Poetry of Catullus
If Catullus's girlfriend Lesbia is, as is usually assumed, a pseudonym for Clodia, the wife of Quintus Caecilius Metellus Celer, it may be that he first met her in 62 BC, when her husband was governor of Cisalpine Gaul.
[18] In the eighth cycle, the famous odi et amo 'I hate and I love' epigram (85), even though thematically different from the Caesar epigram (93), is paired with it by the structural similarity: both poems contain an indirect question, a contrast of opposites (hate vs love, white vs black), and the words nescio, nec scire 'I do not know' at the beginning of the second line of each.
In poem 76, Catullus speaks with emotion of the deep depression he is suffering as a result of Lesbia's dropping him, and prays the gods to relieve him of it.
After her husband's death in 59 BC – Cicero insinuates that she poisoned him – it seems that Clodia took up with a younger man Marcus Caelius Rufus, who had rented a house near hers on the Palatine Hill in Rome.
It is thought possible that poem 77, in which Catullus bitterly attacks a certain former friend called Rufus for stealing his love, reflects this change.
Fordyce and Quinn assume that this is a visitor to Rome; but Dettmer and Richardson argue from the coincidence in language between 24 and 81 that the person meant is Furius.
Another suggestion Dettmer makes is that, in view of the obvious verbal links between 58 and 59, the "Rufa of Bononia" (Bologna) in poem 59 is a mocking name for Lesbia herself; the obscenities glubit of 58 and fellat of 59 refer to the same activity.
[60] Gaius Licinius Macer Calvus, an orator and poet, was about the same age as Catullus,[61] and a close friend; their names are linked by Propertius (2.25.4, 2.34.87), Horace (Sat.
In poem 50, Catullus reminds Calvus how on the previous day they had enjoyed themselves taking turns to compose poetry in different metres, and he jokingly reports that he had spent a sleepless night suffering from all the symptoms of being in love, and was longing to see him again.
In poem 53, Catullus recalls how, when he was watching Calvus prosecute Publius Vatinius (a general of Julius Caesar) in court, probably in 54 BC, he was made to laugh when a bystander called out "Great gods, what an eloquent salaputium!"
[67] Cinna held the office of tribune in 44 BC, the year of Caesar's death, and is said to have been killed by the crowd by mistake for another man of the same name.
Wiseman conjectures that he came from a wealthy family in Transpadane Gaul, perhaps from Vicetia (Vicenza) or Patavium (Padua), where the name has been found on inscriptions.
[69] Nappa compares poem 6, where in a similar teasing way Catullus demands that his friend Flavius reveal all about his latest love affair.
The theme is continued in poem 47, where two of Piso's followers, Porcius and Socration, are reported to have done very well out the trip, while Veranius and Fabullus have been left cadging for invitations on a street corner.
Richardson suggests that Furius had earlier written a poem about Catullus's villa, mocking it for being in an unfashionable location and subject to an unhealthy south wind.
[76] He It is not clear who is meant by the "host (or guest) from Pisaurum" (a dead-end place on the Adriatic coast) in poem 81 with whom Juventius has fallen in love, to Catullus's indignation.
One possibility is the jurist Alfenus Varus, addressed by Virgil in Eclogue 6, who was responsible for confiscating lands near Cremona and Mantua in 41 BC.
[93] A person who is mentioned in eight different poems, and who was continually attacked by Catullus, was Mamurra, a prefect of engineers serving under Julius Caesar, who became immensely rich.
[94] In poems 29 and 57 he is called by his name, in 41 and 43 he is ridiculed as decoctor Formianus 'the bankrupt of Formiae', and in four others (94, 105, 114, 115, probably also in 29) he is given the abusive nickname Mentula 'penis'.
In poem 29, dated probably to late 55 BC,[95] Catullus rails against Pompey and Caesar for enriching the spendthrift Mamurra, who has squandered all his wealth.
In poems 41 and 43 Catullus abusively attacks a woman he calls "Ameana" (the spelling is uncertain),[96] the "girlfriend of the spendthrift of Formiae", describing her ugliness and the ridiculously high prices she charges for her services as a prostitute.
In 57 Catullus again links Mamurra and Caesar, calling them both shameless perverts (improbi cinaedi) and adulterers; they are like twins, both diseased, each as bad as the other.
In 90, Catullus predicts that Gellius will beget a magus, since according to Persian custom, magi were born from a union of mother and son.
[105] The old-fashioned stylistic features of this poem, such as the fully spondaic line 3, perhaps mimic or mock Gellius's own style of writing, antithetical to that of Catullus.
[110] A characteristic of these iambic poems is that Catullus follows the Greek practice of allowing a short vowel to count as long before a word beginning with two consonants, e.g. Propontidā trucemve, impotentiā freta etc.
[122] One feature that clearly marks out Catullus's elegiac couplets from his successors is his very frequent use of elision: it is found in 39% of verses in the elegies, 68% in the epigrams.
"[127] He has been praised as a lyricist and translated by writers including Thomas Campion, William Wordsworth, James Methven, and Louis Zukofsky.
In 966 Bishop Rather of Verona, the poet's hometown, discovered a manuscript of his poems (presumably V) "and reproached himself for spending day and night with Catullus's poetry."
[129] Over the next hundred years, Poliziano, Scaliger and other humanists worked on the text and "dramatically improved" it, according to Stephen J. Harrison: "the apparatus criticus of any modern edition bears eloquent witness to the activities of these fifteenth- and sixteenth-century scholars.
[129] In 1876, Emil Baehrens brought out the first version of his edition, Catulli Veronensis Liber (two volumes; Leipzig), which contained the text from G and O alone, with a number of emendations.
