Peliaco quondam prognatae uertice pinus dicuntur liquidas Neptuni nasse per undas Phasidos ad fluctus et fines Aeeteos
Pines born on the Pelian peak once upon a time
Are said to have swum through the clear waters of Neptune
To the waves of Phasis and the Aeetean borders.
The key word is dicuntur. Its employment here is an instance of the phenomenon rightly recognized as not only a general poetic appeal to authority (the Callimachean ‘‘I sing nothing unattested’’ [fr. 623 Pf.]) but, more specifically, a self-conscious marker of allusion, for which Ross coined the phrase ‘‘Alexandrian footnote’’ (1975: 78; Hinds 1998: 1-3). Gaisser raised a significant point, however, with her observation that dicuntur in line 2, which she called an ‘‘authority formula,’’ also alerts the reader to the story’s status as a fiction which has many authors (1995: 582). In this instance, the plural verb (strictly speaking, attached to its plural noun, pinus) is particularly apt, since, as R. F. Thomas (1982: 144-60) has shown, the poet pointedly alludes to a number of different literary texts in 1-18 (Zetzel 1983; Stoevesandt 1994/5).
Still, as Gaisser’s observation reminds us, Alexandrian footnotes, even when they are footnotes, are not necessarily (or even usually) exhaustive, but more often serve, as dicuntur does here, as a signal to the reader that a certain selectivity has been employed by the poet in his handling of the tradition. This leads to two aspects of the opening of Catullus’ epyllion that have not yet been fully explained. First, in his allusion to previous poetic versions of the Argo legend, the poet-narrator has been simultaneously selective and exhaustive. Selectively, in 1-18 (esp. 1-14), he has concentrated his (and his readers’) attention on the ship, highlighting his predecessors’ conflicting accounts of its material (pine versus fir), its maker (Argus or Athena), and the derivation of its name (from Argus, or from the nationality of the Argonauts themselves [Argiuae robora pubis, ‘‘strength of the Argive youth,’’ 5], or from the adjective ‘‘swift’’ [Greek argos; Latin citus, in cita decurrerepuppi, ‘‘to course along in a swift ship,’’ 6]). Exhaustively, Catullus has recalled so many of the previous literary versions of the Argo story in his representation of the ship that the reader has the feeling the poet has surely included them all. A third quality of Catullus’ intertextual practice might also be added: suppression. For the poet has done all of this without ever naming either the ship itself or its traditional creator (R. F. Thomas 1982: 162).
This raises certain questions: why has the poet selected the ship, in particular, as his focus, and why has he described it with such a display of learned detail yet omitted directly naming it or its (mortal) builder? The answer to these questions is found in Catullus’ most important model, Apollonius’ Argonautica, and is signaled by a second aspect of Catullus’ initial verb that has not been fully appreciated: dicuntur is an unusual way for a poet-narrator to begin an epic. With his opening words, the poet first identifies his narrative role in relation to the story he will tell, and the reader expects either a request from the Muse (such as the Iliad’s ‘‘sing, Muse, the anger of Peleus' son Achilles'') or a first-person beginning such as that which opened Hesiod's
Theogony (‘‘From the Heliconian Muses let us begin to sing’’) and was later used by Aratus in the Phaenomena (‘‘From Zeus let us begin’’) and by Apollonius in his Argonautica (‘‘Beginning with you, Apollo, I will recall the famous deeds of men of ages past’’). Vergil and Ovid both return to the first-person opening in their own highly allusive epic beginnings (Vergil’s Aristaeus episode in Georgies 4 announces itself similarly [lines 285-6]); and the pseudo-Vergilian epyllion Ciris begins with the poet. As Buhler (1960: 47) noted, Catullus does follow Callimachus’ precedent in the Hecale in ‘‘using an ornamental adjective with adverb to sum up the dateless past.’’ Callimachus’ first sentence, however, contains a finite verb (‘‘once upon a time there lived an Attic woman in the hill country of Erechtheus’’ [Hollis 1990: 137]). While Callimachus’ Hecale may well have been a source for the Theseus story in 64, Catullus is not following the earlier poet’s lead with his dicuntur.
There is something unusually manneristic about Catullus’ delegation of narrative authority as a means to open his poem. As has been suggested already, Catullus has taken his cue from Apollonius here, though not from his model’s first line. The proem of Apollonius’ Argonautica itself exhibits a complex structure, which alludes to both Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey (Fantuzzi 1988: 22-3; Goldhill 1991: 288-91; Hunter 1993a: 119-23; Clauss 1993:14-25; Clare 2002: 20-32,261-2). Furthermore, Apollonius has adopted the structure of the Iliad’s beginning as the model for his own proem: ‘‘In both poems the opening verses foreshadow later major events - what the epic is about (Argonautica 1.1-4, Iliad 1.1-7) - and then a transitional passage fills in some of the background up to the point at which the narrative proper begins ( Arg. 1.1-4, Iliad 1.12-42).’’ In doing this, the Hellenistic poet has drawn his readers’ attention to Homer as the ‘‘touchstone against which to measure his epic’’ (Hunter 1993a: 119).
Apollonius is also concerned, of course, to differentiate himself from Homer and signal his own contribution to the epic tradition. He unveils his poem's true starting point with a second proem in 18-23:
As for the ship, the singers who came before me still celebrate that Argus made it, under the guidance of Athena.
But I now will tell the lineage and names
Of the heroes, and their long journeys over the sea,
And the deeds they accomplished as they wandered.
May the Muses be the inspirers of my song.
Apollonius uses a variant of the authority formula (‘‘they celebrate’’) to locate himself within the tradition of poets who have also sung of the Argonaut legend. By opening his verse with ‘‘ship’’ (nea), Apollonius emphasizes for the reader that poets of the past have made their subject the Argo itself. He, however, disposes of the vessel quickly, attributing its creation to Argus, with Athena's help (though as a learned poet himself, he was no doubt aware of competing versions). With his abbreviated yet prominent mention of the ship's treatment by earlier poets, Apollonius employs the strategy of praeteritio and simultaneously suggests that a detailed description of its creation is by now hackneyed, or that, in good Alexandrian fashion, he has selected one version, perhaps even alluding to a particular earlier treatment, and suppressed the others (Goldhill 1991: 290-1; Hunter 1993a: 122). The praeteritio also, of course, serves another, more significant function, which is that ofstaking the poet's claim for his own place in the tradition to which he has referred. His contribution, Apollonius announces in 20-2, will be the catalogue of heroes, which immediately follows these lines.
Apollonius’ praeteritio in 18 provides the answer to our question(s) of why Catullus has chosen to begin with the Arggo itself and why he has described it with such allusive precision. In 64.1-18, Catullus meets the implicit challenge he found in Apollonius’ dismissal of a detailed description of the Argo as passe. In response, Catullus demonstrates ably what a talented neoteric poet can do with the long succession of predecessors available to him (including, now, Roman poets as well as Greek); and in this sense, his display of intertextual virtuosity in the opening of his epyllion exhibits a kind of literary polemic, though of a slightly different order than R. F. Thomas (1982) suggested. Catullus’ suppression of the one fact directly included by Apollonius (Argus’ manufacture of the ship) serves as a backhanded acknowledgment of his primary allusive model. It also puts us on the alert to the possibility that other aspects of Apollonius’ epic might receive similar treatment.
Once we recognize that Catullus’ dicuntur responds to a narrative strategy in Apollonius, we receive reassurance, on a metapoetic level, of what we have known all along, that our poet is in fact running the show from behind the curtain. But, as has been noted, in Apollonius’ second proem (18-23), which follows his first-person opening, the Apollonian ego again appears, this time to announce the upcoming catalogue that is the genuine start of his narrative. Catullus, in contrast, has (thus far, at least) removed all personal identifying markers from his opening. His allusion to his predecessor’s narrative strategy of praeteritio suggests that lines 1-18 of poem 64 similarly comprise a praeteritio (or part of one), albeit a more elaborate one. Furthermore, our confidence that Catullus recognized the Iliadic structure that lay behind Apollonius’ start leads us to expect that he has similar plans to rework his own model’s beginning. Catullus’ decision to begin his poem with an allusion to the start of Apollonius’ second proem is an example of the poet’s determination simultaneously to continue and to disrupt the epic tradition as he received it. As Apollonius had imitated Homer’s structure, then added a second proem, Catullus follows (and reworks) Apollonius, beginning at precisely the point where the earlier poet distinguished himself from his model.
Catullus’ refusal to acknowledge his narrative control at the very start of his poem has a further effect. In the context of his own epyllion, we receive the impression that our poet, like the characters within the narrative, and like the reader, is reacting to the course of the poem rather than guiding it. The (unnamed) Argo itself seems to assert control over the narrative in 1-18. The first action narrated is that of the ship, in the form of personified pine trees, swimming through the sea (2), and it is the Argo as subject that ‘‘first initiated the inexperienced Amphitrite’’ (11) and that ‘‘plowed the sea with its beak’’ (12). Finally, it is the ship as monstrum (‘‘marvel,’’ 15) that draws the nymphs’ admiring gaze and motivates them to emerge from the water and display themselves to the sailors (12-18).
A Catullan praeteritio continues: the Apollonian Argonautica is
Interrupted
In 19-21, Catullus introduces a startling twist to the Argo’s story. The surprise is accompanied by the second appearance of an authority formula, fertur (19).
Tum Thetidis Peleus incensus fertur amore, tum Thetis humanos non despexit hymenaeos, tum Thetidi pater ipse iugandum Pelea sensit.
Then for Thetis Peleus is said to have been inflamed with love,
Then Thetis did not look down upon wedding a mortal,
Then to Thetis the father himself (sc. Jupiter) felt that Peleus should be joined.
In this instance, as Gaisser (1995: 585) noted, the formula does not appear to be fully reliable as an allusive marker. For here Catullus uses fertur when reporting an event whose timing, which the poet emphasizes with the first tum of an anaphoric trio, Catullus himself appears to have invented, in direct contradiction to traditional versions of the myth (see esp. Ellis 1889: 278-83). Most significantly, those earlier versions include Apollonius’ Argonautica, in which Peleus and Thetis are married prior to the Argo sailing, and Chiron brings the child Achilles to see his father off (Argon. 1.558). Could it be that, as with dicuntur, Catullus is challenging the reader to seek a different kind of intertextual model, one that is again concerned not only with content but also, and more pointedly, with structure and narrative control?
With fertur following upon dicuntur, Catullus has allusively and authoritatively, if again obliquely, marked his disruptive contribution to the mythological (and literary) tradition as he received it, and directed his reader to the epic narrative (and narrator) that inspired his daring innovation and whose version of the story he has upset most dramatically. Our ability to recognize what this marker conveys depends upon our recognition of two additional aspects of Catullus’ poem here that imitate Apollonius’ narrative practice. First, we must recognize that Catullus is not simply producing a mini-Argonautica in his opening 24 lines; more specifically, the neoteric poet offers, within his condensed Apollonian epic, an extraordinarily compressed (and, as a result, heavily revised) version of the Peleus-Thetis episode as Apollonius himself had presented it (64.12-18). It is immediately after this, but before the (Apollonian) Argonautica ends, that Catullus inserts his chronological twist.
The reader must also recognize Apollonius as the model for the insertion of the twist itself. We may begin more readily with this second demand, since it has already long been suspected by Catullus’ readers that Apollonius lies behind Catullus’ audacious revision in line 19 (cf. Clausen 1982: 192: ‘‘Perhaps Catullus was emboldened by the example of Apollonius’’). The grounds for this suspicion also provide the primary evidence in its support. For, in Catullus 64’s second major reversal of traditional literary-mythological chronology, Catullus follows Apollonius’ lead more directly (though no less obliquely: Weber 1983). A brief examination of this second reversal in Catullus 64, and of the Apollonian manipulation that inspired it, will be useful for our consideration of the epyllion’s first switch.
As we have seen, the Argo is introduced by Catullus as the world’s first ship (‘‘that ship first initiated Amphitrite with its voyage,’’ 64.11); but later, in the Theseus and Ariadne story embroidered on the wedding coverlet (uestis), Theseus is depicted sailing away in a ship, a chronological impossibility set up by the poem itself. For we are told that the coverlet depicts priscis hominum.. .figuris (‘‘ancient figures of men,’’ 64.50), which certainly suggests, if read straightforwardly, a time prior to that of the wedding for which the tapestry was woven. It has also been noted that Catullus, in reversing the chronology, has followed the precedent set by Apollonius, who similarly manipulated the relative timing of Theseus’ legend and the Argonauts’ journey in his own epic (Weber 1983: 269; Clare 1996: 66-8).
Catullus will have noticed that while Apollonius did not overtly signal the inconsistencies in his use of the Theseus tradition, he called attention to them nonetheless, and without taking full responsibility for the problems he had created. It is the poet-narrator who, in the catalogue of heroes, excuses Theseus from taking part in the expedition on the grounds that he was detained in the underworld (Argon. 1.101), not, as the later mentions of the hero in Books 3 and 4 would suggest, because he was chronologically unavailable. In Book 3, it is Jason, not the poet-narrator directly, who marks the remoteness of his story of Ariadne and Theseus with ‘‘once upon a time’’ (de pote. Argon. 3.997), granting it an antiquity that contradicts the introduction of Theseus in Book 1. It is also Jason who emphasizes only the most positive aspects of Ariadne’s story as he relates it to Medea, omitting the unpleasant elements and employing pointedly ambiguous language that is immediately noticed by every reader. Still later, in Argonautica 4, the robe sent by Jason and Medea among the gifts to lure Apsyrtus to his death is said to retain the divine fragrance from the time when Dionysus held Ariadne, whom ‘‘once upon a time (pote) Theseus had abandoned on the island of Dia, when she had followed him from Cnossus’’ (Argon. 4.430-4); and we learn in the same passage that Hypsipyle, the Lemnian queen who, as Jason’s lover in Book 1, prefigures Medea’s role in the epic, is the granddaughter of Dionysus and Ariadne (Argon. 4.424-7). In this instance, it is the poet-narrator who further complicates the poem’s chronology of Theseus and Ariadne; and by mentioning Theseus’ abandonment of Ariadne directly, he supplies the unpleasant aspect of Ariadne’s story omitted from Jason’s account to Medea in Book 3 (Weber 1983: 269; Fusillo 1985: 69-71; Hunter 1989 ad 997-1004; Goldhill 1991: 301-6).
Apollonius’ treatment of Theseus (and no doubt of other aspects of his epic) sensitized Catullus to the idea that strict faithfulness to mythological-literary history was, or could be, a choice, and that violation of the tradition offered significant poetic possibilities. Also, as Catullus’ expert manipulation of his allusive sources in 1-18 demonstrates, he was fully aware that the choice of which earlier versions, or even individual elements, ofmyths are selected and privileged as intertextual models also lies with the poet. In Catullus’ rendition of the Peleus and Thetis story in 19-21, he takes his cues on narrative selection most strongly from Apollonius’ Jason. Like the ‘‘once upon a time’’ of Jason in Argonautica 3.997, but with greater emphasis, Catullus marks his chronological revision with tum (‘‘at that time’’) in 19. He then completes, in 20-1, his own highly selective and pointedly ambiguous - but not, apart from the timing, altogether false - description of the courtship of Peleus and Thetis. Fertur in 19 is not (again, apart from the chronology) employed by the poet in bad faith; for there are versions of the story (including that in Argon. 4.805-9) in which Thetis does not disdain the marriage itself (her anger comes later); and in Pindar (Isthm. 8.45-7), Zeus joins the other gods in favoring the union of Thetis with a mortal, once the prophecy that Thetis will bear a child greater than his father is known.
It is worth noting that apart from fertur, nothing about the poet’s presentation of his mythological innovations in 19-21 is equivocal. The lines are presented with considerable fanfare, as a triplet, each beginning, as mentioned above, with anaphoric tum, the force of which is felt all the more strongly as it is followed in each instance with Thetis in polyptoton ( Thetidis... Thetis... Thetidi).
Apollonius’ Peleus and Thetis: Catullan compression and revision
The reader’s recognition of Apollonius as the model for Catullus’ chronological disruption in 19-21 is only one of the two aspects of his revision of the earlier poet’s Peleus and Thetis story that Catullus expects his reader to notice. We turn now to the other: Catullus’ allusive compression, in 11-18, of the Peleus and Thetis episode of Apollonius’ epic.
In order to appreciate more fully what Catullus has done with his model, it will be useful to summarize the structure and character of the story as it is told in Argonautica 4, where it forms part of a digression from the main narrative: the escape of Jason and Medea, with the Argonauts, from the pursuit of Medea’s family after the murder of her brother Apsyrtus. The account begins just after Circe’s expulsion of the pair from her island with the warning that Medea’s father will not give up his pursuit to avenge her brother’s death. Hera, who has been monitoring events, sends Iris to summon Thetis, whose aid, together with that of her sister Nereids, Hera enlists to guide the Argo between the hazards of Scylla, Charybdis, and the Wandering Rocks. The episode is of considerable length (Argon. 4.757-968) and becomes itself part of a mini-Odyssey, which finally rejoins Medea’s story at Alcinous’ palace at Phaeacia, to which the Colchians have pursued the couple by an alternate route (Vian 1974-81: III. 46; V. Knight 1995: 207-16; Byre 2002: 134-9; Clare 2002: 139-44).
Within the digression, the story of Peleus’ and Thetis’ wedding, which (as it is told here) was followed shortly afterward by the goddess’ angry departure when her attempts to insure immortality for Achilles were discovered by her husband, is related in a series of flashbacks and speeches, from the different viewpoints of Hera, Thetis, Peleus, and the narrator (Hunter 1993a: 96-100; V. Knight 1995: 297-303). As Hunter has shown, Apollonius has blended elements of two Homeric accounts (Il. 18.429-35, 24.59-63), as well as a number of additional sources, into his depiction of the pair’s relationship. Thetis’ anger, Hunter points out, has an intertextual referent, as it ‘‘is a characteristic of the Homeric Achilles which Apollonius has transferred to his mother in the previous generation’’ (1993a: 99). The couple have only a brief personal encounter (‘‘she drew near and barely touched the hand of Peleus; for he was her husband,’’ Argon. 4.852-3); and when she leaves after their short conversation, her anger unabated, Peleus remembers, painfully, her earlier angry departure (Argon. 4.865-8). Hunter describes the scene between them as ‘‘a powerful manifestation of the gulf between man and god’’ (1993a: 100).
With this in mind, let us return to Catullus 64 and examine the neoteric poet’s revisionist compression of the episode in his introduction. For this, we need especially lines 11-18:
Illa rudem cursu prima imbuit Amphitriten; quae simul ac rostro uentosum proscidit aequor tortaque remigio spumis incanuit unda, emersere freti candenti e gurgite uultus aequoreae monstrum Nereides admirantes. illa, atque <haud> alia, uiderunt luce marinas mortales oculis nudato corpore Nymphas nutricum tenus exstantes e gurgite cano.
That (ship) first initiated inexperienced Amphitrite in its course; as soon as it plowed the windy plain of the sea with its beak, and the wave, twisted by the oars, grew white with foam, from the churning surge of the sea the ocean’s Nereids raised up their faces, marveling at the wonder.
On that day, and no other, mortals saw with their eyes the sea Nymphs, their bodies bared as far as their breasts, rising forth from the gray-white surge.
While the allusions to Apollonius in this passage have long been recognized, R. F. Thomas (1982: 158-9; cf. Syndikus 1990: 120-3) demonstrated that, in fact, Catullus has conflated in these lines two different passages of the Argonautica. One is from the opening book, where the nymphs of Mount Pelion look down in wonder on the Argo, the world’s first ship, as it embarks on its maiden voyage (Argon. 1.549b-52):
On the topmost peaks the Pelian nymphs marveled as they looked upon the work of Itonian Athena, and at the heroes themselves, wielding the oars with their arms.
The other passage is from the episode just described, in the poem’s final book. Despite the story’s many unhappy elements, Catullus has selected a pleasant moment, near the end of the digression, when the Nereids are sporting about in the water, helping the ship along (Argon. 4.933-55). There is even a Catullan play with the Nereids’ attire: Apollonius’ nymphs are described as rolling up their garments to their waists (Argon. 4.948-50), while Catullus’ Nereids are bare-breasted (64.17-18) (Cairns 1984: 100; Hunter 1991). This inversion of detail in Catullus’ account draws the mortals’ gaze to the nymphs and leads directly to the moment in which Catullus interrupts the Argonautica of his predecessor.
By selecting and recombining a moment from the Argonautica's opening action with a (deceptively positive) moment from Apollonius' Peleus and Thetis episode, Catullus has successfully condensed the contents of Apollonius' Argonautica in a manner that serves his own aim of representing the Peleus-Thetis story as one of love at first sight, which occurred when the couple met, during the first sailing of the Argo. And in fact, Catullus' tendentious representation of actual events in his model's epic makes his chronological disruption, when read as it is presented on the surface of his own poem, appear to be the next logical phase in the Argonautica's progress (Clare 1996: 62-5).
Once we recognize the purpose behind Catullus’ conflation of the two Apollonian passages, we can see also that he has signaled his compression with illa atque <haud> alia (Bergk’s correction of the corrupt manuscript is surely right) in 16. These words also find a correspondence in the passage from Argonautica 1: just before the Pelian nymphs are introduced, we learn that ‘‘on that day (hemati keinoi) all the gods looked down from heaven upon the ship and the might of the heroes’’ (547-8). Catullus’ addition of‘‘and no other’’ points not only to his conflation of two different occasions in Apollonius' epic but also to two Homeric passages where Thetis and her sisters appear. One is from Iliad 18.35 ff., when the Nereids leave the sea to comfort Achilles after the death of Patroclus (first noted by Curran 1969: 187); the other appears in
Odyssey 24.47-59, when Agamemnon reveals to Achilles in the underworld the details of the hero’s funeral, including the fact that his mother came forth from the sea with her sisters upon hearing of her son’s death. Here again, Catullus signals his continuity with the epic tradition even as he distinguishes himself from his immediate predecessor (and both of these passages, like the Peleus-Thetis episode in Argonautica 4, lend unhappy undertones to Catullus’ happy love story: Curran 1969).
Catullus’ praeteritio (and mini-Argonautica) end, and his new poem begins
We are beginning to gain a better understanding of Catullus’ aims in these opening lines. In order to see the poet’s plan more completely, it is necessary to examine closely not only 22-4 but those lines that follow (25-30) as well:
O nimis optato saeclorum tempore nati 22
Heroes, saluete, deum genus! o bona matrum
Progenies, saluete iter<um... 23b
Uos ego saepe, meo uos carmine compellabo.
Teque adeo eximie taedis felicibus aucte, 25
Thessaliae columen Peleu, cui Iuppiter ipse,
Ipse suos diuum genitor concessit amores;
Tene Thetis tenuit pulcerrima Nereine?
Tene suam Tethys concessit ducere neptem,
Oceanusque, mari totum qui amplectitur orbem? 30
O heroes, born in a time of the ages too much hoped for!
Hail, offspring of the gods! O blessed sons of mothers,
You (sc. heroes) often, you I will address in my song.
And you especially, exceptionally blessed by happy wedding torches, 25
Pillar of Thessaly, Peleus, to whom Jupiter himself, the father of the gods himself, gave up his own love.
Was it you whom Thetis, the most beautiful daughter of Nereus, held?
Was it you whom Tethys allowed to marry her own granddaughter,
And Ocean, who embraces the whole world with his sea? 30
Lines 22-4, as both Zetzel (1983: 260-1) and Klingner (1964: 167-8) noticed, allude to the poet’s words at the close of the Argonautica (4.1773-5; cf. also Gaisser 1995: 585):
Be gracious, heroes, born of the blessed gods! And may these songs from year to year grow sweeter to sing among men.
But there is more going on here; for Catullus’ apostrophe to the heroes is phrased not as a valediction but as a salutation (saluete, 23), which, as Fordyce (1961: ad loc.) notes, belongs to the style of hymns (Zetzel 1983; Gaisser 1995). Here, a recognition of the unusual character of Apollonius’ closing (and opening) proves significant. As Goldhill (1991: 287) points out, performances of Greek epic were regularly preceded by a short hymn, and Apollonius’ epic both begins (Argon. 1.1) and ends with language common to the closing formulas of hymns, ‘‘as if the complete Argonautica has become a (hymnic) prelude; as if the pretext to end is - playfully - an epic to come.’’ Goldhill’s words summarize well the strategy Catullus noticed in his epic model, and which he reworked, to new effect, in his epyllion.
For Catullus, lines 22-4 serve a dual role, both as an ending and as a new beginning; and we are meant to hear echoes of both the closing and opening (again Argon. 1.1 is meant) of Apollonius’ epic. The transition in Catullus 64 is signaled by the repetition of saluete in 23 and 23b; and the hymnic resonance of these lines suits Catullus’ intended subject, a wedding celebration. More significantly, we are also meant to hear an additional echo of Apollonius, signaled by the reduction of uos to te at the start of lines 24 and 25 and, more pointedly, by teque adeo in the latter. As both Fordyce (1961: ad loc.) and Quinn (1973a: ad loc.) note, adeo is used in line 25 to mark a climax. But what sort of climax? The opening passages of Vergil Eclogues 4 and Georgies 1, both adduced as parallels by Fordyce, serve as especially suggestive points of comparison. In Eclogue 4, a poem whose intertextual associations with Catullus 64 are well established, a series of expressions announcing a new age culminates in line 11, which begins teque adeo and singles out the consulship of Pollio as the contemporary moment that begins an age of renewal in Rome. (This is followed, anaphorically, by te duce at the start of line 13, a verse that echoes Catullus 64.295.) At the opening of Vergil’s Georgics, the poet invokes, in hymn form, a long list of deities, culminating with Augustus, who is addressed with tuque adeo at the start of line 24. In Vergil’s passages, therefore (which may, especially in Ecl. 4, find their models in Catullus 64), teque adeo and tuque adeo mark the climax of a series. This is the manner in which teque adeo is meant to be understood by Catullus in 64.25 as well. As he closes his mini-Argonautica, the poet-narrator invokes the poem’s heroes, then immediately proceeds to single out Peleus among them. The repetition of saluete, further emphasized by iterum in 23b, drives home the point.
Catullus has, therefore, announced the true beginning of his poem with a multiple Apollonian allusion, pointing not only to the first and final lines of his model but also to the beginning that, as we saw earlier, was privileged by Apollonius as his own contribution to the Argonaut legend: the catalogue of heroes. Catullus, then, has closed his praeteritio with a reversal of his predecessor’s use of the same rhetorical ploy, drastically reducing Apollonius’ catalogue to a sole representative, just as Apollonius had reduced his depiction of the legendary ship to one line.
The fact that 25-30 constitute, for Catullus, a second and new beginning is further marked by the duplication, in this passage, of his first, brief narration of the Peleus and Thetis story in 19-21. As Quinn (1973a: ad loc.) notes, a second anaphora begins with teque in 25, continued by tene... tene to open 28 and 29; and this recalls the anaphoric tum in 19-21. While the polyptoton of Thetis in 19-21 is not repeated exactly, a similar effect is produced by Thessaliae... Thetis... Tethysin 26, 28, and 29. There is in the second version of the story, signaled by language repeated from the earlier lines, an emphasis on different details, to mark a transition from the courtship, related within the mini-Argonautica, to the wedding itself, the first event of Catullus’ new poem.
The final element in the first story (21) is the report that Jupiter, expressed as pater ipse, ‘‘felt’’ (sensit) that Peleus and Thetis should be joined. In the new version, this event is relayed in a different manner, in a direct address to Peleus, and it receives two lines: in 26-7 Jupiter is introduced by name, and ipse, repeated in epanalepsis at the end of 26 and start of 27, recalls pater ipse from 21 and defines it more specifically, with diuum genitor, ‘‘father of the gods.’’ With concessit (27) replacing sensit (21), emphasis is placed on the marriage to Thetis as a special favor granted to Peleus by Jupiter. There is also an allusion in both passages, more pronounced in the second, to the role that paternity played in Jupiter’s decision. The question in 29, while it places proper emphasis, in a wedding context, on the extraordinary beauty of the bride, also recalls, and appears to query further, the lukewarm expression of Thetis’ eagerness for the wedding in 20 (non despexit). There is also here an implicit reversal of the tradition, best known from Ovid (Met. 11.217-65), that Thetis herself was notoriously difficult to grasp. The description of Peleus as incensus... amore in 19 is replaced in 25 with a different kind of flame (taedis felicibus aucte, 25), and amor itself is transferred to Jupiter. Finally, 29-30 add details not present in the earlier story, as they trace Thetis’ lineage back to her maternal grandparents, Oceanus and Tethys.
The emphasis in both passages on Jupiter’s paternal role, and the mention of Thetis’ father and grandparents in 28-30, evokes for the reader, both directly and allusively, the complicated familial relations involved in the couple’s wedding story. Jupiter’s description as diuum genitor (27) points to the prophecy that Thetis’ son would be greater than his father, which would, in Jupiter’s case, mean his potential displacement as supreme ruler of the gods. Diuum genitor also, however, recalls deum genus (and matrum progenies) in 23-4 and reminds us that Jupiter is well known as a progenitor of heroes as well as gods. Furthermore, Jupiter’s surrender of his beloved to Peleus brings its own complications. When we learn the names of Thetis’ father and (maternal) grandparents, we are encouraged to recall the groom’s lineage as well, including not only his father, Aeacus, but also, and more significantly, his grandfather, who was, according to tradition, Jupiter himself (through a union with the daughter of a river god). The similar constructions of lines 27 and 29, including the repeated verb concessit with the same object expressed in different terms (suos... amores [27] becomes suam... neptem [29]), further highlights the awkward relations between the couple’s families.
Juno/Hera is notably absent from either Catullan account; her presence is felt, however, since the choice of Peleus as Thetis’ mortal husband is typically attributed to her (not Jupiter, as in 21). Apollonius’ Hera in particular lies behind the description of Peleus as ‘‘raised up by the wedding torches’’ (25), which echoes Hera’s recollection that she herself had raised the bridal torch in honor of Thetis’ loyalty (Argon. 4.808-9). Hera’s own relationship to the bride might also be suggested by the mention of Oceanus and Tethys in 29-30. Hunter, in his discussion of the scene between Hera and Thetis in Argonautica 4, pointed out that Hera’s speech has, in addition to the Homeric intertexts in Iliad 18 and 24, ‘‘a further Homeric model which flickers over the Apollonian surface’’ (1993a: 98). He refers here to Hera’s ‘‘Deception of Zeus’’ in Iliad 14 and, more specifically, to the speech of Hera to Aphrodite (Il. 14.200-10, later repeated in part to Zeus at 301-6), in which the goddess claims, falsely, that she is embarked on a mission to reunite her foster parents, Oceanus and Tethys, who have been separated for years after quarrelling. In Argon. 4.790-2, Hera represents herself as a foster mother to Thetis in words her Homeric counterpart used to describe the care she received from her adoptive parents {It. 14.202-3). The similarities between the story in the Iliad and that of Peleus and Thetis in Apollonius’ epic, as well as Hera’s role as would-be conciliator in both, are clear. Catullus’ diuum genitor in 19, and his allusive juxtaposition of the respective grandparents of the wedding couple, may provide a link with Hera’s story in Iliad 14: in line 201, she refers to Oceanus as theOngenesin, ‘‘progenitor of the gods.’’
It is, of course, the lineage of Peleus that serves most readily as a figure for Catullus’ relationship with his epic predecessors. This is not meant to be overly tidy. Even so, it is tempting to see in the figure of Jupiter the tradition’s beginning in Homer; then, when Jupiter, fearful of the son who might overthrow him, surrenders the object of his affection to his grandson, the subject of Catullus’ poem is created: the marriage of Peleus and Thetis. The elision of the link between grandfather and grandson, Peleus’ father Aeacus {and perhaps also the suppression of the son Jupiter and Thetis might have produced), parallels the suppression in Catullus’ poem of his immediate epic model.
World History
