Catullus

BIOGRAPHY

Little about Catullus's life is known for sure. Most sources, including Suetonius and the poet Ovid (Amores III.XV), agree that he was born in or near Verona , although the Palatine Hill of Rome has been mentioned as an alternative ''locus nascendi'' (place of birth). His was a leading Equestrian family from Verona, but he lived in Rome most of his life. In 57 BC , he accompanied his friend Memmius to Bithynia , where Memmius had received a Propraetor 's post. Catullus's only political office was one year on the staff of the governor of Bithynia.

It is uncertain when Catullus died. Some ancient sources tell he died from exhaustion at the age of thirty. He is traditionally said to have lived from 84 BC until 54 BC ; these dates are based on the Allusion s he makes in his poetry. Subsequently, his poems were appreciated by other poets and intellectuals, but politicians like Cicero despised them for their supposed amorality. Catullus was never considered one of the canonical school authors. Nevertheless, he greatly influenced later poets, including Ovid , Horace , and even Virgil ; after his rediscovery in the Middle Ages , Catullus again found admirers. Still, his writing style, which is frequently explicit, was shocking to many readers, both ancient and modern, and until recently it was not easy to find an equally explicit translation of some of his poems. Jacob Rabinowitz has since remedied this.

POETRY

Sources and organization

Catullus's poems have been preserved in three manuscripts that were copied from one (of two) copies made from a lost manuscript discovered around 1300. These three surviving copies are stored at the s and one mini- Epic .

The ''polymetra'' and the epigrams can be divided into three major Thematic groups (ignoring a rather large number of poems eluding such categorization):

poems to and about his friends (e.g., an invitation like poem 13).

penchants ( 50 and 98 ), but most are about women, especially about one he calls " Lesbia " (in honor of the poetess Sappho of Lesbos , source and inspiration of many of his poems); Philologist s have taken considerable efforts to discover her real identity, and many concluded that Lesbia was Clodia , sister of the infamous Publius Clodius Pulcher and a woman known for her generous sexuality, but this identification rests on some rather fragile assumptions. In the 116 poems found of Catullus, the poet displays a wide range of highly emotional and seemingly contradictory responses to Lesbia, ranging from tender love poems, to sadness and disappointment, and bitter Sarcasm .

poems are targeted at friends-turned-traitors (e.g., poem 30 ) and other lovers of Lesbia , but many well known poets, Politician s (e.g., Julius Caesar ) and Rhetor s, including Cicero , are thrashed as well. However, many of these poems are humorous and craftily veil the sting of the attack. For example, Catullus writes a poem mocking a pretentious descendent of a Freedman who emphasizes the letter "h" in his speech because it makes him sound more like a learned Greek by adding unnecessary Hs to words like ''insidias'' (ambushes).

, comforts a friend in the death of a loved one (presumably his wife or mistress), while several others, most famously 101 , lament the death of his dear brother.

All these poems describe the Epicurean lifestyle of Catullus and his friends, who, despite Catullus's temporary political post in Bithynia, lived withdrawn from Politics . They were interested mainly in Poetry and Love . Above all other qualities, Catullus seems to have sought ''venustus'', or charm, in his acquaintances, a theme which he explores in a number of his poems. The ancient Roman concept of ''virtus'' (i.e. of Virtue that had to be proved by a political or military career), which Cicero suggested as the solution to the societal problems of the late Republic , meant little to them.

But it is not the traditional notions Catullus rejects, merely their monopolized application to the '' Vita Activa '' of politics and War . Indeed, he tries to reinvent these notions from a personal point of view and to introduce them into human relationships. For example, he applies the word ''fides'', which traditionally meant faithfulness towards one's political allies, to his relationship with Lesbia and reinterprets it as unconditional faithfulness in love. So, despite seeming frivolity of his lifestyle, Catullus measured himself and his friends by quite ambitious standards.

Intellectual influences

Catullus's Poetry was greatly influenced by the Greek '' Neoteroi '', or "new poets". Callimachus influenced Catullus especially, having propagated a new style of poetry which deliberately turned away from the classical Epic Poetry in the tradition of Homer . Catullus and Callimachus did not describe the feats of ancient Hero es and God s (except perhaps in re-evaluating and predominantly artistic circumstances, e.g. poems 63 and 64), focusing instead on small-scale personal themes. Although these poems sometimes seem quite superficial and their subjects often are mere everyday concerns, they are accomplished works of art. Catullus described his work as ''expolitum'', or polished, to show that the language he used was very carefully and artistically composed. In contrast with the epic poetry of his time, Catullus's work was intended to evoke emotion and feeling.

Catullus was also an admirer of Sappho , a poetess of the 7th Century BC , and is the source for much of what we know or infer about her. Catullus 51 is a translation of Sappho 31 , and 61 and 62 are certainly inspired by and perhaps translated directly from lost works of Sappho. Both of the latter are '' Epithalamia '', a form of Laudatory or erotic wedding-poetry that Sappho had been famous for but that had gone out of fashion in the intervening centuries. Catullus sometimes used a meter that Sappho developed, called the Sapphic Strophe . In fact, Catullus may have brought about a substantial revival of that form in Rome.

SEE ALSO