R. F. Thomas 1982a, 148. It is of course by no means straightforwardly the case that the
sailing of Catullus’s Argo takes us simply from the Golden to the Iron Age: as we shall
see, the confusion of the various eras is vital to Catullus’s project, and the “heroic race”
of Hesiod is as much at issue as the “Golden Age” (Syndikus 1990, 105 – 6, 188). Still,
he is undoubtedly capitalizing on the crucial concept of a turn from a blessed to a fallen
state, however much the apparent transparency of this concept is put under pressure as
he proceeds. Marincic (2001, 484, 488 – 89) provides a convincing framework for this
problem, arguing for Catullus’s blending of Hesiodic and Aratean paradigms of degen-
eration. For the possible influence of Dicaearchus on Catullus’s conception of a falling-
offfrom proximity to the divine, see Della Corte 1976, 128 n. 29.
- Cf. Fitzgerald 1995, 151. In Apollonius, when the nymphs look on in wonder at
the first sailing of the Argo, they do so from mountaintops, not from the sea (1.549 –
52): Clare 1996, 63. - This is very different from Apollonius’s Argonautica,as is well pointed out by
Clauss (2000, 25 n. 55), who remarks that Apollonius “does not appear to envisage sea-
faring per se as a symptom of a fall from grace.” On the hidden presence of Jason and
Medea in the poem’s opening, see Zetzel 1983, 258 – 61. - Cf. Bramble 1970, 36 – 37; Munich 2003, 48: “While the ship brings about the
occasion for Peleus’s and Thetis’s meeting and is responsible for their union, it is also
an agent of separation — pine trees are uprooted, man is separated from land, and the
sea nymphs abandon their usual home.” - On the rich literary tradition concerning the wedding, see Syndikus 1990, 113;
for the iconographic tradition, see LIMCVII.1, s.v. “Peleus,” 265 – 67. In book 4 of
Apollonius’s Argonauticawe see an encounter between Peleus and Thetis that is the
only depiction of a conversation between a divorced couple that I can think of in
ancient literature, given that in the plays of Euripides and Seneca Jason and Medea are
still in the stage of custody dispute, and that in Odyssey4 Menelaus and Helen are rec-
onciled and “remarried.” It is not much of a conversation, since Peleus sits and listens
in silent shock while Thetis tells him what is going to happen to the ship (4.851 – 68).
She even begins by addressing him in the plural, as if addressing the ship’s company
(856 – 61), before switching to the singular (862 – 64). - Prisc. Gramm.2.79.8, ab humo humanus;Maltby 1991, s.vv. humanusand humus;
see Ahl 1985, 108, on Varro Ling.5.23 – 24. - Best captured in the analysis of Gaisser (1995). The powerful arguments of
Versnel (1994, 90 – 227) on crises of inversion and reversal associated with Cronus and
Saturnus do not provide a model with which to solvethe problems of poem 64, but his
analysis of the total ambivalence generated in these moments of transition and caesura
is very good to think with for students of the poem, not least for those interested in its
ambiguities of moral judgment: note his evocation of the coexistence in transitional
notes to page 123. 267