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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 February 2009
Most commentators apply the phrase ‘vitans onus…iugi’ not only to the heifer but to Attis himself. When they ask what iugum Attis is avoiding, the immediate context provides no obvious answer. They are therefore compelled to interpret the iugum either in the light of a much earlier passage or in the light of a much later one. Neither procedure is satisfactory.
On the other hand, at least one editor has proposed that the phrase ‘vitans onus…iugi’ does not apply to Attis himself but to the heifer alone. The comparison between Attis and the heifer then lies only in their frenzied speed; the yoke-avoiding action is external to the comparison and merely heightens the picture of the charging heifer. The obvious difficulty with this view is that the concept of a yoke, and more generally of avoiding servitude, plays an important role relevant to Attis later on in the poem. From line 50 onwards Attis sees himself as an erifuga anxious to escape from slavery to Cybele. And the account of Cybele's lion, sent to round him up, twice refers to the notion of freeing from a yoke (76 and 84).
Both these traditional approaches concentrate on the literal meaning of the phrase vitans onus…iugi: they assume that the yoke itself is important and that it either does or does not make sense when applied to Attis. But if we focus instead upon the action which the whole phrase vitans onus…iugi suggests, then the description of the heifer has an apt application to Attis within its own immediate context.
1 So Sandy, G., ‘The imagery of Catullus 63’, TAPA 99 (1968), 398ff.Google Scholar; Glenn, J., ‘The yoke of Attis’, CPhil 68 (1973), 59ff.Google Scholar; Basto, J., ‘Caecilius Attis and Catullus 35’, LCVM 7 (1982), 30ff.Google Scholar; K. Quinn (ed.), Poems of Catullus note ad loc.
2 It has rightly been observed (e.g. by Quinn) that Attis is in fact willingly accepting the ‘yoke’ of servitude to Cybele.
3 Thus Glenn and Basto support their claim that the ‘onus iugi’ refers to the marriage yoke by seeing an allusion in line 33 to the much earlier line 5. On the other hand Sandy, who sees the ‘onus iugi’ as a reference to servitude, interprets line 33 in the light of the much later passage 76–84. So too does Quinn.
4 So Ellis in his note on 33. Ellis claims that the ‘propriety’ of the image lies in the custom of sacrificing to Cybele sine labe iuvencam…operum coniugiique rudem (Ovid, F. 4.355–6).
5 Ellis comes close to recognising that the phrase ‘iugum vitans’ refers to movement of the neck in his observation that ‘the point of the comparison lies mainly in the free-bearing of the neck, as a restive heifer might be called δύσλοɸος’. But he makes no attempt to apply this remark about the attitude of the neck to Cybele's initiates.
6 We may also compare Lucretius 2.632, where he describes the Phrygian Curetes: terrificas capitum quatientes numine cristas.
7 Similarly, Ellis may be right to suggest that Catullus chose for his image a heifer, rather than any other animal, because of the customary sacrifice of a heifer to Cybele. Cf. note 4 above.
