Note 70 — Chapter XV

These three poems are composed with the unity and simplicity of the purest art. Like the shorter poems they have taken shape under the influence of one powerful motive; and the feeling with which they were conceived is sustained at its height through the whole composition. It is more difficult to find any single motive which combines into unity the original nucleus of the Epithalamium of Peleus and Thetis with the long episode of the desertion of Ariadne, which interrupts the continuity of the 64th poem. The form of art to which it belongs is the 'Epyllion' or heroic idyll, of which several specimens are found among the poems of Theocritus. This form was due to the invention of the Alexandrians; and Catullus in the selection of his subject and in his manner of treating it takes up the position of an imitator. But there is no reason to suppose that he is reproducing, still less translating, any particular work of these poets, or that his contemporaries—Cinna, Calvus, and Cornificius,—merely reproduced some Alexandrine original in their Zmyrna, Io, and Glaucus. A comparison of the imagery of this poem with that of the earlier Epithalamia, and a consideration of the passionate beauty with which the subject of love and marriage is treated, favour the conclusion that the style and substance of the poem are the workmanship of Catullus. It may be doubted whether any Alexandrine poet, except perhaps Apollonius, whom Catullus in this poem70 often imitates, but does not translate, had sufficient imagination to produce the original which Catullus is supposed to have copied. But the plan of the poem may have been suggested by some Alexandrine model. The more complicated structure of the 68th poem is fashioned after a particular style of Greek art: and on entering upon a new and larger adventure, Catullus may have trusted to the guidance of those whom he regarded as his masters. The Alexandrians studied pictorial representation of outward scenes and of passionate situations, and works of tapestry on which such representations were wrought were common among their 'deliciae vitae71.' Thus, the mode in which the story of Ariadne is told is one likely to have occurred to an Alexandrine poet. It would be also in keeping with the over-subtlety of a class of poets who owed more to learning than to inspiration, to combine apparently incongruous parts into one whole by some obscure link of connexion. Thus Catullus may have intended, in imitation of Callimachus or some other Alexandrian, to paint two pictures of the love of an immortal for a mortal,—the love of Thetis for Peleus, and of Bacchus for Ariadne,—and to heighten the effect of each by the contrast presented in the pendent picture. The original good fortune and the unbroken happiness of Peleus are more vividly realised by the contrast presented to the imagination in the betrayal and passionate agitation of Ariadne. The thought of the crowds of mortals and immortals who come together to celebrate the marriage of the Thessalian prince brings into greater relief the utter loneliness of Ariadne, when first discovered by 'Bacchus and his crew.' Or the original unifying motive of both pictures might be sought in the concluding lines, written in a graver tone than anything else in Catullus; and it might be supposed that he intended by the two pictures of divine favour granted to mortals (in one of which retribution is exacted for what he regards as the greatest sin in actual life—a violation of good faith) to enforce the lesson that it is owing to the sins of the latter time that the Gods have withdrawn their gracious presence from the earth. The thought contained in the lines