Catullus 4

Last updated
A poem about an aging ship. Corbita BM GR1850.3-4.32.jpg
A poem about an aging ship.

Catullus 4 is a poem by the ancient Roman writer Catullus. The poem concerns the retirement of a well-traveled ship (referred to as a "phaselus", also sometimes cited as " phasellus ", a variant spelling). Catullus draws a strong analogy with human aging, rendering the boat as a person that flies and speaks, with palms (the oars) and purpose.

Contents

The poem is complex, with numerous geographic references and elaborate litotic double negatives in a list-like manner. It borrows heavily from Ancient Greek vocabulary, and also uses Greek grammar in several sections. The meter of the poem is unusual — iambic trimeter, which was perhaps chosen to convey a sense of speed over the waves.

Catullus 4 read in Latin

Scholars remain uncertain whether the story of the construction and voyages of this phasellus (ship, yacht, or pinnace), as described or implied in the poem, can be taken literally. Professor A. D. Hope in his posthumous book of translations from Catullus [1] is one translator who takes it so. His introduction calls the phasellus “his yacht, in which he [Catullus] must have made the return voyage [from Bithynia]” and the translation ends Until she made landfall in this limpid lake. / But that was aforetime and she is laid up now . . . However Hope also left, in his final collection of poetry Aubade, a much freer translation, adaptation, or erotic parody, [2] in which the phasellus seems to be, in effect, a phallus. This version says that the phasellus claims that in his hey-day with mainsail and spanker / He outsailed all vessels; and the ending becomes: At his last landfall now, beyond all resurgence, / View him careened upon a final lee-shore; / . . . Sing for the captain who will put to sea no more!

Among a number of other interpretations, Catullus 4 has also been interpreted as a parody of epic poetry, or the boat as a metaphor for the Ship of State.

Text

Notes

  1. Propontis ("in front of Pontus") was the ancient name for the Sea of Marmora, and Ponticum sinum ("Pontic sea") was the name for the Black Sea.
  2. Mt. Cytorus was a mountain on the southern coast of the Black Sea, between the port cities of Amastris and Cytorus. Cytorus was famous as a source of boxwood.
  3. The gemelle Castoris ("twin of Castor") refers to Pollux, the other twin in the Castor and Pollux pair, who were also known as the Gemini ("twins"). The two twins were often referred to by only a single name, most commonly Castor, as though they were one, hence the tibi in line 26.

Bibliography

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Catullus</span> Latin poet of the late Roman Republic (c. 84 – c. 54 BC)

Gaius Valerius Catullus, known as Catullus, was a Latin neoteric poet of the late Roman Republic. His surviving works remain widely read due to their popularity as teaching tools and because of their personal or sexually explicit themes.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Castor and Pollux</span> Greek mythical twins

Castor and Pollux are twin half-brothers in Greek and Roman mythology, known together as the Dioscuri or Dioskouroi.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Helen of Troy</span> Figure in Greek mythology

Helen, also known as Helen of Troy, Helen of Argos, or Helen of Sparta, and in Latin as Helena, was a figure in Greek mythology said to have been the most beautiful woman in the world. She was believed to have been the daughter of Zeus and Leda or Nemesis, and the sister of Clytemnestra, Castor, Pollux, Philonoe, Phoebe and Timandra. She was married to King Menelaus of Sparta "who became by her the father of Hermione, and, according to others, of Nicostratus also." Her abduction by Paris of Troy was the most immediate cause of the Trojan War.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Idas of Messene</span> Messenian prince and argonaut in Greek mythology

In Greek mythology, Idas, was a Messenian prince. He was one of the Argonauts, a participant in the hunt for the Calydonian Boar and contender with the gods. Idas was described as keen and spirited.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Leda (mythology)</span> Greek mythological Aetolian princess who became a Spartan queen

In Greek mythology, Leda was an Aetolian princess who became a Spartan queen. According to Ovid, she was famed for her beautiful black hair and snowy skin. Her myth gave rise to the popular motif in Renaissance and later art of Leda and the Swan.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Clodia (wife of Metellus)</span> Roman aristocrat

Clodia, nicknamed Quadrantaria, Nola, Medea Palatina by Cicero, and occasionally referred to in scholarship as Clodia Metelli, was one of three known daughters of the ancient Roman patrician Appius Claudius Pulcher.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Attis</span> Phrygian and Greek god

Attis was the consort of Cybele, in Phrygian and Greek mythology.

In Greek mythology, Menestheus was a legendary king of Athens during the Trojan War. He was set up as king by the twins Castor and Pollux when Theseus travelled to the Underworld after abducting their sister, Helen, and exiled Theseus from the city after his return.

Apollodorus of Athens, son of Asclepiades, was a Greek scholar, historian, and grammarian. He was a pupil of Diogenes of Babylon, Panaetius the Stoic, and the grammarian Aristarchus of Samothrace, under whom he appears to have studied together with his contemporary Dionysius Thrax. He left Alexandria around 146 BC, most likely for Pergamon, and eventually settled in Athens.

The Greek Heroic Age, in mythology, is the period between the coming of the Greeks to Thessaly and the Greek warriors' return from Troy. The poet Hesiod identified this mythological era as one of his five Ages of Man. The period spans roughly six generations; the heroes denoted by the term are superhuman, though not divine, and are celebrated in the literature of Homer and of others, such as Sophocles, Aeschylus and Euripides.

<i>Appendix Vergiliana</i> Collection of Poems written by Virgil.

The Appendix Vergiliana is a collection of Latin poems traditionally ascribed as being the juvenilia of Virgil.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Catullus 64</span> Latin poem by Catullus

Catullus 64 is an epyllion or "little epic" poem written by Latin poet Catullus. Catullus' longest poem, it retains his famed linguistic witticisms while employing an appropriately epic tone.

Catullus 101 is an elegiac poem written by the Roman poet Gaius Valerius Catullus. It is addressed to Catullus' dead brother or, strictly speaking, to the "mute ashes" which are the only remaining evidence of his brother's body.

The Cypria is a lost epic poem of ancient Greek literature, which has been attributed to Stasinus and was quite well known in classical antiquity and fixed in a received text, but which subsequently was lost to view. It was part of the Epic Cycle, which told the entire history of the Trojan War in epic hexameter verse. The story of the Cypria comes chronologically at the beginning of the Epic Cycle, and is followed by that of the Iliad; the composition of the two was apparently in the reverse order. The poem comprised eleven books of verse in epic dactylic hexameters.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cynosarges</span>

Cynosarges was a famous temple of Heracles, public gymnasium, and surrounding grove located just outside the walls of Ancient Athens on the southern bank of the Ilissos river and near the Diomeian gate. The modern suburb of Kynosargous is named after it.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lynceus of Messene</span>

In Greek mythology, Lynceus is a Messenian prince and one of the Argonauts who served as a lookout on the Argo. He also participated in the hunt for the Calydonian boar.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Phoebe (daughter of Leucippus)</span>

In Greek mythology, Phoebe was a Messenian princess.

In Greek mythology, Eurytus and Cteatus were twin brothers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Olympian 1</span> Pindars 1st Olympic Ode

The Greek lyric poet Pindar composed odes to celebrate victories at all four Panhellenic Games. Of his fourteen Olympian Odes, glorifying victors at the Ancient Olympic Games, the First was positioned at the beginning of the collection by Aristophanes of Byzantium since it included praise for the games as well as of Pelops, who first competed at Elis. It was the most quoted in antiquity and was hailed as the "best of all the odes" by Lucian. Pindar composed the epinikion in honour of his then patron Hieron I, tyrant of Syracuse, whose horse Pherenikos and its jockey were victorious in the single horse race in 476 BC.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Acts 28</span> Chapter of the New Testament

Acts 28 is the twenty-eighth and final chapter of the Acts of the Apostles in the New Testament of the Christian Bible. It records the journey of Paul from Malta to Italy until he is at last settled in Rome. The book containing this chapter is anonymous, but early Christian tradition uniformly affirmed that Luke composed this book as well as the Gospel of Luke.

References

  1. The shorter poems of Gaius Valerius Catullus : a new translation; translated by A.D. Hope, Blackheath, N.S.W., Brandl & Schlesinger, 2007
  2. The drafting of this version is discussed in Hope’s Notebooks, since transcribed and edited by Ann McCulloch as Dance of the Nomad: a study of the selected notebooks of A.D. Hope, Canberra, ANU Press, 2005 p. 323.
  3. Catullus 4, via the Perseus Project