Apollonius’ Argonautica is not, of course, the single key to understanding Catullus 64. Versions of the Theseus tradition, for example (especially, one suspects, Callimachus’ Hecale), are of great importance for the interactions between the two stories presented in the ecphrasis, one on the surface, the other barely beneath (see Knox, this volume). There is, however, much to be gained from a recognition that Apollonius’ epic is not only a source of specific allusive references but also, and more importantly, a model for the complex structure of Catullus’ poem and for the extraordinary character of its narrative. A recognition that 1-30 comprise an introduction constructed in direct response to Apollonius enables us to answer, once and for all, why a poem on the wedding of Peleus and Thetis starts with the Argo. And once we see that dicuntur in line 2 leads us specifically to the opening of Apollonius’ second proem, we are primed to seek Apollonius (or, in some instances, another allusive source) behind every authority formula, even less clearly authorized ones such as the innocent-looking locatur in 47, when the coverlet is first ‘‘placed’’ in the middle of Catullus’ poem (cf. sedibus in mediis, 48). We are now better assured that these lines mean to lead us, through allusion, to the placement of the couch over which the golden fleece is laid for Jason and Medea in Argon. 4.1141-3 (the responsibility for which is also not explicitly stated in Apollonius’ poem).
Undoubtedly the most striking aspect of Catullus’ restructuring of Apollonius’ Argonautica is his complete suppression, in his own narrative, of Jason and Medea, and his notable abandonment, once his introduction is finished, of the Argo legend itself. It was suggested in the introduction to this chapter that this extreme combination of allusion and suppression is a means to convey the tension between the poet’s desire for continuity with the literary tradition and his recognition that a break with it is necessary if he is to establish a place for himself. It was further suggested that this tension is figured by the poet as a problem of (murderous) family relations. One effect of Catullus’ placement of the Peleus and Thetis story at the opening of his narrative proper is to straighten out chronology in his frame story, which now moves neatly from the wedding of Peleus and Thetis to its most important result, Achilles. In literary-historical terms, Catullus has placed himself early in the Homeric tradition, and his ‘‘Marriage of Peleus and Thetis’’ becomes, in a sense, ‘‘father’’ to its own ‘‘grandfather,’’ Homer’s Iliad, a family connection strengthened by the emphasis on Achilles (with Homeric allusion) in the final section of the poem. To accomplish this effectively, the poet had to eliminate his own ‘‘father,’’ Apollonius, as well as the Argo legend itself, in what might be viewed as a kind of literary-historical patricide.
Of course, Catullus also expects us to recognize that literary forefathers do not surrender easily to their sons. Catullus’ attempt to replace Apollonius’ Argonautica with Theseus and Ariadne, and to enclose it within the bounds of a narrative digression, has decidedly (and deliberately contrived) mixed results. At one level, the suppressed Argonautica still holds onto its proper position, between the wedding of Peleus and Thetis and the Trojan War; and the extraordinary length of the digression gives the impression that the (barely) hidden Apollonian epic is itself attempting to burst its confining frame. But of course, the Argonautica is also not there: Theseus and Ariadne are.
While the ecphrastic centerpiece has not been the focus of this chapter, it shares and exemplifies the concerns of the poem as a whole. Within the ecphrasis, the tension between continuity and rupture is figured, at an intertextual level, as a tension between the Theseus and Ariadne story and that of Jason and Medea. When Catullus’ language (or that of his characters) directly evokes the contradictions between the two stories (as when Ariadne refers to the Minotaur as her brother), he means for his readers to notice not only his own disruption of the tradition, but his predecessor's similar behavior in using Theseus and Ariadne as an exemplum in his own epic; thus, of course, he establishes a continuity between himself and Apollonius.
It is time, at last, to introduce into the discussion the additional members of Catullus’ (dysfunctional) literary-historical family. As Catullan readers know, it is through allusions not only to Apollonius and Homer, but to many other texts as well, that Catullus evokes the multiple additional poetic voices (including especially Euripides, Ennius, and his own lyric ego), along with the additional perversions of literary or mythological relationships those voices convey, all of which work together to produce his richly complex masterpiece. It is to this cacophony of voices, expressed and suppressed, and most notably to the suppressed voices of Apollonius and his main characters, Jason and Medea, that Catullus refers in his closing epilogue (64.397-408):
But after the earth was initiated with unspeakable crime,
And all mortals banished justice from their desiring minds,
Brothers soaked their hands in brothers' blood,
400
405
The son stopped grieving for his dead parents,
The father hoped for the death of his young son,
So that he might be free to enjoy the flower of an unwed stepmother,
And an impious mother, spreading herself under her unknowing son
Did not fear, impious as she was, the pollution of her family gods.
All things, speakable, unspeakable, confounded by an evil madness, turned away the justice-wielding mind of the gods from us.
Therefore they do not condescend to attend such gatherings, nor do they allow themselves to be touched in the clear light of day.
There could be no more apt expression of the juxtaposition, combination, and suppression of Catullus’ allusive creation than omnia fanda nefanda permixta (‘‘all things, speakable, unspeakable, confounded,’’ 405). In their lament both for an irretrievable past and for the thorough degradation of familial relationships in the present, these lines express two of the chief concerns expressed by Catullus, both narratively and allusively, throughout his epyllion: the problem of belatedness, and the perversion of family relationships that has caused the rupture between the present and the past. In societal terms, Catullus was no doubt aware that his readers would find (as critics have done) in contemporary Roman society all too many possible reference points for the kinds of incestuous relationships his epilogue describes. In aesthetic terms, however, Catullus’ lament is also a proclamation of his own poetic achievement. His fellow neoterics would have recognized it as such: Cinna and Calvus, whose epyllia Catullus may also mean to evoke here, had very likely thema-tized the tension between continuity and rupture similarly in their epics; and their subjects (the incestuous love of Myrrha; Jupiter’s rape of lo) suggest that the perversion of relationships might well have been one of the strategies their poems shared with that of Catullus.
World History
