And groom so deep in love; love never tied
So true, so tight a knot; your hearts are one”(362-64)
Ariadne has eloped with her lover to fulfil her dreams of a marriage such as that of Peleus and Thetis, which will not come to pass:
“Soft was the voice with which you once swore love
And gave me expectations, not of this
Nightmare but of the dream I most desired,
The privilege and the happiness of marriage”(154-56)
Both the reading audience and the young Thessalians who view the tapestry at the wedding see that the tragic figure of Ariadne will soon be rescued from her utter despair and misery by Bacchus, who comes to Naxos “[m]ad for you, Ariadne, flushed with love.”(274) Yet Catullus glosses over this happy ending for Ariadne that will realise her dream of perfect love. Instead he has kept her ignorant of the impending rescue, lingering instead on the spectacle of Ariadne in the midst of her pain. Therefore, the contrasted situations of love and marriage between the two tales shows similarities in that Ariadne too will find passion in the arms of a god, while the goddess Thetis finds passion in the arms of a mortal.
Contrast is shown in the dominant emotions evoked in each story. At first the audience and wedding guests feel pleasure at the joyous marriage of Peleus and Thetis, and pity and sorrow for Ariadne’s abandonment. Yet each tale reverses these principal emotions as events unfold. Sorrow turns to relief and joy as the “inconsolable and immobile” Ariadne is rescued by Bacchus from her anguish and certain death, while pleasure at the union of Peleus and Thetis turns to concern and horror at the role that Achilles will play in the Trojan War as warrior and causer of grief. Pity is shifted from Ariadne to the grieving Trojan women who mourn their lost sons.
The emphasis placed on women as mothers is apparent in both stories, with imagery and narrative that draws the inner eye to women’s breasts. They evoke an erotic response in the case of Thetis and Ariadne, and also exemplify the role of women as nurturers:
“Never before
Or since have men’s eyes seen the Nereids
Stand nipple-naked in the grey-green swell.”(17-19)
This image of the bare-breasted Thetis and her companions is one of carnal interest, and also one of potential motherhood. The allusion to breasts for the purpose of nursing and suckling is all the time more evident in the description of the tantalizing vision of Ariadne:
“Thrown off the light blouse and the delicate scarf
That bound her milk-white breasts – her garments fallen
Loose at her feet and lapped by the salt tide.”(73-75)
Of these two women, it is Thetis who will become mother and nurturer to Achilles, who will be the cause of the mourning of many mothers for their lost sons. This prophecy by the Fates illustrates how the women of Troy will have given birth in vain, for the sons who once suckled from their once milk-white breasts will die, and their breasts are now old and decaying:
“Mothers at gravesides with grey hair unbound
And uncombed…as their weak fists pound
Old women’s breasts because a son is dead.
Run, spindle, run, and draw the fatal thread.”(378-82)
In the immediate fate of Ariadne, her milky breasts cannot be utilized in their natural purpose of nourishing children, for her lover Theseus, the potential father to her children, has forsaken her.
Abandonment is central to the theme of the tale of Ariadne and Theseus, yet this theme is also integral to the tale of Peleus and Thetis. The countryside of Thessaly is deserted by its inhabitants as they flock to Pharsalus to attend the wedding:
“Deserting Cieros and Phthiotic Tempe,
The homes of Crannon and Larissa’s walls”(40-41)
Agricultural tools are left to rust in the abandoned fields:
“nobody tills the land…the trailing vines
Escape the curved rake’s discipline; no oxen
Thrust the share hard down, ripping clods…and a rough
Tetter of rust flakes the forgotten plough.”(43-48).
In contrast, Ariadne, who awakens from her sleep on the beach to find her lover gone, feels the raw pain of desertion on an emotional level:
“We know how, waking,
In a hysteria of grief she fetched
Scream after scream from the deep well of anguish”(135-37)
The final lines of the poem contain Catullus’ ethical critique of the abandonment of moral codes by man and describes the falling of mankind into total degradation:
“Brothers plunged hands in the blood of brothers, children
Ceased mourning for their parents…
And vicious mothers seduced innocent boys
In blasphemous outrage of the household gods”(437-42)
The consequential desertion of mankind by the gods is therefore due to mankind’s downward spiral into perversion:
Till, right and wrong, virtue and vice, all weltering
In mad perversity, we so estranged
And horrified the minds of the good gods
That they no longer condescend to join
Men’s feasts and festivals…”(443-47)
The theme of abandonment is therefore demonstrated in both stories; the land itself is abandoned, Ariadne is left to die by her lover, man abandons his moral codes, and in turn, the gods abandon man. Consistently the imagery of breasts throughout the poem evokes the role of women as mothers and nurturers. However, the role of Thetis as mother will cause that one mother’s son will bring untold grief to many mothers, whilst the role of Ariadne as a potential mother is made impossible by Theseus’ desertion. The reversal of the dominant emotions within both stories is ironic: the representation of the perfect union of Peleus and Thetis is distorted by the disturbing foretelling of the deeds of their son Achilles and the tragic figure of Ariadne is soon to be liberated from utter despair and impending death by a god who will make her a goddess. The central theme is that of love and marriage, though for Ariadne it is a promise of marriage that is reneged upon. Marriage is established in a public forum with the marriage of Peleus and Thetis, and in a private elopement and wedding for Ariadne. The divine marrying the mortal is illustrated in one tale and alluded to in the other; a hero taking a goddess for a wife, and a tragic figure rescued by a god who will become her husband.
It is evident that the two love stories must not only be examined and understood individually, but together with their larger mythical cycles in mind so as to gain a more comprehensive understanding of the poem as a whole. Underlying the main theories of the poem is the question of whether Catullus was using the Ariadne and Theseus myth as a mouthpiece for his own emotional feelings of desertion by Lesbia. If this is true, then the story ending on a positive note speaks in his favour, for while the grief and anger felt by Ariadne at her betrayal was lingered upon, she was rewarded ultimately with the passion and love that she so deeply craved.
Though the ekphrasis itself does not imply a betrayal, see footnote 5 for a description of the eventual end to their marriage.
Garrison, The Student’s Catullus, p. 133.
Fordyce, C.J., Catullus: A Commentary, p.274.
Catullus’ audience would have been well aware of the relationships and their tragic elements connected to the myths in Poem 64. The first is the relationship between Jason and Medea who consummate their marriage on the Golden Fleece, (perhaps the tapestry on the bridal bed in Poem 64 alludes to the consummation of the marriage of Jason and Medea on the golden fleece) and yet the marriage ends gruesomely with Medea murdering their sons after Jason’s betrayal (see Euripides’ Medea). The second relationship is that of Peleus and Thetis who beget Achilles, and it is the wrath of Achilles that causes the mourning of many mothers for their lost sons during the Trojan War. Even in death his bloodthirstiness reaches back into the world of the living with Achilles demanding the sacrifice of Polyxena so that she may become his bride in death – a striking contrast to the setting of the marriage of his parents (see Euripides’ Hecuba and Seneca’s The Trojan Women*). The marriage of Peleus and Thetis was not in the end successful, and in one version of the myth, Thetis fled from Peleus and refused to return after Peleus pulled Achilles from the fire that Thetis was plunging him into. The third relationship is that of Theseus and Ariadne, which branches off to Theseus where, after the abandonment of Ariadne on Naxos, Theseus marries Ariadne’s sister Phaedra, whom after a long separation from Theseus, falls in love with Theseus’ son Hippolytus. When Phaedra’s sexual advances are rejected by her stepson, she hides the truth of the affair from the returned Theseus, who believes that his wife was raped by Hippolytus and has killed herself because of the shame, and so Theseus calls on the Sea God to avenge the death of his wife and slay Hippolytus (see Euripides’ Hippolytus and Seneca’s Phaedra). The fate of Ariadne is depicted on the tapestry that shows the arrival of Bacchus to Naxos, where he will save her from certain death and make her his divine bride.
*Please note that although the Senecan plays were written after the death of Catullus, they are based on the plays of the Greek playwright Euripides, who composed his plays during the 5th century BC.
Whigham, P., The Poems of Catullus, p. 30.
In particular, lines 19-20 referring to Thetis, lines 73-74 referring to Ariadne, and lines 380-81 referring to old women mourning their lost sons.
Quinn, K., Catullus: The Poems, p. 309. Quinn is drawn to the idea that the gods hold the relationships together by the role that they play in each.
Lyne, R.O.A.M., The Latin Love Poets: From Catullus to Horace, p.34. Lyne observes that Catullus uses foedus in Latin to “stress the unparalleled degree of reciprocity and sanctity that this romantic, mythical marriage…apparently possessed.” p. 34.
The happy ending for Ariadne is implied with negative connotations with the arrival of the followers of Bacchus painting a grisly and disturbing scene on the tapestry. Garrison comments: “[The] imagination of the observer takes us so far into the picture that we not only hear the noises produced by this wild band, but we also react unpleasantly to its outlandish racket. Dionysus’ rescue of Ariadne is therefore less a happy ending than a distasteful conclusion.” p. 139. I do not feel as strongly as Garrison, though I do think that portraying the maenads in a frenzied state clutching chunks of raw meat is disturbing. I do not believe that it detracts at all from the positive outcome of Ariadne’s story, where she is eased of her grief and at last attains a love like that of the goddess Thetis and her husband Peleus.
Wiseman, T.P., Catullus & His World: A Reappraisal, p. 180. Wiseman gives a wonderful explanation for Catullus’ reasoning and intentions: “Catullus may not rewrite the happy ending, but he can overshadow it by lavishing all his attention on the anguish, and leaving the felicity wholly unemphasised…What we are shown is not the meeting of Ariadne and the god, not the joy and glory he brings her, but only his outlandish and barbarous company.”p.180.
Fitzgerald, W., Catullan Provocations, p. 143. Fitzgerald claims that the poem’s unity can be found, “in the theme of the union of gods and mortals, whose dark counterpart is the story of the abandoned Ariadne.” p. 143. See also: Konstan, D., Neoteric Epic: Catullus 64, from Roman Epic. Konstan sees the unity of this theme as being passion: “Some have detected an analogy between Bacchus’ love for Ariadne in the final panel of the ekphrasis and Thetis’ assent to marriage with Peleus: two instances of passion joining a mortal and a divinity.” p. 66
Fitzgerald, W., op. cit., p. 156.
Fitzgerald, W., op.cit., p. 150. In regards to Thetis and the Nereids, the Latin used is ‘nutricum’ – nutrix means ‘nurse’ or ‘foster mother’. The inference to these women as potential mothers is stressed further with the depiction of Ariadne’s breasts; ‘lactentis…papillas’, meaning ‘suckling’, ‘milky’, ‘juicy’, or ‘full of milk’ breasts.
