Search

Catullus 63 is one of the most unusual of Latin poems, and also one of the most difficult for literary interpreters. In this paper I would like to discuss it from three angles, connected by the common factor of change or alteration: ethnicity, the poem's alteration of Attis' previous ethnic identity to make him Greek and to stress the contrast with the poem's Asiatic setting; gender, its transsexual use of previous female literary characters as models for Attis' two speeches;2) and genre, the literary form of the poem and its alteration and mixture of various types of generic antecedent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In my contribution I attempt a new analysis of the myth and ritual of Attis and its reception in Catullan Rome. I argue (1) that the attempts to identify Attis with the Herodotean Atys are unconvincing, as they are based on Hermesianax's poem, which intended to provide an aetiology for a taboo on the pig in Pessinous; (2) that Attis starts to appear in the Greek world in the middle to the third quarter of the fourth century BC; the mention in Demosthenes should be taken as referring to his own time, not to that of Aeschines' mother; (3) that a careful comparison of Timotheus' account with that of Pausanias enables us to reconstruct the Phrygian myth and ritual of Pessinous as well as its gradual development, whereby special attention is given to Kybele, Agdistis, Attis and his festival, and the eunuch Galli; (4) that the religious aspects of Catullus 63 show a close identification of the cult of Kybele with that of Dionysus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]