Jennifer Ranck, CUNY Graduate Center
In Catullus’ Carmina 64.188-201, Ariadne invokes the Eumenides (194), the snaky-haired avenging goddesses who “avenge the deeds of men” (64.193, Mulroy 2002),” and whose appearance resembles the Erinyes more than that of the Eumenides. Ariadne summons the Eumenides for her demise here in Catullus’ poem while the variations and receptions of her myth, particularly in other Roman elegy, do not seem to include any such evocation to these goddesses by any name. Instead, the Eumenides, more so than the Erinyes (Propertius Elegies 2.20, Ovid Heroides 11.103), are found in several instances in Roman elegiac poetry (Ovid Metamorphoses 4.482, 6.430-31, 10.46; Heroides 7.96; Horace Odes 2.13.36; Propertius Elegies 4.11), as well as in Virgil’s Georgics 1.278. The metrical placement in these instances always has the Eumenides name first in the line as it is also in three of the four instances in Euripides’ Orestes (Εὐμενίδας 38, Εὐμενίσι 836, 1650; μελάγχρωτες Εὐμενίδες 321).
The development of the role of the Greek Erinyes from protectors of relationships between blood kin, avenging crimes of familial bloodshed, to the inclusion of marriage and family equating the Erinyes with the Eumenides and the Semnai Theai, with their expanded role to include intimate love relationships or bonds, especially those that are broken. (Johnston 1999; Mitchell-Boyask 2009). The various names are noted as interchangeable in both Euripides and in Vergil (Martin 2020, 155; Brown 1984, 267) while these names also represented the dual functions of these goddesses: to “punish homicides (kin-murders)” and to “act as divine guarantors of solemn oaths and curses” (Heinrichs 1994, 95).
Along with the development of the avenging goddesses in name and function, Catullus utilizes the Medeas of Euripides and of Apollonius Rhodes, whose Medea calls on the Erinyes, to (Dufallo 2013; Armstrong 2006; Clare 1996). Armstrong notes that there may be “something significant in the change Catullus makes from Erinyes to Eumenides” (Armstrong 2006, 54.n40). The allusions to Medea may also explain why Ariadne is not depicted in either elegiac poetry or in art with avenging spirits, but instead as the abandoned, sleeping and as reclining bride of Bacchus.
I argue that Catullus establishes a precedent in Roman elegy not only for calling these spirits Eumenides but also for their metrical placement as first in line in Roman elegiac poems. Catullus’ adaptation of the Greek mythical past as the setting for his poems including the choice of Ariadne as the betrayed and deserted allows for the insertion of Bacchant elements (Wasdin 2017, 186), and for the infusion of familial vengeance via Medea to portray the furor and rage experienced by love gone awry, which then heightens the betrayal of Theseus and the pain of betrayal on the part of Ariadne (Dufallo 2013, 68). The Eumenides are invoked in Roman elegiac poetry, first by Catullus, as an expression of the raw and powerful emotion as well as the instability that accompanies the loss of intense, passionate love especially if through desertion or betrayal.