Catullus 64 Catullus 64 Catullus 64 is an epyllion or "little epic" poem written by Latin poet Catullus. Catullus' longest poem, it retains his famed linguistic witticisms while employing an appropriately epic tone. Though ostensibly concerning itself with the marriage of Peleus and the sea-nymph Thetis (parents of the famed Greek hero Achilles), a sizeable portion of the poem's lines is devoted to the desertion of Ariadne by the legendary Theseus. Although the poem implies that Theseus and Ariadne were in love, in reality the text never explicitly states that Theseus even looked at Ariadne. Told through ecphrasis, or the depiction of
Seduction of the Minotaur the doctor allows himself to be shot because he is loved only as a doctor and never as a man, perhaps patterned after her understanding of Otto Rank's death. The title refers to the Freudian concept of a "monster" in the subconscious confined by a "labyrinth". Since one should not kill one's own mind, the repressed feelings must be "seduced" by developing conscious insight. An earlier version was published in 1958 with the title "Solar Barque", after a ship found in an Egyptian pyramid. Seduction of the Minotaur Seduction of the Minotaur is an autobiographical novel by the mixed nationality