Using Horace’s Book I Ode 33, Albi, ne doleas and Catullus’ Poem 38, the reader can get a sense
of how they share the theme of comfort. The reader can see how Horace comforts
a heartbroken friend, and how Catullus responds to not being comforted.
Horace tells his friend Albius to “not grieve” over his
“bitter-sweet Glycera” because she has betrayed him for a younger man. He then
begins to tell a story about Cyrus betraying his “beautiful, narrow-boned
Lycoris” for the “hard-hearted Pholoe”. He uses this story because it describes
the situation that Albius is in, him being compared to the “beautiful,
narrow-boned Lycoris”. Like roe-deer mating with Apulian wolves, this
relationship is unusual. He ends the
story portion discussing how it is the “decree of Venus” since she joins
“unequal minds and bodies under her yoke of bronze”. The mating of opposites is
part of the game of love. However, Venus’ yoke must be made of bronze, not
anything easier to break, in order to keep the two at bay. Horace ends his poem
by discussing himself and his affair with “Myrtale, a freedwoman”. Essentially,
Horace is saying that what Glycera did is just a part of life that even he has
done.
Catullus beings by discussing how “life is really a bitch”
to him and is “getting worse”, yet Cornificius hasn’t “offered him any consolation”. Catullus feels that he himself would
have done so, and is “pissed off with [Cornificius]” that he hasn’t. He receives
no comfort from the busy Cornificius. He wants more than just a “tearful…message
on a gravestone”, showing that he feels he deserves to be comforted for all his
love that he has given to Cornificius.
Horace treats comfort in a much more delicate manner than
Catullus. While Horace uses a beautiful story to try to comfort his friend,
Catullus outright tells his friend, in an angry manner, that he (Catullus)
needs to be comforted. Whereas Horace sees comforting a friend as a kind
gesture to them, Catullus seeing it as an obligation that must be made.
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