Madness, Pity, and Echoes of Epic in Catullus 63
Abstract
Abstract: Catullus’ Attis is known as a figure of devotion and delusion, a zealot who castrates himself as an offering to Cybele, regrets his actions too late, and is condemned to lifelong exile and servitude. This paper argues that traditional oral-epic thematic and phraseological design in 63 provides an epic-like setting for a poem about a eunuch that begins in the realm of myth, where Attis is portrayed as an eccentric, though benign, convert to foreign religious practice. But midway through the poem, Catullus shifts our focus to a Greco-Roman realism from which Attis can be viewed simultaneously as a madman and an object of pity.