Catullus 64: The Descent of Man

Abstract

Editors and critics of Catullus, both recent and not so recent, seem content with viewing lines 384-408 of Catullus’ sixty-fourth poem as a ‘moralizing epilogue’ which contrasts the poet’s own time with that of the Age of Heroes as represented by Peleus and Thetis, Ariadne and Theseus. For example, E. T. Merrill in his venerable school edition of Catullus comments succinctly: ‘Epilogue, commenting upon the withdrawal of divine presence from the ceremonies of men after the heroic age, on account of the impiety of the race’.