Catullus 64 Translation

Introduction

Carmine 64 tells the story of Theseus** voyage and his defeat of the**Minotaur from the maiden’s point of view. The verse opens with a beautiful discussion of how the Argosy was made from pines that grew on Pelion, and how, while the Argonauts were sailing to collect the Golden Fleece, Peleus caught sight of Thetis, the sea Nymph and they were wed. From that union came Achilles.

Achilles is not specifically mentioned in the poem. Instead, Catullus rhapsodizes about how wonderful it was when husbands and wives were faithful, and how the land prospered. Now, he goes on to say, things are not going well outside the palace. Even so, inside a marriage bed is made for a goddess.

This bit is setting the scene for what is to come, foreshadowing the real action. We begin at the end, with Ariadne left lonely on the shore while Theseus sails away with his companions.

Ariadne has risen from sleep, to see Theseus sailing away. She cannot believe her eyes. She casts her delicate crown from her. She rends her garments. She is mad with grief and anger.

Ariadne has good reason to be upset. Theseus had come to the realm ofKing Minos** to defeat the Minotaur**, a monster that each year claimed the flower of the kingdoms young men and maidens. As he was making arrangements with the king, he sees Ariadne. She is described and a very young maiden who has not yet left her mother’s side. But when she sees Theseus she develops a desire for him. As a result, she gives him a ball of string and tells him how to defeat the Minotaur.

When Theseus emerges victorious, she has every expectation that the two of them will wed. But instead of taking his bride with him, Theseus abandons her and sails away.

Apparently, Theseus is a dreadfully forgetful youth. Not only does he leave a maiden whom he made wife behind him, he forgets a signal agreed upon with his father. If the venture was successful, they were to change the sails on the ship to a different color. But they left the plain white sails installed.

Therefore, when his father saw the ships approaching, he fears the worst. He cannot face the death of his son, and throws himself from the battlements onto the rocky shore and perishes.

Now, it is Theseus turn to suffer.

Catullus, canny storyteller that he was, now pulls back the camera, as it were, to give his audience a wider view. He seems to speak of the funeral procession, and of self-indulgent youth. He explains that embroidered on the hem of the bed covering are scenes from mythology. First, come the mortals, then the gods are shown in procession – thus were weddings once attended.

He then follows it up with a scene with theFates, spinning, weaving and tangling up the tapestry of mortal affairs. Catullus finishes it off by pointing out how when people do not take care of things as they should – being faithful to a wedded spouse, sending the right signal to a father – many things tend to go disastrously wrong.  Now, he points out, the gods no longer attend weddings and other feast days.

Carmine 64 is one of Catullus’ longer works. Superficially, it is concerned with Theseus’ abandonment of Ariadne and his neglect to finer details, such as hanging white sails instead of the colored sails of grief. A closer examination of the underlying theme reveals criticism of the way Rome is being governed. Or, to put it another way, Catullus is pointing out that the Roman leaders have abandoned the ways of the righteous and that they are indulging their own passions and ambitions to the detriment of the Roman people. Since he wrote during the turbulent days of Julius Caesar’s rise to power, during which time political battles turned violent, causing Rome to be burned twice, it is no wonder he might have drawn a parallel to Theseus abandoning Ariadne.

This particular Carmine is relatively subtle compared to some of his more pointed works. Indeed, Caesar was once asked why he didn’t have Catullus executed for his insolence. Caesar is said to have remarked that he approved of him, and then to have quoted from his works. Whether this story was true or not, it is clear that Catullus was popular during his own time. More to the point, his themes of passionate love, grief, abandonment, and his retelling of classical themes have a universality that can be applied to many eras in history.

In spite of his many frankly sexually explicit references, such as “naked to the paps”, literate folk from the middle ages (when his works were re-discovered) to the present day have read his works with enjoyment. Perhaps it is because the era in which he wrote has been so thoroughly recorded, analyzed and studied down through the last two thousand years, or perhaps it is because he was simply that good a student of human nature.

Flowery, convoluted, and subtle though his poetry can be, even from this end of history is it not difficult to perceive the needle-sharp lampoons hidden in the over-blown poetics. For example, in this poem Theseus is not portrayed as a returning hero, but as a young idiot who ruined a girl’s life and then was too careless to change the sails on his vessel, thus causing his own father’s death. His “triumph” therefore instead becomes a funeral march, and his wedding an underlying cause of the downfall of Troy.

It does not take too great a stretch of the imagination to cast a youthful Julius Caesar, once the darling of the masses, as a “modern” Theseus. More than once, he defied the council of Rome, continuously pushing back the boundaries of the Republic until it began to collapse under its own weight. Nor was his personal household without stain. First widowed, then divorced, and finally married a third time, Julius clearly had his romantic struggles. Furthermore, he was often at loggerheads with the Roman Senate and the senior councilors to such extent that he finally triggered the Roman civil war, sometimes call Caesar’s Civil War.  

Carmen 64

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