Connections To Homer and Greek Myth
Central to this poem is the story of Protesilaus and Laodamia from the Trojan cycle. Protesilaus and Laodamia were married shortly before the Trojan War, in which he was the first Greek to die. Daniel Garrison connects this story to Catullus’ relationship with Lesbia saying, “Catullus was separated from Lesbia by his brother’s death near Troy, Protesilaus from Laodamia by his own death in the Trojan War.” This connection that Garrison draws explains Catullus’ transition to the death of his brother, who died where the Romans believed Troy to be. Catullus returns to the theme of Lesbia’s infidelity when he compares her behavior to Laodamia’s faithfulness in lines 117 and 131.
Overall, Catullus portrays Troy as a negative place calling it “ill-omened,” “obscene," and “ill-fated." His negative description of Troy is not limited to his grief for his brother’s death but extends to his allusions of the entire war. Theodorakopoulos explains, “In both poems 64 and 68] it is clear that Troy is an abomination, not the glory that contemporary Romans may have been seeking to gain from connection with it. Troy stands for the strangeness of death, for the remoteness of the world of the dead from that of the living.”
Read more about this topic: Catullus 68
Famous quotes containing the words connections, homer, greek and/or myth:
“Growing up human is uniquely a matter of social relations rather than biology. What we learn from connections within the family takes the place of instincts that program the behavior of animals; which raises the question, how good are these connections?”
—Elizabeth Janeway (b. 1913)
“The student may read Homer or Æschylus in the Greek without danger of dissipation or luxuriousness, for it implies that he in some measure emulate their heroes, and consecrate morning hours to their pages.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Lucretius
Sings his great theory of natural origins and of wise conduct; Plato
smiling carves dreams, bright cells
Of incorruptible wax to hive the Greek honey.”
—Robinson Jeffers (1887–1962)
“One of the oddest features of western Christianized culture is its ready acceptance of the myth of the stable family and the happy marriage. We have been taught to accept the myth not as an heroic ideal, something good, brave, and nearly impossible to fulfil, but as the very fibre of normal life. Given most families and most marriages, the belief seems admirable but foolhardy.”
—Jonathan Raban (b. 1942)