8/27 - Catullus LXIV (64)

• In the first 50 lines, we read the framing story of the bulk of the poem's narrative, which told the story of the marriage of Peleus and Thetis. Peleus was an Argonaut, one of the sailors on the first ship, the Argo, which Jason sailed to Colchis to retrieve the Golden Fleece. The narrative tells of the sea and all her creatures' amazement at the first keel breaking the waters; in their astonishment the Nymphs rise to the surface to watch, among them Thetis, daughter of Oceanus. Peleus, aboard the Argo, falls in love with her, and they plan to marry.
• On the day of the wedding, everyone in Thessaly comes to Pharsalus (the home of Achilles, son of Peleus and Thetis; the setting thus references the Iliad), abandoning their work and their homes in favor of the palace in which the wedding will be held. The palace is described with synonyms of "gleaming"; every object in the house shines, owing to the union. Upon the marriage couch of Thetis lies a tapestry or covering which is decorated with a story, that of Ariadne, which begins on Line 50.
• The poem is an epyllion, or a miniature epic, and so mimics their style, with dactylic hexameters. Yet it's a personal poem, so far largely empty of gods.
• Compare the relationship Catullus and Homer with Vergil and Homer: Catullus borrows the characters of the Iliad in Achilles' parents, but sets them in a romantic and small-scale situation (a wedding); Vergil continues the epic tone and transcribes the wrath central to the earlier epic, that of Achilles, to Juno. The reason for Catullus' allusion is because of his status as a novus poeta; his knowledge of the epic was filtered through the Alexandrian poets and their database of literary knowledge. The Augustan poets (Vergil + Horace) are literary poets, with heavy reference to past, principally Greek works.
• Elevated poetry: similar to the Vergil, than previously thought: epic meter, metonymy, repetition, anaphora, chiasmus and synchysis, apostrophe, hyperbaton, periphrasis, etc.

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LXIV (64) 50-51

haec vestis priscis hominum variata figuris

heroum mira virtutes indicat arte.

This tapestry varied [embroidered] with ancient figures of men

The virtues of heroes indicate with remarkable skill.