1 Cf. Schafer 2020: 134 (who nevertheless argues for authorial issue of 61–4 as an independent book, with 65–8 forming the first part of an elegiac libellus).

2 Depending on whether 68 is considered to be one poem or two (‘68a’ and ‘68b’). On the unity problem, see n. 16 below.

3 A further partial exception is ‘68a’, which begins with an ostentatiously prosaic epistolary formula, quod…mittis epistolium (‘in regard to your letter’), in keeping with its (probable) function as a covering letter for ‘68b’. A similar formula occurs at line 27 (quod scribis, ‘as for what you write, that…’); cf. e.g. Cic. Fam. 1.9.1: quod autem tibi grata mea erga te studia scribis esse, ‘as for what you write, that you are grateful for the goodwill I have shown you’. For stylistic contrasts between the carmina maiora and the shorter poems, see Sheets 2007; Chahoud 2021: esp. 118–20. On the elevated diction of and prominent use of the ‘golden’ line in 64, see Trimble 2025 (Introduction, section 2[d]), with further bibliography; see also Van Sickle 1968 on marked verbal patterning in poems 65, 66, and 68. Fedeli 1983: passim draws attention to the distinctive combination of elevated and informal language in poem 61.

4 The ‘covering letter’ 65 and the complex and innovative 68 are again exceptions here. For the controversial question of who speaks the final lines of poem 62, see n. 11 below.

5 For thematic continuities across the carmina maiora, see esp. Lieberg 1958; Wiseman 1969: 17–25; Most 1981: 118–20. Wiseman 1969 considers the possibility of publication as a separate libellus, though he later modified this view (see now Wiseman 2023: 42); cf. e.g. Schafer 2020: 147–55, who sees continuity of theme and structural balance across book division at 64/65. Wasdin 2018: 29–53 persuasively traces connections between the framing poems, 61 and 68; Newman 1990: 204–47 and Dettmer 1997: 115–50 (among others) argue for structural and thematic unity separately from questions of publication.

6 The terminology was not always so narrowly applied even in antiquity, however: for this, and the division of the poem (a somewhat contentious issue), see Fedeli 1983: 8; Thomsen 1992: 26–9; Wasdin 2018: 19–20, 30–1. Thomsen identifies a further subdivision – what he refers to, in the light of the refrain, prodeas noua nupta, ‘come forth, bride!’, as the ‘prodeas song’ – at 76–113. (Note: line numbering for poem 61 is complicated by the lacunae following lines 78 and 107. Modern editions generally number the transmitted lines continuously, with a second set of line numbers given in brackets to indicate the numeration with the missing lines allowed for. Some older editions – e.g. Kroll – use the latter numeration only.)

7 The oldest manuscripts (OGR) give the bride’s name as Iunia (16) Aurunculeia (82–3); the alternative readings Iulia and Vinia appear in the recentiores. For the emendation Vibia (Syme) and further discussion, see Neudling 1955: 185.

8 For the ‘Greek or Roman?’ debate, see e.g. Fedeli 1983: 3–7 and passim on poem 61; Goud 1995: 32 on 62. On the Roman wedding ceremony in general, see esp. Treggiari 1991: 161–70; Hersch 2010. On the ‘mimetic’ poem, see now McCarthy 2019: esp. 81–133; Gramps 2021. Wasdin 2018: 22–3 argues that the ‘MC’ role played by the speaker in poem 61 is traditional, and can be traced back to Sappho.

9 See esp. Stigers 1977; Thomsen 1992; Panoussi 2007; Caldwell 2015: 139–53; Wasdin 2018: esp. 29–53, 81–103.

10 Comparisons between the bride and groom and e.g. deities or hero(in)es were a conventional element of the hymenaios/epithalamium; but fruit and flower similes appear to have been associated particularly with Sappho (see frs. 105a and b Voigt, and note the testimonia of Himerius and Michael of Italy at 105a and 194a Voigt). On this aspect of the epithalamium, see esp. Stigers 1977; Fedeli 1983: 34–6; Feeney 2013: esp. 71–5; Wasdin 2018: 82–93, 139–42. For the raptio or ritual seizure of the bride (sparsely attested in ancient sources), see Treggiari 1991: 166 n. 56; Hersch 2010: 144–8. Particularly suggestive is the juxtaposition rapis teneram (‘you carry off the tender [girl]’) at 61.3; and compare 61.56–9: fero iuueni in manus / …/…a gremio suae / matris (‘…from her mother’s embrace, into the hands of a wild youth’) with 62.20–4.

11 On the question of who speaks the final stanza (the boys’ chorus, the narrator, or a third party?), see Fraenkel 1955; Goud 1995.

12 For the role of the abandoned concubinus as a kind of analogue for the groom, whose transition to adulthood doubles or stands in for that of Manlius himself, see Thomsen 1992: 49–50; Panoussi 2007: 282–3. For the transition from youthful amores to dutiful adulthood, cf. Cicero’s depiction of the young Caelius in the Pro Caelio, esp. 39–43. As scholars have observed, the ‘abstinence’ from homoerotic relations enjoined on the groom (134–43) should not be envisaged as an absolute ban, but as emblematic of his abandonment of adolescent pleasures and his embrace of his new responsibilities as paterfamilias: the sexual symmetry implied by Catullus’ poem does not reflect the differential expectations of sexual fidelity in husbands and wives typical of Roman sources in general.

13 Cf. 61.195, and the insistent repetition of the adjective bonus throughout the poem (in addition to the two passages cited, see 19–20, 62, 159, 179–80, 197–8, 219–20, 225–6).

14 Panoussi 2007: 276.

15 Panoussi 2007: 280–1, 284 notes, too, the (ominous?) echoes of poems 7 and 11 at 199–203 and 87–9 (with 62.39–47 and Sappho fr. 105b Voigt). Ready 2004: 156 argues that the comparison with Penelope ‘cancels the discordant implications of the first simile’; but we may legitimately wonder whether the troubling undercurrents are in fact so easily dismissed.

16 The expression of gratitude is perhaps preceded by an apologia for an inability to provide the love poetry for which his friend has asked, owing to his grief for the recent death of his brother – if ‘68a’ is considered to be either part of the same poem or a closely linked ‘covering letter’, bearing a similar relation to ‘68b’ as 65 does to 66. The poem’s unity, or otherwise, continues to be a matter of debate: see, most recently, Leigh 2016, with copious citation of earlier bibliography. Particularly intractable is the issue of the addressee’s/addressees’ name(s), which appear at 68(a).11 and 30 as mali (i.e. Mallius or Manlius?), whereas the manuscript readings at 68(b).50 (alli, O; ali, X) and 66 (allius, O; manlius, X) suggest the form ‘Allius’ (the two remaining passages where the laudandus is apparently named are corrupt [quam fallius, 41; aliis, 150]). Leigh 2016: 217–23 offers a lucid account of the difficulties presented by the confusion of the manuscripts and various attempts to repair them.

17 On the Protesilaus–Laodamia simile, see esp. Macleod 1974; Lyne 1980: 56–60, 1998: 200–9; Feeney 1992: 39–42; Janan 1994: 119–42; Miller 2004: 44–8; Hunter 2006: 106–8.

18 For a persuasive reading of the two poems along these lines, see Wasdin 2018: 29–53; cf. Miller 1994: 115–16; Feeney 2013: 79–80. For marriage and the domus as central to poem 68, see also Lyne 1980: 56–60; Most 1981: 118–19.

19 According to Plutarch (Quaest. Rom. 29), it was customary to lift or carry the bride over the threshold; cf. Luc. 2.359; Varro ap. Serv. ad Ecl. 8.29; Fedeli 1983: 106–7; Hersch 2010: 180–2. Tripping or stumbling in the doorway was considered particularly ill-omened; but Varro suggests that setting foot on the threshold at all at such a critical moment was something to be avoided.

20 Catullus’ phrase echoes the Homeric δόμος ἡμιτελής (‘a house half-finished’; Il. 2.701), the meaning of which was disputed in antiquity. Among several explanations put forward by the ancient commentators was that the house(hold) was ‘incomplete’ in the sense that no child had been conceived: see Eustathius and the Venetus A scholia ad loc.

21 Cf. Feeney 1992: 33–4, 2013: 79–80; Wasdin 2018: 36–44. On the eikasmos as a traditional component of the epithalamium from Sappho onwards, see n. 10 above.

22 See esp. Janan 1994: 115–42; Skinner 2003: 53–7; Gale 2012: 205–6; Leigh 2016: 208–13. Compare Oliensis 2009: 46–54, who reads the poem’s subliminal anxiety differently, as a submerged expression of guilt in relation to the death of Catullus’ brother and the impossibility of mourning him adequately.

23 Indeed, if there is a Penelope-figure in this poem, it is the speaker himself, whose weeping at 68.55–6 resembles that of Odysseus’ wife, who similarly ‘melts like snow on a mountain-top’ (Od. 19.204–9).

24 J. S. Clay 1995 compares Attis to ephebic figures such as Hippolytus and Meleager, who similarly fail to complete the transition to adult manhood. Cf. Quinn 1972: 249–51; Skinner 1997: 136–40; Fantuzzi and Hunter 2004: 480–1.

25 The manuscripts give masculine forms at lines 42, 45, 88, and 89: most editors correct these to feminines (see e.g. Fordyce 1961: 264 ad 63.8), though some critics have argued for a deliberate fluctuation between genders: see e.g. J. S. Clay 1995: 146–8; Skinner 1997: 138.

26 Cf. Janan 1994: 106–7. For interpretation of the cut -flower simile of poem 11 as suggestive of castration and effeminization, see Chapter 2, pp. 45–6, above. Putnam 1974: 80 connects the image with Attis’ self-characterization as ‘the flower of the gymnasium’ (gymnasi…flos; 63.64). A slightly different, though related, interpretation, advanced particularly by Skinner in her influential article of 1997, understands Attis’ castration as an emblem of political impotence in the face of aristocratic, perhaps especially Triumviral, monopolization of power in the closing decades of the Republic.

27 For ‘ironic’ readings, see esp. Curran 1969; Bramble 1970; Konstan 1977; Gaisser 1995. Contra, Jenkyns 1982 and Fitzgerald 1995: 140–68, both of whom emphasize the poem’s voluptuously sensuous character and deny that it is primarily concerned with the moral status either of the Age of Heroes or of the poet’s contemporary society. For similarly aestheticizing readings, see M. Heath 1989: 60–2; Martindale 2005: 90–100; see also Schmale 2004: esp. 284–90, who accounts for the poem’s incongruities by drawing a sharp distinction between internal and external audiences, and between narrator and author, and Fernandelli 2012: esp. xvii–xxxiv.

28 On the complexities of the simile, and the ultra-Callimachean shifting of narrative weight from the hero’s exploits to the marginal figure of Ariadne, see esp. Hunter 2006: 99–100.

29 As is suggested particularly by its Lucretian intertext, Lucr. 1.84–101, where the sacrifice of Iphigenia is similarly described and explicitly contrasted with the wedding in which Agamemnon’s daughter should be participating. For verbal echoes between the two passages, see Skinner 1976; Morisi 2002. On Lucretian intertexuality in poem 64 more generally, and the difficult issue of chronological priority, see Gale 2007: 69–70, with further bibliography; see now also the methodologically innovative study of Tamás 2016.

30 The details of the scenario elaborated in the poem are somewhat unclear, and have given rise to considerable controversy: particularly disputed are the identity of the Caecilius mentioned in line 9 as the house’s current owner and his relation to the two Balbi; and whether or not line 20 implies a previous marriage on the part of Balbus’ wife. For discussion and bibliography, see e.g. Laguna Mariscal 2002: 16–18; Lewis 2009: 40–4 (the latter argues that the obscurity is deliberate, thematizing the unreliability of gossip and the nature of literary communication). For further points of contact between poems 66 and 67, see Macleod 1983: 192–3; Levine 1985: 69–71; King 1988: 388; Fitzgerald 1995: 205–7; Höschele 2009: 129–34.

31 For comic elements in poem 67, see Maynes 2016 (surprisingly, the poem is not discussed in Polt 2021); cf. esp. Plaut. Curc. 15–157 for direct address of the personified house door.

32 Cf. esp. 62.58: cara uiro magis et minus est inuisa parenti, ‘[the girl who is married off] is more dear to her man and less burdensome to her father’. See also Wiseman 1969: 22. Fantuzzi and Hunter 2004: 476 note that the opening lines of 67 recall the conclusion of Callimachus’ ‘Lock of Berenice’, the model for Catullus’ translation in poem 66, which, as printed by most editors, omits the lines in question. Critics are divided as to whether (i) Callimachus removed the concluding lines of his poem in adapting it for incorporation in the Aetia (see also n. 42 below) – presumably the version that Catullus read; or (ii) Catullus translates the lines but moves them to the beginning of 67, creating an allusive link between the two poems (so Fantuzzi and Hunter); or (iii) the Catullan lines should in fact appear at the end of poem 66 (so Agnesini 2011; Du Quesnay 2012: 181–3; Portuese 2013: 102–6, 141–4; Heyworth 2015: 135–7; Fo 2018: 933–6). Even if the proposal to reassign the lines is accepted, however, assimilation between door and bride is still suggested by the phrase facta marita (lit. ‘once you were made marital’, i.e. were married/belonged to a married couple) at line 6.

33 Roman notions of incestus were broader than their modern equivalent, embracing near relations by marriage as well as blood relatives: see Watson 2006: 40 n. 35.

34 See e.g. Marinone 1997: 160–4.

35 And the incestuous relations which the narrator of 64 represents as typical of his own, degenerate age in the poem’s coda, 64.401–4. Berenice and Ptolemy were in fact cousins rather than brother and sister, but their union is assimilated to the sibling marriages typical of Egyptian dynastic tradition. This section of the Coma (poem 66) also resonates with the theme of ‘false tears’ (an epithalamial topos) in 62: the boys’ insinuation that, though young girls ‘take pleasure in carping at [Hymen], with feigned complaints’, they secretly long for marriage (36–7) is reiterated by the Lock, which professes exaggerated surprise that Berenice’s resistance to marriage (implied by the language of erotic violence in 13–14, as well as the ‘abundant tears’ of brides in general in 15–18) has so quickly given way to longing for her absent husband.

36 For this interpretation of fetus, see e.g. Fordyce 1961: 326, ad loc.; Syndikus 1984–90: ii.195; Fitzgerald 1995: 192–3. As Fordyce points out, however, the term may equally refer to the ‘fruit’ of trees or other plants: expromere, ‘bring forth’, suggests the metaphor of bringing fruit out of a store, and anticipates the accidental ‘production’ of the apple in the concluding simile. Woodman 2012: 135 asserts that the characterization of the Muses as virgins effectively rules out the former interpretation; but, in the epithalamial context of the carmina maiora, we might well think of a progression from virginity to maternity; moreover, the poem’s characteristic inversions of gender (on which see esp. Wray 2001: 197–203; Young 2015: 131–2; Seider 2016: 289–96) suggest that the maternal figure in this scenario is the poet rather than the Muse.

37 In addition, of course, to poem 65 itself: several scholars have commented on the paradox entailed in apologizing for not being able to produce a poem in a poem which is itself a masterpiece of allusive complexity and polished artistry, not to mention the implication (12) that the brother’s death will in fact inspire future songs of lamentation. See esp. Selden 1992: 474–5; Skinner 2003: 3–5.

38 The precise reference of the simile is much disputed: does the apple represent the promised poem or Hortalus’ request? Does Hortalus himself play the role of the sponsus or the girl’s mother? For a clear, if somewhat schematic, statement of the alternatives, see Laursen 1989. As will be clear from the discussion above, I believe that the text of the poem simultaneously invites both interpretations, neither of which can be definitively ruled out. On the culture of literary exchange presupposed by the poem, see Chapter 3, pp. 54–5, above.

39 It is noteworthy in this connection that the noun gremium (literally, the lap or bosom) can also refer to the female genitalia (presumably the sense at 67.30, the wife’s vagina being regarded as the husband’s property) or uterus (see Adams 1982: 92; OLD §3; TLL 6.2322.36–56).

40 For a sensitive analysis of Catullus’ negotiation of conflicting loyalties – to his amicus and to his dead brother – in the poem’s closing lines, see Fitzgerald 1995: 189–96, who however interprets the metaphors of conception and pregnancy somewhat differently from the reading outlined above. See also Oliensis 2009: 25–32; Seider 2016: 289–96.

41 See e.g. Fordyce 1961: 326–7, ad loc. Catullus’ phrasing (as well as the name Itylus) closely recalls Penelope’s speech at Od. 19.518–23, where she compares herself to the unfortunate Aedon; but the epithet ‘Daulian’ suggests the alternative version of the myth, according to which Tereus was king of Daulia in Phocis (so Thuc. 2.29.3). As Woodman 2012: 142 observes, too, the participle absumpti applied to Itylus at 65.14 can mean ‘devoured’ as well as merely ‘carried off by death’, and thus points implicitly to Tereus’ cannibal feast.

42 ‘Probably’ because – as noted above (n. 32) – two versions of the Callimachean poem apparently existed in antiquity, an original, separate publication and a (slightly modified?) version incorporated into the end of Aetia 4. For details, see e.g. Marinone 1997: 41–2; Harder 2012: ii.799–800.

43 The relevant section of the text has not survived, but Aristaenetus’ version of the story (Ep. 1.10 = Callim. Aet. fr. 75b Harder), which can be assumed with some confidence to be based closely on that of Callimachus, mentions Acontius’ rolling (diekulisas) of the apple and dwells at length on Cydippe’s blush, occasioned by the mention of marriage; Cydippe’s nurse, who initially picks up the apple, is also said to wonder whether one of the other girls has let the apple fall from her prokolpion (cf. 65.20: casto…e gremio). The apple as ‘secret gift’ (65.19) is more generally reminiscent of Acontius’ stratagem (furtiuo is roughly equivalent to the lathrā, ‘secretly’, ‘stealthily’, of Aristaenetus): cf. also Ov. Her. 20.5–6, 97, 21.112 (the blush), 20.209 (the rolling apple). See further Daly 1952; Barchiesi 1993: 363–5; Hunter 1993. Others (e.g. Syndikus 1984–90: ii.197–8) are sceptical.

44 Woodman 2012: 150–1.

45 Here we might compare Propertius’ reworking of the Acontius–Cydippe story at 1.18, where the poet represents himself as wandering, like Acontius, in a lonely place and carving the name of his beloved on trees (cf. Callim. Aet. frs. 72–3 Harder); in other respects, however, his relationship with Cynthia bears no similarity to that of Acontius with Cydippe.

46 For a line-by-line comparison of poem 66 and the surviving fragments of the Callimachean model, see e.g. Warden 2006: 100–18. For elements of Callimachean style in poem 65, see King 1988: 384–5; Barchiesi 1993: 363; Hunter 2006: 101–2. For poems 65 and 66 as representing different points on a ‘continuum of allusive practices’, see also Fantuzzi and Hunter 2004: 474–5 (quoted phrase at 474); Young 2015: 128–65, esp. 164–5.

47 See esp. Fantuzzi and Hunter 2004: 467–74; McElduff 2013: esp. 15–16 (range of translation practices) and 132–4 (Catullus 65 and 66); Young 2015: 6–19; Feeney 2016: esp. 45–64.

48 Marinone 1997 goes so far as to print the two poems with lines interleaved where the Greek text is extant, though cautioning against the assumption that Catullus’ version offers a transparent window onto the Callimachean original (35–6). For an account (and critique) of scholarly attempts to use Catullus to reconstruct Callimachus, see esp. Bing 2009. For a full discussion of the controversial Catullan lines 66.79–88, which have no equivalent in our text of Callimachus, see Du Quesnay 2012: 162–75, with further bibliography at 163 nn. 54–7. For debate around the poem’s ending, see n. 32 above.

49 See esp. Höschele 2009; Young 2015: 139–65. On Aeneas’ quotation of the Lock’s inuita, o regina at Aen. 6.460, see esp. Lyne 1994: 187–93; Griffith 1995; Wills 1998; Pelliccia 2011; Hardie 2012: 229–35.

50 Höschele’s warning (2009: 126) against the unexamined assumption that the poet’s personal experience is primary – that he chose the Coma to translate because it happened to chime with his own preoccupations – is salutary, however: as is clear from the complex intertextuality of poem 65, Catullus’ depiction of his own grief and sense of alienation is as much conditioned by his reading of Greek literature as it is determinative of the texts he selects as components of his literary self-fashioning.

51 Cf. Fedeli 1983: 52–3, 86–9.

52 On intertextuality in poem 64, see esp. Thomas 1982; Zetzel 1983; Gaisser 1995; Clare 1996; De Brohun 2007; Fernandelli 2012: esp. 160–210. For the coverlet as mise-en-abyme of the poem as a whole, and hence as a metapoetic symbol of Catullus’ importation of a ‘decadent’ foreign poem-type, see Young 2015: 26–39. Dufallo 2013: 39–73 similarly reads the ecphrasis as dramatizing the clash between Hellenizing and traditional Roman value systems in contemporary culture. Conversely, Fitzgerald 1995: 140–68, esp. 142–6, argues that the poem embodies a nostalgic sense of alienation from the seductive world of Greek myth.

53 Interpretation of poem 64 as an ‘indictment of [contemporary] Rome’ is most fully developed by Konstan 1977.

54 On myth and intertextuality in poem 68, see esp. Macleod 1974; Tuplin 1981; Skinner 1984; Shipton 1985; Janan 1994: 119–39; Vandiver 2000; Gale 2012.

55 Young 2015: 25–51. Catullus’ depiction of Attis as Greek appears to be an innovation: in other accounts, he originates from Phrygia. See e.g. Harrison 2004: 520–3. For the cult of Attis and other versions of the myth, see L. E. Roller 1999: 237–59; Bremmer 2004, with a brief survey of earlier scholarship at 534–5.

56 For cultural imperialism in Cicero and Virgil, see esp. Cic. Tusc. 1.1–6, 2.5–7; Virg. G. 3.10–15. Cf. Young 2015: 6–19.

57 For the argument that Catullus’ account of the Trojan War in this poem draws on the choruses of Aeschylus’ Agamemnon, with their similar focus on the cost of the war to the families left at home, see Gale 2012: esp. 196–207.

58 See above, p. 46. Relevant in this connection is the gender change of the Lock: in the process of translation, the Greek (masculine) plokamos is converted into the Latin (feminine) coma.

59 For the argument that Callimachus’ Lock echoes the laments of female poets (Sappho, Erinna) separated by marriage from their companions, see Gutzwiller 1992, esp. 374–6. Berenice’s longing also recalls that of Ariadne, who – like the coma – has been taken from her home and family: compare 66.23: quam penitus maestas exedit cura medullas! (‘how deeply anxiety consumed your sorrowful heart!’) with 64.93: imis exarsit tota medullis (‘from the depths of her heart her whole being caught fire’).

60 On landscape and alienation in poem 63, see Janan 1994: 104–6; Rosivach 2012; De Villiers 2017; O’Hearn 2021a. For Roman perception of Cybele – or at least certain aspects of her cult – as ‘oriental’, see Vermaseren 1977: 96–7; L. E. Roller 1999: 301–9. The ecphrasis of Bacchus and his train at 64.251–64 similarly stresses the threatening ‘foreignness’ of his orgiastic cult (esp. 264: barbara…tibia): for the suggestion that Dionysiac overtones are present in poem 63, via intertextual connections with Euripides’ Bacchae (a work similarly concerned with ‘the cultural clash of East and West’), see Harrison 2004: 520–7; cf. also Panoussi 2003.

61 Cic. Leg. 2.5; cf. Off. 1.57–8 for the analogous hierarchy between familial and patriotic duty. Catullus’ joyful homecoming to Sirmio in poem 31 paints a notably different picture of his relation to his provincial roots.

62 See further Dench 2005: esp. 329–42 on Catullus. Also relevant in this connection is the provincial setting of poem 67; for the door’s speech (particularly the grandiose personifications of 32–4) as a send-up of local pretensions, see Dench 2005: 340–1.

63 Cf. 64.142–6: quae [sc. promissa] cuncta aerii discerpunt irrita uenti./nunc iam nulla uiro iuranti femina credat/…dum aliquid cupiens animus praegestit apisci,/nil metuunt iurare, nihil promittere parcunt (‘the airy winds have torn apart all his promises and brought them to nothing. Now indeed no woman should believe a man’s oaths…While their eager mind is urgent to obtain some end, they do not shrink from oaths and spare no promises’). The accusations of perfidia with which Ariadne begins her speech also echo the ‘betrayal of friendship’ poems discussed in Chapter 3, esp. poem 30: see pp. 55–6 above.

64 Putnam 1961: 200.

65 Bibliography on poem 64 is immense, and I have not attempted to do more than cite a sample of particularly important or influential discussions. In addition to Putnam 1961, Klingner 1956 advances powerful arguments for the unity of the epyllion – which in earlier scholarship (e.g. Wheeler 1934: 130–2) had regularly been faulted for its lack of cohesion. Inconsistency and competing ‘voices’ are analysed with particular incisiveness by Gaisser (1995), from whom the image of the textual labyrinth is taken; see also Theodorakopoulos 2000; O’Hara 2007: 33–54. Fernandelli’s large-scale study of the poem (Fernandelli 2012) renews the argument for poetic unity, playing down ‘incongruities’ as a by-product of Catullus’ (successful) ‘totalizing’ integration of a wide range of intertexts, and his focus on the narrating ‘I’ rather than the events narrated.

66 Verbs of speaking: perhibent (76), commemorem (117), perhibent (124), ferunt (212); see Gaisser 1995: 600–1.

67 LIMC iii.1.1056–65 (departure of Theseus and advent of Bacchus in the same scene: no. 97). The importance of visual models for Catullus’ handling of the narrative was observed by Klingner 1956: 32–43; more recent scholarship has drawn attention to the thematization of the gaze, both within the ecphrasis and in the framing account of the Thessalian wedding guests as internal readers/spectators (see esp. Fitzgerald 1995: 140–68; Elsner 2007: 68–73). Trimble 2025 expands in various ways on Klingner’s insights (esp. section 1[f] of the Introduction).

68 A dichotomy particularly emphasized by Schmale 2004.

69 Laird 1993.

70 For Klingner 1956 (esp. 66–77), the poem’s essential unity arises both from the similarities and from the contrasts between the two stories.

71 The aged Peleus appears to be living alone in Phthia (Il. 19.334–7), while Thetis has returned to her father’s house beneath the sea (1.358, 18.36, 24.83–6); cf. Ap. Rhod. Argon. 4.866–79. The irony is underlined by the blithe assurance at the end of the Parcae’s prophecy that Thetis’ mother need have no anxieties about the couple’s sleeping apart (secubitu; Catull. 64.380), and by Catullus’ suppression of the otherwise widely attested unwillingness of Thetis to enter into a match with a mortal – here, the couple’s desire and devotion are instead emphatically represented as mutual (334–6; cf. 20: non despexit).

72 See pp. 23–4 above (with bibliography at n. 73).

73 As Zetzel argues, the dense intertextuality of the opening lines leads us to expect an Argonautica, or perhaps a Medea, rather than a Marriage of Peleus and Thetis: it is not until we reach lines 19–21, with their emphatic polyptoton tum Thetidis…tum Thetis…tum Thetidi that the poem’s true subject is revealed (Zetzel 1983: 261).

74 For these ironies, see esp. Bramble 1970.

75 The inconsistency is already noticed by Haupt 1876: 73. On the chronological issue, see esp. Weber 1983; Gaisser 1995; Feeney 2007: 123–7; O’Hara 2007: 34–41. See also the ‘Epilogue’ in Trimble 2025 for stimulating discussion of the poem’s representation of time and space in general.

76 In Apollonius, for example, Peleus is already married before the expedition sets out, and Chiron brings the baby Achilles to wave his father off (Argon. 1.553–8).

77 For Medea’s role in this phase of the myth, see e.g. Callim. Hecale fr. 232–4 Pf., with the diegesis (Dieg. 10.20–1).

78 Cf. Hes. Op. 90–2, 112–18; Aratus, Phaen. 108–13; Lucr. 5.933–6; Virg. Ecl. 4.40–5; Virg. G. 1.125–8; Tib. 1.3.37–48; Ov. Met. 1.91–106.

79 For bibliography on Virgil’s reception of Catullus 64 in Eclogue 4, see Chapter 6, n. 21, below.

80 For the elegance of the poem’s form (full discussion of which is precluded here by constraints of space), see esp. Jenkyns 1982; for a general account of the poem’s style, see also Trimble 2025: Introduction, section 2(d).

81 Klingner 1956.