post uento crescente magis magis increbescunt,
purpureaque procul nantes ab luce refulgent.(269-75)
Then just as the West Wind ruffles the calm sea with morning breath, and sets the waves rolling, as
dawn rises, towards the portals of the roving sun, and driven by the gentle breeze they proceed slowly at
first, and their ripples sound with a soft plash; then, as the wind freshens, they crowd thicker and faster,
and as they float along, shimmer afar with the purple light.
The comparison primarily illustrates how a trickle of departing guests develops into a flood, and nobody
who has taken in the poet's words will forget them on such occasions. But there are other points of
correspondence: 'cachinni' suggests the guests' merry babble, 'purpurea' their fine clothes, 'nantes' their
undulating movement. The luminosity of the passage is typical of the poem as a whole: Catullus has
imitated the more glittering aspect of Hellenistic poetry and given it a delightfully new colour and
freshness.
As the poem draws towards its close it appropriately includes an epithalamium, which is sung not by a
choir of young girls (the usual practice), or by the Muses (as in Pindar's account of this particular
wedding), but by those grisly spinstresses, the Fates. Their chant begins normally enough with a mention
of the Evening Star, a commendation of wedded bliss, and an annunciation of the child of the marriage.
But the prophecy of Achilles gradually assumes a sinister note: 'his surpassing merits and glorious deeds
mothers will often acknowledge at the funerals of their sons, when they let fall disheveled hair from grey
heads and bruise withered breasts with palsied palms. Run, drawing the threads, run, spindles' (348 ff.).
And to remove all doubt about the poet's stance, they predict that Achilles' tomb will be honoured by the
sacrifice of a girl. The poet's revulsion at these barbaric deeds is all the more effective for the matter-of-
fact way in which they are presented. The poem's limpid beauty, which suited so well the lost age of
innocence, now takes on a characteristically ironic note: just as in some of the love poems, the subject-
matter and the style have begun to pull in opposite directions.
In spite of their very different subjects, Lucretius and Catullus have much in common. Both arc
recognizably poets of the Republic, and can describe intellectual or emotional adventures with a candour
difficult in later periods. Both write Latin with an elegant propriety that is sometimes lost in the
subtleties of the Augustans. Both observe the world with an uncluttered directness that had been
unknown for centuries, and was never quite recovered in antiquity. Lucretius' awareness of beauty
shows the influence of the new poetry, and some of Catullus' descriptions are modeled on Lucretius. But
though the Neoteric movement refined techniques and enlarged sensibilities, its effect on literature was
not all good. When art is pursued for art's sake, there is a danger of forgetting the nature of things.