CLASSICS RESEARCH COLLOQUIUM DATE: Thursday, 21 February 2019 TIME: 14:10 - 15:45 VENUE: Committee Room, Classics Department, Room GO 12A, Ground Floor, MTB, Howard College Campus SPEAKER: Dr Suzanne Sharland (Classics, UKZN) TOPIC: Oscar Wilde’s poem Charmides and Catullus 63: raving, remembrance, and regret ABSTRACT: Oscar Wilde’s poem Charmides describes the actions of a beautiful Greek youth who, returning from Sicily to Athens by sea, commits a sexual and religious outrage by simulating sexual intercourse with a statue of the virgin goddess Athena in her temple. When Charmides returns to sea, he is deceived by what he perceives as a vision of the goddess Athena walking on the waves toward him, and jumps to his death off the ship. We are in no doubt the goddess has taken her revenge for the youth’s impetuous, hot-blooded and hubristic transgression. Our eponymous hero’s body floats back to Greece and is washed up at Colonus, where a nymph falls in love with him, initially unaware that he is actually dead. Like Ovid’s Echo who wastes away over Narcissus wasting away over his own reflection next to the pool, so this nymph weeps, moans and eventually dies for love of (and over) the dead Charmides. However, Aphrodite the goddess of love, who happens to be passing in her pigeon-powered flying chariot, looks down, and, taking pity on the unfulfilled lovers, arranges for them to consummate their union in Hades. Wilde’s elaborate, intensely saccharine late Victorian depiction of the triumph of Eros over Death combines, alters, and subverts numerous Classical sources. My purpose here is to compare and contrast it with Catullus 63 and other works. ALL STAFF AND GRADUATE STUDENTS ARE WELCOME! For further information please contact: Dr Elke Steinmeyer Classics Programme University of KwaZulu-Natal 4041 Durban South Africa Tel: +27 31 260 1306 Fax: +27 31 260 7286 Email: steinmeyere1@ukzn.ac.za