Catullus 64 in Translation and Allusion

This chapter is about the reception of Catullus’ mini-epic poem 64. The first section shows how the poem was translated by Charles Abraham Elton, the philanthropic disseminator of classical literature in English to bourgeois Britain, and by the formally trail-blazing, Norwich-based Teutophile poet Frank Sayers. The second section hones in on the creative engagement with Catullus 64 by writers of the Cockney School including Thomas Love Peacock, Leigh Hunt, and John Keats. There emerges a new symbolic allegory based on the mythical sequence found in Catullus’ poem whereby the abandonment of Ariadne and the arrival of Bacchus accrue polemical reformist significance in line with the wider goals of the Hunt circle in the 1810s. In a time of post-revolutionary despondency the plight of the abandoned Ariadne parallels the abandoned hopes of the unhappily terminated revolution, and the arrival of Bacchus represents a renewed hope for reform.

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