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MENANDER'S THAIS AND CATULLUS' LESBIA

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 June 2015

S.J. Harrison
S.J. Harrison*
Affiliation:
Corpus Christi College, University of Oxford
*
[email protected]
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Extract

Menander's lost comedy Thais with its famous protagonist, the hetaira lover of Ptolemy I Soter and perhaps Alexander himself, was plainly well known at Rome, and is alluded to several times in Latin poetry of the Augustan and later periods, as Ariana Traill has shown. My purpose here is to argue that the literary characterisation of Thais in Menander's play underlies certain aspects of Lesbia as presented in the poetry of Catullus; that Catullus' poetry uses the plays of Menander has been demonstrated by Richard Thomas, arguing that Catullus 8 shows clear traces of Demea's monologue in the Samia (325–56).

Type
Shorter Notes
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 65 , Issue 2 , December 2015 , pp. 887 - 888
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Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 2015 

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References

1 On Thais and her ancient and modern reception see Ravazzolo, C., Thais, etera di Alessandro: da Plutarco ai manga (Padua, 2009)Google Scholar.

2 See esp. Traill, A., ‘Menander's Thais and the Roman poets’, Phoenix 55 (2001), 284–303 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. I am very grateful to Prof. Traill for her helpful suggestions on this piece.

3 See Thomas, R.F., ‘Menander and Catullus 8’, RhM 127 (1984), 308–16Google Scholar.

4 Another may be a line apparently cited at 1 Corinthians 15:33: see PCG 6.2 165 φθείρουσιν ἤθη χρήσθ’ ὁμιλίαι κακαί with commentary; Dunsch, B., ‘Menander bei Paulus: Oralität, Performanz und Zitationstechnik im Corpus Paulinum’, JbAC 53 (2010), 5–19 Google Scholar.

5 See Iversen, P.A., ‘Menander's Thaïs: “hac primum iuvenum lascivos lusit amores”’, CQ 61 (2011), 186–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 So Traill (n. 2).

7 On glubit here (the image is that of peeling bark from a log), see Adams, J.N., The Latin Sexual Vocabulary (London, 1982), 168Google Scholar.

8 I owe this reference to CQ's anonymous referee, whom I thank warmly.

9 See e.g. the emphasis on this aspect in the recent volume of le, I.M. Du Quesnay, M. and Woodman, A.J. (edd.), Catullus: Poems, Books, Readers (Cambridge, 2013)Google Scholar.

10 On Catullus and New Comedy see O'Bryhim, S., ‘Catullus 23 and Roman Comedy’, TAPhA 137 (2007), 133–45Google Scholar, with bibliography.