カトゥルス64の教訓的結語(384-408)について

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In the envoy of the Peleus-epyllion Catullus praises the happiness of the Golden Age and compares with it the sin and unhappiness of the present time. This is not a mere imitation of Hesiod, but something he obtained from his own experience. For, first, since this epyllion is closely connected with the love experience of the poet himself, the envoy cannot be quite unrelated to it. Secondly, the first half of the envoy indicates the happiness of the Golden Age, which has been described in the story of Peleus, with some other examples of epiphany and for this reason it is a suitable epilogue of the story; but the fact that the unhappiness of his own age related in the latter half has no relation to the story of Peleus except that it is an antithesis shows that the poet, having finished his objective description, has returned to his subjective standpoint. Thirdly, though in the envoy he makes pietas the moral criterion of happiness, in the narrative he only describes the hero's happiness without being conscious of his pietas. This shows that he inquires into the reason for the happiness only after he had finished the story, and so the envoy contains the poet's subjective interpretation of the story. Fourthly, pietas is the kernel of his moral conception, which has matured through his love experience with Lesbia. For at the time of demoralization, when the pietas, the most fundamental moral concept of Rome, was about to lose its original power, he tried to revive it as the moral basis of a new republic, "the republic of love and friendship", which he founded with his intimate friends and loves, and thus he intended to rescue both the people from decadence and the pietas from oblivion. In this republic there was no difference between love-affairs and married life, if only they were supported by the new interpretation of the principle of pietas. Moreover pietas changed,. through Catullus' experience of Lesbia's faithlessness, from mutual duty of faith and service into unilateral devotion. For he passionately idealized the fickle mistress, who then turned into a goddess and demanded of her loyal lover absolute submission. This did not last long, and at last he laid the blame on her in the name of pietas and broke off with her. But through the Lesbia-experience he thus reflected upon the concept of pietas, purified it, and gave it a new meaning. It may be said from our objective point of view that his moral consistency is doubtful; but Catullus, who constantly claimed pietas in every human relation and who believed himself to have maintained it, was surely a truly Roman poet. So the envoy of the Peleus-epyllion is both a retrospection of the old days and a general survey of the present time from the same moral standpoint, as he adopted in criticizing all sorts of conduct in his epigrams, iambics and hendecasyllabics. It may have no close relation to his love with Lesbia, nor is his thought original; yet it is a genuine reflection of his own experience.
日本西洋古典学会の論文
1967-03-23

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中山恒夫
共立女子大学

カトゥルス64の教訓的結語(384-408)について

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