whole a post-classical phenomenon. Theseus cannot be considered diabolical. His heroism is conceded from the start: the crimson coverlet displays heroum virtutes, v. 51. Although the plural is somewhat peculiar, it certainly includes Theseus' exploits. As hero, he is ferox, "bold" (vv. 73, 247). He thirsts for fame, glory and praise (v. 102, cf. 112). That is perhaps the very essence of heroism. The hero's one overriding purpose in life is to acquire prestige, to make himself worthy of honor by performing deeds of valor, to obtain glory by meeting the challenge of a crisis situation. In determining to free Athens from the burden of paying tribute in human life to an unjust king, Theseus shows heroic devotion (v. 80 ff.). The verb optauit in line 82 should not be overlooked. It means "chose." He went to Crete of his own free choice, not because any other person, human or divine, had imposed the task on him. He is motivated not only by love of fame but also by loyalty to Athens. However, his conception of love and loyalty is irreconcilable with Ariadne's. Theseus is loyal to the ancient pieties, devoted to country and to his father Aegeus. His great courage, his willingness to sacrifice himself for the commonwealth, remind us of the Roman heroes of the early Republic. Ariadne is the reverse of this. She is loyal in her personal relationship to Theseus. She deserts father, family, country and the altars of her gods in order to be with the one person whom she perceives as irreplaceable and upon whom she concentrates all her affection and desires. Furthermore, where Theseus is heroic, Ariadne is pathetic. Every kind of hero, good or bad, is the antithesis of the pathos figure. The hero acts, the pathos figure reacts; the hero is the vigorous agent, the pathos figure is the passive victim; the hero in some sense wins, the pathos figure, after struggling feebly against overwhelming odds, goes down to inevitable defeat.

Since Theseus and Ariadne are direct opposites we should not be surprised to discover that the deities associated with each of them are opposites also; for the god who influences and sways any individual is the god who is most in accord with his basic nature and self-hood. By virtue of his birth, upbringing and circumstances, Theseus is under the patronage of Pallas Athena: Athena is controlled and rational, a goddess of warfare, a protectress of city states (especially of Athens, the city state named after her), and a special guardian of heroes (we recall that she built the Argo for the Argonauts); but she is cold, inclined to cruelty, and of course, as virgin goddess, impregnably chaste. Chastity is not one of Theseus' virtues, but apart from this he participates in the qualities perfectly exemplified in the goddess Athena. Ariadne on the other hand is swayed by the deities of instinct, passion and natural human impulse, Venus and Cupid. Moreover, we find out later on that she is loved by Bacchus, another god identified with man's instinctual side. At first her acceptance of natural impulse leads not to happiness and liberation but the opposite: loss of autonomy, rejection, humiliation, pain and despair. In the end, however, she escapes unexpectedly into joy. Theseus, apparently victorious and triumphant, is suddenly thrust into disaster.

His valor peaks at v. 105ff. In answer to Ariadne's prayer the gods grant him victory over the Minotaur. Catullus condenses the story of their fight into seven lines. The end result is given in v. 110: Theseus "laid low" (prostravit) the monstrous bull. How this was accomplished is not directly narrated; instead, it is implied in the five-line simile which immediately precedes. The Minotaur is compared to a mighty oak or pine on an exposed mountain top; Theseus is like a still mightier force, the unconquered whirlwind. The whirlwind wrenches the tree up by its roots and throws it flat. The imagery suggests that the adversaries were not duelling with weapons but wrestling with bare hands. Apparently Theseus manages to lift his opponent from the ground and goes into an "airplane spin"; this is followed by a body-slam which has fatal consequences. Guided by Ariadne's clue he emerges from the labyrinth unharmed and exultant. The brevity and obliquity of the account do not detract from Theseus' glory, but it is worth noting that his aristeia is bracketed by references to the help Ariadne gave him. Catullus does not want us to forget this.

If Theseus' victory over the Minotaur marks the physical climax of the epyllion, the emotional climax is provided by Ariadne's lament at the shore, vv. 132-201. As we have already suggested, her monologue shows a number of correspondences with the climactic soliloquy of Attis in no. "63" (vv. 50-73). Both speeches are written in the first person singular and may be regarded as lyric insets in a third person narrative; both give pathetic expression to a sense of overwhelming loss. But Ariadne's lament is three times longer than the complaint of Attis. It is a far more varied and complex composition. Attis' speech shows little dramatic progression. He hardly gets beyond self-accusation and the expression of vain regrets. Ariadne does not accuse herself; she accuses Theseus. Her mood evolves continuously; she passes from helpless lamentation to deep despair, then in the end turns to the gods for help and calls down angry curses on her false lover: these curses are not vain. They bring death, not upon the hero himself but upon his father, who suffers for the sins of his son. Although both Attis and Ariadne are presented sympathetically, one senses that the poet projects himself far more deeply into the experiences of the heroine than into those of Cybele's victim; Attis represents to him only a terrifying possibility, but Ariadne recalls the agony of lived experience.

She begins by addressing the absent Theseus in apostrophe. The opening adverb sicine, followed by seven lines of rhetorical questions, shows (by a technique now very familiar to us) that she can scarcely believe that he has left her. She is appalled by the sudden revelation of his cruelty, ingratitude and treachery. All his promises were false and worthless; like the assurances of Alfenus in no. "30," 9-10, they have been carried off by the winds. Then at 143ff. she checks herself, tries to make excuses for him. He is not unique, he is just a man; all men are like that, opportunists and deceivers. Catullus had attempted to excuse Lesbia in similar terms in no. "70." But she soon veers back to reproach, remembers her' pest acts of kindness and how they have been repaid by monstrous cruelty. She calls him the child of a lioness or a sea monster (v. 154ff.). The poet had used comparable imagery in crying out against Lesbia's inhumanity (no. "60"), but the present passage is even more vehement. At v. 155 in place of the neutral genuit, "bore," she uses the ugly metaphor exspuit, "spewed out." The implication is that even such subhuman mothers as Syrtis, Scylla or Charybdis must have rejected with horror and disgust what they had conceived: the birth was a spitting out, a vomiting forth, a throwing up. At v. 158ff. she again shifts and relents, declares that she would be willing to accept almost any humiliation just to be close to him. Passion abases its victims. Already enslaved to him in the figurative sense, she would serve him literally as well. Although a royal princess, she would be glad to make his bed and wash his feet. For her, even foot-washing could be beautiful, an act of love (v. 162).

But there is a limit to her capacity for self-abasement. In line 188 she turns from useless self-address to prayer. She does not pray for healing and release from her love, as Catullus had done in no. "76"; she calls down curses in the name of justice. She asks the Furies, those powers of vengeance who take the part of innocent victims, to punish the guilty Theseus in accordance with the law of the talion, measure for measure. She hates him for his cruelty and deception, for giving her death in exchange for the gift of life; she hates him for his injustice. Yet at the same time she curses him against her will. Cogor, "I am compelled" (v. 197), makes this clear. The curse is wrenched from her; something within resists. That something is what is left of her love. Ardens and furore in the same line are usually understood as referring to her wrath, but it is better to take them as functionally ambiguous. They refer both to anger and to love. Ariadne is going through something very like the quintessentially Catullan experience of no. "85" (Odi et amo). Anger, hatred, love and a sense of outraged justice coexist within her tormented heart.

After Ariadne's soliloquy Jupiter gives solemn assent to her prayer and she is avenged. This is followed by a flashback to the time of Theseus' departure from Athens, The hero's father Aegeus (in the second extended speech of the poem, vv. 215-237) gives his son his final instructions: if he succeeds in killing the Minotaur he is to change his sails from sad violet to joyful white. In its pathos Aegeus' speech resembles that of Ariadne. He is extremely old and feeble; Theseus is his only son, dearer to him than life itself. They had been separated for many years and were only recently reunited. He grieves (vv. 223, 226) that he must now part from him again and expose him to mortal danger in Crete; yet circumstances (fortuna, v. 218) and Theseus' bold resolve (feruida uirtus, ibid.) tie his hands (vv. 216, 219). He does not expect his son to return; he mourns and pours dust on his head as if he were already dead (v. 224). Aegeus is presented as wholly sympathetic figure. Ariadne in line 159 had misjudged him, imagining in him a severity which is alien to his character. Certainly Theseus is more eager to go to Crete than Aegeus is to send him. Although Catullus is sometimes hard on the older generation, especially on rigid puritans and killjoys who are envious of the happiness of young people, he shows no animus against Aegeus. On the contrary he sympathizes with him as a lover and a sufferer, as one who suffers through his love and indeed dies because of it. The old can be lovers too. One thinks of the aged grandfather in the simile of no. "68," vv. 119-124. Aegeus is a pathetic expansion of that old man.

The epic is often called the most comprehensive form of poetry on the ground that it creates a whole world. A whole world from the ancient point of view will include a divine dimension. Hence in our epyllion the gods have an important role to play. What is the relationship between men and gods, according to this poem? In the extremity of her pain Ariadne briefly entertains the idea that the world is not governed on any rational basis whatsoever (vv. 169-170). She feels that what she has been through is meaningless. What made it happen, really? What purpose did it serve? Or worse, she suspects that the universe may be ruled by fors insultans, diabolical evil, an unpredictable power which is not merely indifferent to human suffering but actively and inscrutably cruel. However she does not hold this view for long. Almost immediately she turns to the gods in supplication. According to the theology of this poem she is right to do so; for the gods do exist, they do rule the universe, they do listen to prayers. Sometimes, to be sure, they grant them to the hurt of the person praying, as at vv. 103-104, where they accept Ariadne's prayer that Theseus may be victorious over the Minotaur. But they also accept prayers that wrongdoing may be punished: Theseus is made to suffer for his perjury. At v. 204 Jupiter nods in solemn assent to Ariadne's prayer for vengeance, and at v. 207ff. Theseus forgets his father's instructions. 'What has happened? Has Jupiter invaded Theseus' personality and forced him to forget? The curiously contorted simile in vv. 238240 hints at an answer. A high and snowcapped mountain (representing either Aegeus and his instructions or Theseus) usually has at its summit a plume of cloud (representing Theseus' thoughts). Just as a blast of wind may blow the cloud away, so an unnamed force analogous to the wind made Theseus forget. All winds are under the control of Jupiter as god of the upper air and of weather generally; likewise the unnamed force operates according to his will. Since there is no discernible motivation at the human level, it is a fair inference that Jupiter alone causes Theseus to forget.

Is justice then done? A very rude and approximate kind of justice at best. Minos pays for his pride cruelty and injustice, as we have seen, and Theseus is not permitted to get away with his perjury. The gods punish the guilty Theseus by direct interference and the guilty Minos by a more circuitous route. That much is understandable. But they do not protect the innocent. Ariadne, the victim of Venus and Amor, who did no voluntary wrong, suffers far beyond her deserts. The gods, in order to get at her father, allow her to endure agony. Likewise Aegeus, through no fault of his own, dies because of the offenses of a son whom he loved more than life itself. The divine justice is flawed and incomplete. The gods cannot bring perfect good out of evil. There is a margin for tragedy in the world. There is a discrepancy between the ideal justice man longs for and the rough-hewn justice which the gods dispense. Nevertheless that discrepancy is far from total Wrongdoing is punished, however clumsily, and the prayers of blameless victims are not ignored. According to Catullus, the powers that govern the universe are not blankly indifferent to our need. Man is not a passion inutile, malevolent fors is not in control; the world is not absurd.

The story is not over. Theseus' sad end is contrasted with a sudden rebound in Ariadne's fortunes. Her sufferings are ended by the unexpected arrival of the god Iacchus. Iacchus is Dionysus or Bacchus. He is much more than a jolly god of wine and intoxication. Finley rightly calls him a god of liberation, especially a god who frees women from all that restricts and confines them. As a god of release he delivers Ariadne from her imprisonment on the desert isle of Dia. He does not come to her in answer to a prayer: she never prays to be saved, the possibility does not even cross her mind. Nor does he come in the interests of justice or compassion. He comes to her, winging his way across the sea, simply because, for no apparent reason, he is on fire with love for her:

te quaerens, Ariadna, tuoque incensus amore.
(v. 253)

seeking you, Ariadne, and on fire with love for you.

Loving her, he must have seen her somewhere, before her flight with Theseus; seeking her, he must have lost her: but Catullus does not go into details. Once he has found her she joins his ecstatic entourage, the thiasos or holy company of Satyrs, Sileni and Maenads, and becomes his bride. She is united with lacchus as Peleus is united with Thetis. The parallelism and contrast between these two major myths helps to fuse the two halves of the epyllion into a thematic unity. Marriage with divinity is the common term. As Thetis condescended to accept Peleus, so Iacchus raised up and glorified Ariadne. Love, which brought her all her sufferings in the first place, finally releases her from the crimson world of her pain.

In the long elegy, no. "68," Catullus uses mythology as a mirror of his own experience. It seems probable that the Ariadne legend also had some private and personal meaning for him. Certainly he never thought of himself as a hero. Theseus is the antithesis of all he valued most, and he must have known that the glory of a Peleus was not available to him. But what of the passionate Ariadne, with whom he so clearly identifies? Having shared her pain did he long to share in some sort of final liberation and joy comparable to hers? Did he ever hope he might be loved without reason or deserving by a god of release and thus share the divine life forever? If so, he must have realized the hope was illusory. In his time, the gods no longer show themselves to man (v. 397ff). Attis in poem no. "63" had hoped for a blissful union with the goddess Cybele but in the upshot was subjected to a life of hellish servitude. Catullus knew he could never be a second Ariadne, but the hopeless yearning may still have existed within him, deep down. I suspect that lines 251-264 express that yearning in mythical terms.

The poet breaks off his description of the crimson coverlet at v. 265. The mortal wedding guests, who are not allowed to look upon the gods face to face, and who therefore must not be present when the divine guests arrive, depart from the graced palace of Peleus to resume their normal occupations in the familiar world. Their departure is described in the longest and most elaborate simile of the poem, vv. 269-77. In these lines the guests are compared to the waves of the sea at dawn, which under a freshening wind grow higher and higher, move faster and faster toward the rising sun and make more and more sound as they go, finally reaching a point where they are clearly seen. Likewise the crowd of guests moves slowly at first, then gathers speed as it advances; at first silent, they gradually begin to laugh and speak as they move out of the dusky megaron of Peleus' palace into the bright sunlight. The effect of the simile is to suggest that the collective mood has changed. A moment before they had been gazing with eager intensity at the images of Ariadne's suffering and exaltation which were embroidered on the coverlet (vv. 265-8): now they leave the palace and start home Their state of mind has shifted, the spell is broken they are about to resume their ordinary and unexalted lives as field-laborers.

The most obvious difference between epyllion and epic is that the one is short and the other is long. Because of the ample scale of his genre, the epic poet has to cope with the problem of retardation and expansion; he must know how to provide passages of relaxation between the climaxes. In the miniature epic these problems are less pressing; it is possible to secure continuous concentration and speed. Catullus maintains in poem no. "64" a density and richness comparable to that which we find in the best of his shorter poems. But if there is any passage in the epyllion in which a relaxation of intensity is permitted, lines 278-302 seem to provide the likeliest example. This is the verse paragraph in which the gods begin to arrive at the palace. Once again, as in his narrative of the arrival of the Thessalian guests (v. 32ff.), the device of the epic catalogue is utilized. The catalogue is not without a principle of organization. The gods are listed in order of rank, first the lesser and then the greater. Chiron heads the list, followed by Peneus; next comes the Titan Prometheus, and finally the Olympians.

Chiron is the wise centaur who lives on Mt. Pelion. He was famous for his skill in hunting, music, "gymnastics," and the art of prophecy. Many of the most distinguished heroes of Greek mythology were trained by him. Jason, Castor and Pollux were among his pupils; so too were Peleus and Achilles. He brings as a wedding gift not the celebrated Pelian spear but garlands of wild flowers, simple emblems of festivity.

Peneus is the chief river god of Thessaly and as such the source and sustainer of all life in the country. He is also, as it happens, a close relative of Thetis. He has his hands full: he brings five kinds of trees, to be planted at the entrance of Peleus' palace; there they will provide shade for generations yet unborn. Among his sylvan gifts are the poplar and cypress, both of which connote death and are perhaps prophetic of the brevity of Achilles' life.

Prometheus' presence is heavy with significance. It was he who had warned Jupiter not to marry Thetis, as the high god had once intended to do: she was destined to give birth to a son greater than his father. Jupiter therefore renounced her and allowed her to marry Peleus instead (cf. vv. 26-27).

Jupiter and the other Olympian gods arrive last. Like Prometheus they bring no gifts; their mere presence is gift enough. Two of the Olympians are absent, Apollo and his twin Diana. As god of prophecy, Apollo fore knows that Achilles, the future son of Peleus and Thetis, will kill Hector and thus seal the fate of Troy, his favorite city. He also foreknows that he will himself take Achilles' life in retaliation. The absence of the children of Latona, like the earlier references' to poplar and cypress, casts an ominous shadow on the otherwise ideal happiness of the occasion.

After the gods have arrived the Parcae sing their wedding song.… [T]he song is double-edged in its effect: while it praises the perfect love of Peleus and Thetis it also prophesies the birth of a terrible son, greater than his father but a shedder of blood, violent, cruel and inhuman. The perfect joy of the wedding day will bring fresh evil into the world.

There is a marked element of paradox in Catullus' portrayal of the Parcae. To the casual observer they are three insignificant little old ladies suffering from something like Parkinson's disease: their infirmity is mentioned twice, vv. 305 and 307. Festively attired for the occasion in crimson and white, they have nevertheless brought with them baskets of fleece and (as Merrill points out) refuse to stop their incessant spinning even during the wedding feast. As they spin, they strip the finished threads clean with their teeth, and flocks of bitten wool cling to their withered lips. But despite their unprepossessing appearance and curious behavior we know that these little old ladies are really all-powerful birth goddesses who foreordain the course and duration of every human life. If they are old and infirm, it is because they have been carrying on their aeternus labor, their "everlasting occupation" (v. 310) ever since mankind first appeared on earth. Although the description of their clothing may seem purely ornamental, recent investigation has shown that it is part of a pattern of color contrast which pervades the entire poem; white is insistently associated with happiness and crimson with suffering. In the present passage the combination of the two colors hints at the varying proportions of joy and affliction that the Parcae assign us at birth. It is not over-subtle to say that the white and crimson garments together with the crimson headbands are emblematic of their awesome divine power over the lives of mankind.

They are engaged in the humdrum and unremarkable activity of spinning (described in meticulous detail at vv. 311-14), but their spinning has no ordinary utilitarian purpose. The woollen threads they are forming are obviously symbolic. Since thread is a fragile commodity that has a beginning, grows steadily in length as it is spun, and comes to an end when the fleece on the distaff is exhausted, it is an apt image for the frail brevity of human life. Everyone is familiar with the developed form of the myth according to which one of the Parcae spins, another measures and a third snips the thread. Catullus, however, here follows Homer's earlier and simpler version in which all three spin and the measuring and cutting are not mentioned. Only the spinning matters in the present context.

As they spin they sing; their song is modelled in part upon primitive work songs. Such songs often have a refrain comparable to that sung by the Parcae,

currite ducentes subtegmina, currite, fusi
run, spindles, run and spin the threads
(v. 327 etc.),

in which a tool or utensil is apostrophized as if it were a lazy animal or slave and verbally encouraged to hurry up and get the job finished as soon as possible. Work songs are sung by people engaged in boring and repetitive jobs; the idea is to turn routine into something like play. No doubt the Parcae are rather bored by their everlasting occupation of spinning our innumerable lives into existence; after all we are only "threads", more or less alike, and our minor differences are rather uninteresting. The little old ladies are mainly intent on keeping up their schedule, getting through their quota of fleece on time.

But because it is sung by goddesses the song of the Parcae differs from ordinary work songs. [Their song] is prophetic and inerrant; the point is stressed, vv. 321-3, 336, 383. The threads may fix the length of each life, but it is the song that determines its nature; the Parcae sing our whole future into being, in all its distinctive particularity. As they sing they offer evaluations that jar on the sensibilities of any enlightened human being. Of course we are not disturbed by their praise of the harmonious love shared by Peleus and Thetis, but when they go on to describe the career of Achilles, their comments begin to strike us as alarmingly inappropriate. Indifferent to the sufferings and injustices endured by the vanquished, childishly superficial in their conception of heroic arete, they seem malicious or senile or both. Enormous power is seen to rest in irresponsible and incompetent hands, and the three sisters, as Quinn puts it, are at once sinister and absurd. Apart from the Cybele of no. "63" and the Orcus of no. "3" they represent Catullus' least attractive, most disquieting image of divinity.

After the Parcae have sung their ambiguous epithalamium, one expects to read a description of the arrival of Thetis and the entry of the happy pair into the bridal chamber. However, Catullus omits this and proceeds to draw a contrast between the world-wide pietas of the heroic age and the wholesale corruption of human relationships in the present. In olden times, the gods "often" visited the houses of mortal men, showed themselves to human eyes, descended to earth on festal occasions, accepted generous sacrifices, led their worshippers in sacred dances upon the mountain tops, came to their aid in time of war. Men's homes were still castae; the family was unstained by impurity and wickedness; pietas was not yet scorned; religion and justice were not yet forsaken. Hence men lived on terms of intimacy with the gods in those days. Now, however, all that is changed. We are living in an Iron Age, sodden with sin. Justice is forgotten and evil desires have taken over in the form of avarice, ambition and lust. Family life is defiled. Brother offends against brother as sibling rivalry is pushed to the point of fratricide. Children offend against parents and begin to look forward eagerly to the deaths of their fathers and mothers. Parents offend against children: the father lusting after his son's fiancee desires his death in order to be free to marry the girl himself, thus saddling his remaining children with a stepmother; the mother makes incestuous love with her offspring, daring to pollute by her sin the sanctity of the household gods. The end result has been an irrational overturning of all values and an alienation of the gods from the human race. Affronted by our universal degeneracy they no longer visit man's world or show themselves to mortal eyes.

The idea that the human race is degenerate was a commonplace in antiquity. Hesiod and Aratus, to mention no others, provide examples of the motif. Catullus follows in their footsteps, yet his version of the myth is generally felt to be unsatisfactory. Some have called it moralistic. If the adjective implies that he is narrow and conventional in his judgments, it is ill chosen. It is not narrowminded to deplore fratricide and incest. The trouble lies elsewhere. Quinn has correctly diagnosed the weakness of the passage. Catullus' denunciation of the age is too direct, too abstract, too unqualified, too heavy-handed. Any opposition of shining virtue to conscienceless depravity is bound to seem melodramatic and Catullus has not managed to escape this trap. Furthermore, one is disturbed by the lack of any rational analysis of the problem. The poet points with alarm, wrings his hands, but goes no further. What has caused this hideous falling away into vice? Is it the fault of the Parcae? Or does time by its very nature mar and degrade the original harmony? What, if anything, can be done to halt and reverse the downward spiral? No answer is given; perhaps no one knows.

Alexandrian in form, no. "64" is no mere literary exercise. It is typically Catullan in its approaches, attitudes and preoccupations. An astonishing number of themes taken from the shorter poems are incorporated into its substance. The so-called moral epilogue denounces vices similar to those attacked in the invective poems. The mythical material introduces dramatic con'flicts and expressions of hope and fear analogous to those which we have met in the Lesbia cycle. Ariadne consumed by passion and forsaken by her faithless lover is undoubtedly a surrogate for the poet himself. He takes her part, identifies with her, can see himself in her. Her lyric lament expresses a despair which reminds us of his own anguished disillusionment with Lesbia. Likewise he is personally involved in the story of Peleus and Thetis. The mythical pair represent what he had once hoped for in his relationship with Lesbia, at a time when she still seemed to him to be a goddess on earth. In brief, no. "64" recapitulates and expands most of the major themes which appear elsewhere in the body of his poetry. It is so thoroughly Catullan in spirit, so intimately related to his other writings and to his life experience, that it is difficult to see why it was once regarded as a translation from the Greek. Klingner is unquestionably right in regarding it as his greatest achievement, the crown of his literary career.

Some Conclusions

As we have mentioned several times …, Catullus was one of the New Poets, a prominent member of that band of brilliant young men who, in the course of a single generation, succeeded in transforming Latin poetry. Until they made their influence felt, the dominant poetic genre at Rome had been the Ennian epic, heavy and long-winded, preoccupied with nationalistic themes, historically oriented and thoroughly impersonal. Departing from this tradition, the young innovators turned to Alexandria for their models and brought over into Latin literature the dominant forms of Hellenistic verse: miniature epic, elegy, and "lyric," i.e. the independent short poem. One of their chief aims was to master the literary erudition and concentrated brevity characteristic of the best Alexandrian writers. Along with high standards of craftsmanship in language and versification, they cultivated a new sophistication of outlook and a new ironic wit. Even more important, they initiated a shift from the state-centered values of their Roman predecessors to a new individualism and a new concern for the subjective and personal. In brief the New Poets effected a radical change in the Roman literary sensibility and gave a different direction to the development of Latin poetry. The effect of their work on subsequent writers was lasting and profound.

It is easy to exaggerate the influence of the Alexandrians on the New Poets and in particular their influence on Catullus. Certainly he was no slavish imitator of the Greeks. He recognized an obligation to "make it new," in Ezra Pound's phrase. He realized that he had to move beyond his models, adapt the tradition to his own talent, carry it forward. To his short poems he brought an intimate and vivid personalism that marks an enormous advance upon the elegant evasive conventionality of the Hellenistic epigram and has no discernible parallel in Greek literature after early iambic and melic verse (e.g., Archilochus, Sappho, Alcaeus, Ibycus and Anacreon). His literary raw materials are purportedly taken from real life experience in the contemporary world. The experience par excellence is of course the madness or disease of passionate love, which strikes arbitrarily and irresistibly and makes its victim miser, pitiable, a pathos figure in the fullest sense of the word. In language that often seems to approximate ordinary colloquial usage, Catullus dramatizes the whole course of his affair with Lesbia from its anxious beginnings to its acrid end. It is this series of some two dozen love poems (all short, except for no. "68" and no. "76") that, in the opinion of most modern readers, constitutes his most creative innovation and his chief title to literary fame.

Yet his longer poems must not be underestimated. Formerly dismissed as stuffy Alexandrian exercises, they are now recognized as being no less innovative than the Lesbia lyrics. In two of them, nos. "64" and "68," Catullus introduces mythological subject matter and adopts a more elevated style to match. The invocation of the heroes in no. "64," 22-30 suggests that mythology offered him an escape from his corrupt present into the ideal splendor of an imagined past. More important than this rather literary nostalgia is his technique of blending myth with autobiography, a procedure that apparently was unknown to the Alexandrian Greeks. Peleus' marriage to Thetis marks the fulfillment of a bliss that Catullus had fleetingly and imperfectly experienced at the house of Allius. Our author repeatedly identifies with the passionate and suffering heroines of legend. He sees correspondences between his own pathos experience and that of an Ariadne, overwhelmed by passion and abandoned by her false lover. He empathizes with the ardent and devoted Laodamia, who lost her irreplaceable Protesilaus at Troy, the very place where his own brother was buried. The interrelation of personal experience with mythical paradigms in no. "68" foreshadows Augustan practice, especially that of Propertius; for this reason among many others, this poem has been called the prototype of Roman "subjective" love-elegy.

These are fundamental innovations. Taken collectively they make up the essence of what has been called the "Catullan Revolution." That revolution marks an important advance over Alexandrian precedent, a broadening of the classical sensibility, and a shift in the whole direction of the Graeco-Roman literary tradition. Nevertheless, it does not signal a complete break with the past, and therefore the term "revolution" is perhaps somewhat misleading. Radical discontinuities are hard to find in literary history; probably they do not exist. In many important ways Catullus is linked to his predecessors and is plainly a continuator of established poetic practice. To call him a Romantic, as if he had somehow miraculously anticipated the European literature of the Nineteenth Century, seems to me to be a serious anachronism. Catullus is no Romantic. He is an essentially classical author and by that very fact a literary traditionalist.

He is typically classical in his respect for the exemplaria Graeca, the tested and approved models, both Hellenistic and earlier. His debt to Sappho as a monodist and as a composer of wedding-songs is already familiar to us and need not be rehearsed here: the very name Lesbia, "girl of Lesbos," bears witness to his dependence. His invective poems are based not only on Archilochus, Hipponax and other Greeks but on the work of his Roman predecessors in the comic-satiric tradition. Ross has shown that most of the short elegiac pieces are written in the style of pre-neoteric, old-Roman epigram. His close relationship with the Alexandrians, especially Callimachus, requires no further documentation at this point. As a literary traditionalist he accepts without cavil the received genres of classical poetry. He is familiar with the rhetoric taught in the schools of his day add makes expert use of it. In poetic diction, imagery and versification he shows no significant break with established practice. Like all other Latin authors he takes it for granted that the correct method of literary composition is by imitatio. the poet's proper task is not to strive for absolute originality but to rival and if possible to excel the form and style of the recognized classics, the great models of achievement in each kind. In addition, he accepts the classical principle of decorum, which prescribes that the style of any given poem must be appropriate to the presumed speaker, the circumstances and the literary genre. This is strikingly evident in the hymn to Diana, no. "34," but may be observed throughout his writings.

Later Roman authors like to call Catullus doctus, "polished," "accomplished." For him as for the Alexandrians before him poetry is above all an art Ingenium, "innate talent," is of course indispensable; so too is that strange subconscious impulse that we call inspiration. All the same, poetry remains ars an acquired skill. Skill is developed by study. We learn from lines 31-36 of no. "68" that one needs a whole library of books in order to write a large-scale work. "No. 1" with its references to polish and pumice gives us some idea of the importance Catullus attaches to exact and discriminating craftsmanship. In no. "95" he expresses his admiration for Cinna's ultra-Alexandrian Zmyrna, an epyllion that was nine years in the writing. Significantly, the Muses connote to our author not inspiration but technical expertise. They are doctae virgines, "accomplished maidens" (no. "65," v. 2). He confides his thoughts to them; they put his ideas into memorable form and pass the result on to his readers (no. "68," 41-50). So intent was Catullus upon mastering the technical secrets of earlier writers that he even deigned to compose verse translations of Callimachus (the Coma Berenices, no. "66"), of Sappho (no. "51") and Theocritus (the Pharmaceutria; this version has not come down to us, but it is referred to by the elder Pliny. Such exercises no doubt helped him to acquire his distilled and concentrated style. The informal, colloquial manner that he deliberately adopts in so many of the shorter poems must not be mistaken for artless spontaneity; it is evidence for his skill in the difficult art of concealing art. Even the least ambitious poems are workmanlike, competently constructed and not devoid of artifice. We do not regret that they have been preserved.

The average emotional temperature of Catullus' writings is high; hyperbole and rhetorical questions abound. Nevertheless, the artist is invariably in control of his art. He is not thrown off balance by sheer passion. Even when he is in the grip of vehement love or hate, he never dreams of rejecting or undervaluing reason. On the other hand, lyric poetry that is bereft of feeling is a contradiction in terms. Many of Catullus' most unforgettable poems combine intense personal involvement with rational and artistic detachment. The writer is at once the observer and the observed; thought and emotion are intertwined. A similar combination of emotion and unfaltering insight has often been discerned in Sappho.

Non-Sapphic, however, is Catullus' technique of dramatizing inner division by self-address. We have called attention to several poems in which he apostrophizes himself by name: Catulle, miser Catulle. Naturally these vocatives are associated with imperatives, jussives or rhetorical questions. They are spoken by a superior self who analyzes and understands to an (unreplying) inferior self who agonizes or endures or is simply unaware. The superior self exhorts, arouses, encourages or warns the inferior self. We are not always sure that he wins out, but he never gives up hope, never stops trying.

Catullus did not write to please a literary patron; he had no need of one. He wrote to please himself and a small circle of like-minded friends. His primary audience was therefore a lettered elite. Wheeler is no doubt correct in supposing that the poems were at first passed around from hand to hand and only at a later date made available to a wider readership. The general public, when they read his published work, found themselves treated as semi-outsiders, not fully informed about what was going on. They were allowed only to overhear the poet's words. Probably they missed many of the elliptical and half-hidden allusions. So do we; it is just this semi-private quality that obscures the meaning of many of the occasional pieces to this very day. Barring the unlikely event of new information turning up, the ultimate intention of many passages will in all probability never be recovered.

Hand in hand with his literary traditionalism goes a distinct conservatism in morals and religion. Unlike his many false friends, Catullus honors the virtues of fides, "good faith," and pietas, "responsibility." He insists upon loyalty and integrity in personal relationships. He naively expects men and women to stand by their sworn word and to show gratitude for benefits received. In time of crisis he turns to the just and merciful gods in prayer (no. "76"). He writes a hymn to Diana, perhaps with a view to public presentation at a religious festival; he prays that she may protect and preserve the people of Romulus. He even offers the archaic inferiae at his brother's grave in the Troad, in spite of the fact that he knows the rite is vain and ineffectual. In his wedding-songs he upholds the old-fashioned upper-class view that par conubium, "marriage with a fitting and proper partner," is a blessing both to family and nation; he maintains that iustum matrimonium is in accordance with nature, reason, law and immemorial custom, and indeed that it is the gods' best gift to the human race.

On the other hand, there is also a strain of nonconformity and rebellion in Catullus. Since he was wealthy and well-born, he could afford a certain independence of outlook. In his invectives he cuts a very different figure from the pathetic miser of the poems of complaint. He speaks out with republican forthrightness and blistering obscenity against Caesar and Pompey and their underlings, whom he regards as destroyers of the commonwealth, obsessively intent upon consolidating political power and appropriating the spoils that belong by right to the state. Few would have dared to say so much so openly. Yet he attacks politicians on personal rather than ideological grounds: probably he did not understand the realities of politics very well. Certainly his attitude toward Rome's exploitation of conquered peoples is unenlightened and unreflective. Like the vast majority of his contemporaries, he takes it for granted that the empire exists for the economic advantage of the ruling class.

He is exceptional in his rejection of normal Roman career objectives. Apart from his year in Bithynia, he lived a life of otium. He manifested no interest in entering politics, law, the army or public administration The central concerns of his life were poetry and love, in both areas he was a pioneer. Before his time, writers had regarded love as a youthful aberration to be presented in the comic or satiric mode. Catullus insisted upon taking love seriously. At the beginning of the affair, Lesbia was his domina and he her servant; or even more hyperbolically, she was his radiant goddess and he her worshipper. Later he dreamt of a perfect relationship with her, grounded in physical passion to be sure, but sanctioned by oaths and marked by bene velle and consensio on both sides; it was to be a companionship of kindred spirits. He said that he felt for her a responsible and protective affection such as fathers feel for their sons and for their daughters' husbands. Yet in spite of these idealistic yearnings he openly admitted that he was carrying on a love affair with a married woman. How could he square this conduct with his vaunted pietas is a puzzling question.

His main concern is with man, not nature. Nature for its own sake does not interest him very much. Of course, he often describes the world around him, but these descriptions serve either as a basis for comparisons (e.g., the mountain cascade in no. "68," 57-62) or as a significant background for hymen speech and action (e.g., the seascapes of no. "64"). Like most Latin authors, he is repelled by wild and desolate scenery. The remote woodlands of the Diana hymn inspire a certain awe, but he shudders at the dark snow-clad forests of Cybele's sinister mountain. Even well-cultivated farmland subdued by human labor and ministering to human needs (which Ruskin regarded as the favorite Roman landscape) fails to excite his admiration. We recall how, in his spring poem (no. "46"), he flees the rich plowland of sweltering Nicaea for the shining cities of Asia. He simply does not share Horace's enthusiasm for the country life or Virgil's passion for agriculture. It is true that Sirmio appeals to him partly because of its natural beauty, but he values even more the security it affords and the opportunity for repose after the hardships of travel abroad. Rome, not Sirmio, was his usual place of residence; the metropolis was more attractive than the countryside. At times he seems to sense that nature is positively alien to man. It has no kinship with us. In our sufferings the elements mock us by their indifference, and the endless cycles of the external world taunt our ephemeral hold on existence. Man is not fully at home in his world.

Catullus has a favorable opinion of himself. Notwithstanding his occasional excursions into mild self mockery, he is not troubled by feelings of inadequacy or inferiority. He readily assumes the role of an urbane arbiter of social behavior, and passes confident Judgment on the gaucheries and ineptitudes of his acquaintances. He girds against his saeclum insapiens et infacetum, his "witless, tasteless generation" (no. "43," 8). He retaliates against his rivals with scathing invective. In some respects he believes he stands far above other men. Especially does he praise himself as a faithful lover. He compares his love for Lesbia to a beautiful but defenseless flower, nicked and destroyed by the plow of her culpa. The world has never seen a fides to equal his, nor will it ever again. No one can be his parallel.

Despite this conviction of personal uniqueness, the modern reader ordinarily has little difficulty identifying with him. All poetry worthy of the name fuses the particular with the universal. His thoughts, experiences and emotions are widely shared, especially by young people. Betrayal and rejection are common experiences. Disillusionment is nothing new. Many youthful idealists (Hamlet was not the first) have discovered to their pain that reality does not live up to their expectations, that ingratitude is pandemic, that society is sometimes foolish but more often corrupt, that the flower of love is callously destroyed, that death is final, that this world can show itself a god-forsaken hell, that there are innumerable reasons for pessimism and despair. But Catullus is not always sad. He knows the joy of homecomings, the delight of reunions, the solid satisfactions of true friendship, the sweetness of laughter and kisses, and the exhilaration that comes from plenty of good wine. Excellence does not belong entirely to the past. The wedding songs celebrate fruitfulness, concord and fidelity, happiness in love and in the ongoing continuity of the family. In sum, whether he praises or finds fault, he thinks and feels as many of us still do. He bears witness to the unchanging substratum of human nature. If he did not do so, his poetry would not be classical.

Many classical writers think of man as a paradoxical blend of grandeur and misery. Man is magnificent in his capacity for heroic achievement but pitiable because of the manifold limitations under which life must be lived. Catullus does not altogether accept this formula. He does not deny the possibility of heroism but sees it as belonging to the remote past (Peleus) and as often flawed or spurious even then (Theseus, Achilles). On the other hand, he has a thoroughly classical awareness of human finitude. In his view, our freedom is compromised in a minor sense by other men but in a major sense by time, fortune, fate (the Parcae) and the gods. Against the depredations of the first three he sees no appeal; the gods, however, are ambivalent. He holds that they punish the guilty, but they do not always protect the innocent. At their best they impose obligations of fides and pietas; if we live up to these obligations we are entitled to call upon them in prayer when trouble comes. Usually we do not live up to them, and therefore the world has become a moral waste land in which even the holiest bonds of affection are regularly dishonored. At their worst they smite us with passion (Venus and Cupid) or inexplicable madness (Cybele). Really, the cards are stacked against us. Man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward. To live is to suffer, either through our own fault or that of others or through the very structure of reality; and the end of all is total extinction, nox perpetua.

This is a dark picture, but I repeat that Catullus is far from being a total pessimist. Life does offer major consolations, though the sort that most men value are vain. Catullus does not believe in transcendence through responsible and devoted service to the commonwealth, as many Romans of his class and status did; or through conversion to philosophy, whether Stoic or Epicurean, with its notorious devaluation of the affective life; or through initiation into one or another of the many oriental mystery cults. He certainly does not believe man can save himself through the pursuit of power, wealth and status. Crass hedonism does not seriously tempt him. Depressed by the decadence of the contemporary world, he has no hopes the process may be reversed and a better age be at hand; he dreamed of no new saeclorum ordo such as Virgil foresaw in his Fourth Eclogue. For Catullus, the major sources of satisfaction are true friends (especially fellow poets), conviviality, love in its glorious beginnings, familiar and beloved surroundings (e.g., Sirmio), the joys of a clear conscience, and above all his art.

Not that he believed in art for art's sake. Poetry to Catullus is a source of good, both to his readers and to himself. To his readers it is valuable not only because of the pure pleasure it gives but also because of the wisdom it imparts. Poetry can be a way of teaching, advising, exhorting and consoling. As vicarious experience it enhances our understanding of the human predicament. To the poet, his poetry is even more. It is self-expression first, a kind of safety valve for the pent-up emotions. Further it confers power: power to celebrate whatever may merit praise; power to punish the wicked, to expose the inept, to defend the helpless and to retaliate upon the ungrateful. Even more important it is a way to self-understanding. One of the best ways to sort out one's experience, to make sense of one's existence, is to try to write a good poem about it. And finally if the patrona virgo grants her favor, it is a way to create a series of artifacts which, in a qualified sense at least, will escape the destructive power of time and last plus uno saeclo: down through the years.