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Mythological incest: Catullus 88

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

S. J. Harrison
S. J. Harrison
Affiliation:
Corpus Christi College, Oxford
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Extract

Here Gellius, also the target of poems 74, 80, 89, 90, 91 and 116, is accused of incest with his mother, sister, and aunt. This accusation is coupled with the only extended mythological reference to be found in the group of short Catullan epigrams 69–116:2 not even Tethys or Oceanus can wash out Gellius' crimes. This notion that large bodies of water are unable to wash away the stain of crime is of course a topos going back to Greek tragedy, but the individual naming of the two sea-deities seems to make a point—a literary point which is relevant to the invective of the poem.

Type
Shorter Notes
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 46 , Issue 2 , December 1996 , pp. 581 - 582
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1996

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References

1 The manuscripts transmit the present indicative abluit, but better would be either the subjunctive abluat of the Aldine edition of 1502 (‘can wash away’) or the future abluet: in support of the latter are the imitations at Seneca, Phaedra 715–16 quis eluet me Tanais aut quae barbaris / Maeolis undis incumbens mari; Hercules Furens 1323–6 quis Tanais… abluere dextram potent.

2 This point is noted by Ross, D.O., Style and Tradition in Catullus (Cambridge, MA, 1969), 103 andCrossRefGoogle ScholarSyndikus, H.-P., Catull: Eine Interpretation III(Darmstadt, 1987), 67 n. 10.Google Scholar

3 To Sophocles, O.T. 1227'9: cf. Syndikus loc.cit. (n. 2) and Coffey and Mayer's commentary on Seneca, Phaedra 115–18. It is notable that in both O.T. and Phaedra the topos refers to incest or quasi-incest, as in Catullus.