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   CJ Bellwether (siege@octodon.social)'s status on Friday, 01-Mar-2024 04:14:54 JST CJ Bellwether

   "That emphasis, however, sharply reverses immediately after Attis’ castration, after which Catullus switches to entirely female identifiers. Catullus describes them, using the feminine, as citata, “[she is] swift” — the “swiftness” Attis now has perhaps recalling the weight they have shed — and uses haec, not hic, as their pronoun at 63.11. 63.11 also describes them with the feminine adjectives adorta and tremebunda. The entire
   Cybelean priest(ess)hood is described in feminine terms as well: Catullus consistently uses Gallae, not the more common Galli. Although Catullus uses masculine predicates later in the poem
   — ego mulier, ego adulescens, ego ephebus, ego puer (“I a woman, I a youth, I an ephebe, I a boy”); ego vir sterilis ero?, (“shall I be a sterile man?”) — feminine grammatical features
   describing Attis remain the norm until the very beginning of their soliloquy. Even as Attis begins to regret their loss of a male, Greek identity, Catullus uses a feminine form to describe them — maesta est (“she grieved”) — hinting at Attis’ ambiguous femininity even as the character’s own view becomes rather more uncertain. It is clear, therefore, that Catullus views Attis as essentially feminine between their castration and lament.

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     CJ Bellwether (siege@octodon.social)'s status on Friday, 01-Mar-2024 04:25:25 JST CJ Bellwether

     in reply to

     "Nonetheless, Catullus’ description of Attis’ identity and role are not without ambiguity. Perhaps the most prominent of these uncertainties is found at 63.27, where Attis is described as a notha mulier. This line has often been taken as a denial of Attis’ femininity: Green, for instance, renders the predicate as “woman no woman,” and Lee translates it to “false female.”

     It is unnecessary, however, to take notha as such a strongly negative qualifier. While the word in its general meaning can be taken as “bastard” or “false”, it may also have the more neutralsense of “mixed” or “hybridized.”

     It is therefore premature to
     conclude that notha, as Catullus uses it, is indeed a negation of Attis’ being a mulier: the meaning of the term is ambiguous, and it can equally be taken to imply that Attis is a woman of unusual origins, or with hybrid male and female characteristics, so as to imply that they are not a woman at all.

     While it is difficult to speculate as to the author’s intent, the use of falsa would have much more clearly conveyed the sense of negation taken by Green and Lee and would be metrically equivalent.

     More concretely, the “mixed” or “uncertain” sense of notha corresponds quite well to the single other use of mulier within the text, in which it is placed in an uneasy coexistence with seemingly contradictory identities:

     ego mulier, ego adulescens, ego ephebus, ego puer, ego gymnasi fui flos, ego eram decus olei

     “I a woman, I a youth, I an ephebe, I a boy, I have been the flower of the gymnasium, I was the glory of the oil.”

     While these lines are undoubtedly biographical, it is difficult to determine the chronology of the line, that is, which of these identities coexist or succeed others at any given moment in Attis’ history.

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     CJ Bellwether (siege@octodon.social)'s status on Friday, 01-Mar-2024 04:38:12 JST CJ Bellwether

     in reply to

     clearly showing off my classics nerd past here.

     I love reading the different parses of greek and latin texts through the years. Theres so many moments where a straight writer will push text one way and then a gay translator will shake their head and say erm excuse me.

     The focus on the end of Catullus 63 where its like oh no what a terrible fate has befallen Attis, no one has come to save him on the shore line as he laments his mistake of running wild and free and being a woman, he is a fake woman only.

     And its like excuse me, what do you think Cybele sending her lions is about? Why is that not considered an act of one of the most powerful Goddesses to do exactly that? Attis's doubt disappears and she returns to her acceptance of the wild and her womanhood with the gallae.

     Like this isnt some esoterical pondering of an imagined concept by Cattulus as it is for the translators, these same wild Gallae literally danced in wild ecstasy through the streets outside his window on many occasion through the year.

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     CJ Bellwether (siege@octodon.social)'s status on Friday, 01-Mar-2024 05:14:16 JST CJ Bellwether

     in reply to

     like oh this is clearly a metaphor for Cattulus's masculinity and relationship to Clodia.

     Or is it perhaps poem by a man who's living world is surrounded by Gallae, and may feel anxiety that the Mother Goddess may enact the same wild fury of desire to join womanhood upon him one day?

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     CJ Bellwether (siege@octodon.social)'s status on Friday, 01-Mar-2024 05:20:09 JST CJ Bellwether

     in reply to

     if Christian men felt Mother Mary held power over them to turn them into wild lusting slave-girl attendants the way Romans did of her when she was Great Mother, perhaps we'd also see quite a few prayers and tributes given up in hope that she spare them too.

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     CJ Bellwether (siege@octodon.social)'s status on Friday, 01-Mar-2024 05:21:31 JST CJ Bellwether

     in reply to

     please dont make me put on the cat girl ears and maid uniform Mother uwu

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     Sleepy time tea bear (sleepytimeteabear@octodon.social)'s status on Saturday, 02-Mar-2024 00:38:05 JST Sleepy time tea bear

     in reply to

     @siege well now that would be a Marian cult with some pizazz, and a really interesting frame on how the power dynamic of Magna Mater & Attis are flipped with Mary & Jesus- Mary as the less powerful consort, interceding but not acting without being called; she can’t be feared the same way because she isn’t pro-active or personally transformative that way.
     & you’re totally right- Catullus was living in a world where gallae were among the people in the neighborhood, and so why wouldn’t you wonder ‘could I be called the same way?’ Especially in a theological framework where you can’t escape the divine

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     CJ Bellwether (siege@octodon.social)'s status on Saturday, 02-Mar-2024 02:49:21 JST CJ Bellwether

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     • Sleepy time tea bear

     @Sleepytimeteabear yeah, like i can imagine the impact must have been quite intense, seeing the Gallae dance and play through the streets during the day of blood, bleeing as they go - without understanding for what motivates them beyond "wild ecstatic fury". What could motivate someone to do that but divine intervention