Peleus and Thetis, and describes the
Parcae's contribution to the
In several cases this is doubtless related to the Roman tradition of the Fata, as it is especially evident in the tales featuring trios of female figures (like the
Parcae), e.g.
This offers yet another example of a young woman imperilled at sea whose misfortune has been frozen into art, but as an intertext of "Le Rouet d'Omphale" Catullus 64 is most sinister once the
Parcae, the sisters of Fate, have been introduced:
So far from blessing a marriage which we might say was `made in heaven', divinity here is hostile: the
Parcae have their conditional clause, and the gods react in brutal disproportion to the neglect of an ancillary sacrifice.
Dorian outlines some general parallels:(2) both are in alcaics - which may indeed be significant since this is the only instance of Milton's use of that metre; both contain the theme that the
Parcae (only one in Milton) and Death abduct their victim without regard for his rank or skills.
The imagery used in qualifying Laodamia's passion, however, sharply contrasts with the event and the accompanying image that initiated the tragic sequence featured in the digression: Laodamia was punished by the
Parcae because she withheld sacrificial blood from a ieiuna ara.
Old men so duely, As, sooth, the
Parcae thought him one,
The Romans identified the
Parcae, originally personifications of childbirth, with the three Greek Fates.
He turns the witches into the
Parcae and, above and beyond that, into the constitutive condition of the tyrant's own being, not into an imposition forced onto Macbeth, whom they follow.
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This comparison is strengthened by the images painted onto the porticoes of Trimalchio's house: the procession of the gods Mercury, Minerva, Fortuna and the
Parcae, with Trimalchio in the place traditionally reserved for magistrates, echoes the procession usually held by the munerarius before the munera.