We have reached what has always been recognized as the true starting point of Catullus’ poem. As Apollonius did with Homer, now Catullus, by structuring his opening in response to Apollonius’ Argonautica, has made the earlier poet’s epic the touchstone for his epyllion. Apollonius’ epic will serve as the primary intertext and structural model for the rest of his poem as well. While the brief space of this chapter does not allow for a full reading of the poem in this light, there is sufficient space to demonstrate, at least in broad outline, how Catullus has restructured elements from the Argonautica to new effect, as well as to suggest a few of the ways that a recognition of the particularly strong relationship between these two epics contributes to a fuller understanding of Catullus 64.
Once the poem begins anew at line 25, its structure, at its most basic, is twofold: the main story, the wedding of Peleus and Thetis, also serves as the frame for an inset narrative, the story of Ariadne and Theseus, related through an {extraordinarily) extensive ecphrastic digression. The story on the uestis, with its complex structure, juxtaposition of visual and verbal media, and representation through multiple viewpoints, occupies the narrative space of, and stands in for, the Argonautica itself. While there is not space to examine it in detail, we will return to consider its significance later. For now, however, our focus will be the frame.
It has long troubled Catullan readers that the wedding appears to have two separate parts {e. g., Klinger 1964: 29-31; Gaisser 1995: 590-1, 608; Lefevre 2000a). The first begins at 31 with the arrival of the Thessalian guests and ends just after the ecphrastic digression, when we are explicitly informed that, having satisfied their desiring gaze by viewing the wedding coverlet, the mortal guests depart {267-8). Afterwards, the divine guests arrive and the second part of the wedding commences, leading to the song of the Fates. Once our attention has been directed by Catullus to Apollonius’ Argonautica, and especially to Book 4, we can see that Catullus found his model for the wedding of Peleus and Thetis, with its inset digression, in the two-part wedding of Jason and Medea, the episode which, significantly, directly follows the
Peleus and Thetis digression in Apollonius’ poem. The strong intertextual resonances between the wedding in Catullus 64 and that in Argonautica 4 have, of course, been noticed (esp. Braga 1950: 160; Klingner 1964: 30; Konstan 1977: 69; Zetzel 1983: 260; Clare 1996: 65-6). What has not been fully appreciated, however, is that, as he did with other aspects of Apollonius’ poem, Catullus has taken over his predecessor’s narrative structure and created from it a new story that is, while obviously different, also closely related to its model, not only in structure but also in content and spirit.
An outline of Apollonius’ narrative will again be useful for an understanding of what Catullus has done. Shortly after the Argonauts land on Phaeacia, they learn that the Colchians have also arrived by a different route, to demand Medea’s surrender and return to her father (Argon. 4.1001-7). When King Alcinous promises his protection to the couple if they are already married, a quick wedding is arranged. The ceremony (Argon. 4.1128-60) is held in a sacred cave (and is well known to Vergil’s readers as a model for Aeneas’ marriage to Dido in Aen. 4, a story that draws from both Apollonius and Catullus 64). The wedding couch is covered with the golden fleece itself, ‘‘so that the marriage might be honored and made the theme of song’’ (1141-3), and this, as readers have long recognized, is the primary inspiration for Catullus 64’s uestis. Nymphs (sent by Hera) and the Argonauts comprise the guest list, and Orpheus is reported to have sung the wedding-song (1159-60). After a brief interlude (to which we will return), a second phase of the wedding takes place the next morning when, after Hera has sent forth a ‘‘true report’’ of the news (1184), the entire city celebrates. Alcinous affirms the union and is faithful to his promise of protection for Medea (1170-1205). As Hunter (1993a: 73) notes, Apollonius’ wedding of Jason and Medea has among its own models earlier poetic accounts of the wedding of Peleus and Thetis, the unhappy results of which, as noted above, Apollonius’ readers have just encountered in the Argonautica’s preceding episode (cf. Vian 1974-81: III.49-50; Byre 2002: 134-9, 146).
Let us consider now the brief interlude that separates the two parts of the wedding of Jason and Medea (Argon. 4.1161-9):
It was not in the land of Alcinous that the heroic son of Aeson had desired to complete his marriage, but in the halls of his father, after his return to lolcos; this also, Medea had intended, but necessity forced them to join at that time. For never, in truth, do we tribes of suffering mortals tread joyfully with a full step, but there is always some bitter pain that accompanies our happiness. And so it was that they, too, although they were warmed by their sweet love, were fearful whether the judgment of Alcinous would be accomplished.
The emotional resonance of these lines with the spirit of Catullus 64 is obvious. More to the point, however, in the creation of his wedding poem Catullus has once again taken a number of cues from Apollonius' epic and recombined them for his own purposes. Most obviously, Catullus has taken over Apollonius’ structure of a two-part ceremony with interlude and replaced Jason and Medea with Peleus and Thetis in his frame. This choice was motivated by the implicit comparison of the two pairs through their representation in successive episodes in Argonautica 4. Then, with the same audacity with which he drastically compressed his model's Peleus and Thetis episode for his opening praeteritio, here he expands - even more dramatically - Apollonius’ very brief interlude, transforming it into a fully developed inset narrative introduced with the wedding couch and its coverlet, and replacing Jason and Medea with Theseus and Ariadne. This decision was inspired especially by Apollonius’ suggestive description of the purpose which lay behind the choice of the golden fleece as wedding coverlet for Jason and Medea (‘‘so that the marriage might be honored and made the theme of song’’) and, as we saw earlier, by Apollonius’ manipulation of the Theseus and Ariadne story as an example, as well as by the recognition, on the part of both poets, of the potential for creative juxtaposition inherent in the similarities and differences between the traditions surrounding the two couples.
The interlude in Apollonius played a role for Catullus as well. While the argument need not be pressed too far, in this short passage Apollonius casts a shadow over the wedding, and the future of Jason and Medea, in much the same way that he does with the Ariadne example. The expressed desires of the couple to marry after the Argo's return, in Aeson’s house, remind the reader of the exceptionally unhappy future that awaits them in their later literary-mythological tradition. The interjection of the poet-narrator's voice in reaction to the couple's fear, and his extension of their situation to all mortals, finds reflection in Catullus' poem in his division of the mortal and divine guests at the wedding of Peleus and Thetis immediately after the ecphrasis is completed. For, as the words of Apollonius’ narrator remind us, it is mortals, not gods, for whom the images on the tapestry have meaning.
While Apollonius places the wedding of Jason and Medea in Argonautica 4 just after the digression which relates the unhappy result of Peleus' and Thetis' union, Catullus reverses this order in his poem: the first part of the wedding, which includes the arrival of the Thessalian guests, then the long ecphrastic digression and its exclusive viewing by the mortals, has as its primary correspondence the wedding of Jason and Medea in Apollonius’ poem. (Even the juxtaposition of two peculiar versions of the Golden Age in 64.35-42 and 43-9, one evocative of Hesiod’s ‘‘Myth of the Ages’’ in the Works and Days, the other characterized by the opulence of Peleus’ palace, finds a parallel in Apollonius’ description of the kingdom of Phaeacia, the site of his wedding. Phaeacia is first introduced with the story, most familiar from Hesiod’s Theogony, of Cronos’ mutilation of his father [Argon. 4.982-6; the story provides an etymology for the island’s name Drepane, ‘‘sickle’’], but is also the home, of course, of the Odyssean palace of Alcinous.)
What, then, of the second part of Catullus’ wedding in poem 64? For this, the ceremonial banquet, Catullus has followed traditional versions of the Peleus and Thetis story (though of course, with his own revisions in the divine guest list), according to which all the gods attend the wedding, but no mortals apart from Peleus himself (Lefevre 2000a: 187-9). The use of an elaborate Homeric simile to describe the departure of the mortal wedding guests is meant to signal to Catullus' readers that we have entered not only a new part of the wedding but also a new allusive world (64.269-77). For it is no longer Apollonius’ Argonautica but now Homer's Iliad that serves as the primary intertext, especially for the telling of Achilles’ future in the song of the Fates (Klingner 1964: 30-1; Stoevesandt 1994/5; Od. 24.35-97 is also a likely source, for Agamemnon concludes his description of Achilles’ funeral with: ‘‘but what pleasure is this to me, that I have wound up the spool of war?’’).
Apollonius' epic does offer, in Hera's speech to Thetis, a prophecy concerning Achilles that is not included in the Fates' song (indeed, it cannot be, since it involves a character suppressed in Catullus’ poem) but would naturally follow their vision of Achilles’ future and provide a direct link not only between Peleus, Thetis, and Medea but also, thematically, between all three pairs in both poems (Argon. 4.810-17):
‘‘But come, let me relate a tale (Greek: mythos) that is infallible. When your son comes someday to the Elysian plain,... it is fated that he will be the husband of Medea, daughter of Aeetes. Therefore help your daughter-in-law as a mother-in-law should, and help Peleus himself.’’
As Byre (2002: 136-7) noted, Hera’s promise of a kind of immortality (combined with marriage) for Achilles and Medea suggests an alternative fate for both characters not dissimilar to that of Ariadne.
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