The Iliad In Catullus Poem 64

The passage from Catullus’ Poem 64 begins with the song of the Parcae; where through anaphora the pair is highlighted as being the ideal of love and happiness: ‘No house has ever given shelter to such loves, / No love has ever joined lovers in such treaty’ (c64.334-335). While their marriage is divinely sanctioned by the fates themselves, the remainder of the passage concentrates on their future son Achilles and his increasingly gruesome deeds. The juxtaposition between their present bliss and the violent future creates the idea that the love can provide a means for death, destruction and tragedy to prosper. The juxtaposition also implies that even their great love is in a precarious position, as their situation could conclude in other disastrous …show more content…
Using intertext, Catullus refers to Homer’s The Iliad using descriptors such as ‘free from fear’, ‘swift’ and valiant’ to create the expectation that Achilles will be depicted as a glorious hero. However this is undermined by violent imagery which emphasises visual elements such as blood, death and fire. In traditional Roman literary descriptions of warfare, extending pity or clemency towards the defeated was seen as virtuous, but this is subverted by Achilles’ ruthless actions (Hope, V.M. 2007). This subversion of traditional expectations is continued through a simile where he is likened to a reaper cutting down Trojans without mercy. The simile is used to characterise Achilles as simply doing his duty without sympathy or pity, as he kills Trojans as though ‘beneath the burning sun’ which implies his ruthlessness and destructive power. The overall characterisation of Achilles demonstrates how virtus should not be idealised, as it can lead to immense death and –in regards to the death of Polyxena- how competing qualities of amores and virtus are idealised at the expense of