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2 - Catullus 64: Variants and the virtues of heroes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 January 2010

James J. O'Hara
Affiliation:
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
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Summary

Theseus knew he owed his life and his country's freedom to Ariadne's courage, and he knew he could not leave without her. Some say he asked Minos for her hand in marriage, and that the king gladly consented. Others say she stole onto the departing ship at the last minute without her father's knowledge. Either way, the two lovers were together when the anchor lifted and the dark ship sailed away from Crete. But this happy ending is mixed with tragedy, as stories sometimes are. For the Cretan captain of the vessel did not know he was to hoist white sails if Theseus came home in triumph, and King Aegeus … spied the black sails coming over the horizon. His heart broke at once, and he fell from the towering cliff into the sea, which is now called the Aegean.

William Bennett, The Book of Virtues

quis ille? “who is that speaking?”

Apuleius, The Golden Ass, 1.1

Catullus 64, the epyllion or miniature epic often called the Peleus and Thetis, is not really an epic, but some definitions of epic would exclude four of the five works examined in this study; we must appreciate, rather than lament, the fact that most Roman epics were not written by authors who spent their whole careers working in the genre. Doubtless this fact helped make generic experimentation almost the norm for Roman epic.

Type
Chapter
Information
Inconsistency in Roman Epic
Studies in Catullus, Lucretius, Vergil, Ovid and Lucan
, pp. 33 - 54
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2007

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