Text: V. Rendell, “Poe: A Classical Reference,” Notes and Queries (London, UK), May 30, 1914, pp. 426-427

POE: A CLASSICAL REFERENCE. — Poe published two poems inscribed ‘To Helen.’ The earlier one, which figures in ‘Poems written in Youth,’ is the better known, and contains the familiar quotation about the glory of Greece and grandeur of Rome. It begins: —

What is the reference here? So far as I am aware, no commentator — Poe or another — has supplied it. It is to be noted that there are some changes of text in various publications of the poem, but that the first stanza remains the same throughout. It may reasonably be concluded then that, though the poem was a juvenile performance, Poe scrutinized it with some care in after years.

But for “Nicean,” one would naturally think of the picture as that of Odysseus carried at last happily from Phæacia to his old home, Ithaca. The adjective “Nicean,” [page 427:] however, must refer to some Nicæa, and the best-known, place of that name. which gives us the “Nicene Creed,” is in Bithynia. “Nicean,” therefore, at present seems to me decisive in favour of a reference to Catullus, though some of Poe's details are hazy. Catullus returned, “tired with foreign travel,” to his beloved Sirmio (Poem 31) from Bithynia, and “the rich plain of burning Nica,’ which he was anxious to leave. Poem 46 has

One would gather that Catullus travelled in his own “phaselus” (Poem 4), built in the same regions.

References to Catullus are not common, since that author was generally neglected in the early part of the nineteenth century; but Poe was clearly a forward boy in knowledge, and his schoolmaster at Stoke Newington had the reputation of being a good scholar. ‘Al Aaraaf,’ one of Poe's earliest poems, contains a reference to Sappho, the “Idea of Beauty” which “lit on hills Achaian,” and a “Therasean reign,”’ which in the poet's own, notes is explained as a reference to Seneca.

V. RENDALL.