Greek and Roman Themes in Gogarty

Thoroughly educated in Greek and in Latin, Oliver St John Gogarty made substantial use of Greek and Roman material in his work. This is especially clear his poetry, which runs to over 500 pages and includes works such as ‘Europa and the Bull’ and ‘Leda and the Swan,’ both topics treated in a light satiric vein. Among classical poets, Gogarty fa-vours Sappho and her Roman follower Catullus, but he was also inspired, for example, by Virgil and Horace. In Joyce’s novel Ulysses, Gogarty appears in the guise of the character Mulligan who suggests to Stephen Dedalus that Ireland be Hellenized.