Catullus was a Roman poet born in Verona in 84 BC who moved to Rome. There he fell in love with a woman named Clodia, known by the pseudonym "Lesbia" in his poems. Their relationship inspired many of Catullus's most memorable love poems but also caused him great anguish. In 57 BC Catullus traveled to Bithynia as part of a governor's staff, where he wrote a moving poem upon visiting his brother's tomb. Though his explicit style was sometimes controversial, Catullus had a significant influence on later Roman poets like Virgil and Horace.

1. GAIUS VALERIUS
CATULLUS
Verona, Cisalpine Gaul 87 (84) BC -
Rome 57 (54) BC

2. date of birth
Catullus was born in Verona.
St. Jerome gives the year 87 B.C. and
says that he died at age 30.
Since events of 55 B.C. are referred to
in several of Catullus's poems, however,
and no poem can be said with certainty to
be later than 54, scholars accept the dates
84-54.

3. Catullus's family was prominent and well-to-do. They owned a villa at Sirmio. It is
believed that his father was a friend of Julius Caesar and entertained Caesar when the
later was governor of Gaul.

4. Catullus’ style and education
We know from Cicero that Catullus was
one of the "neoteric" or new poets.
Whereas the majority of poets in Rome at
that time produced epic poems, often
commissioned by aristocratic families,
Catullus and other neoteric rejected the
epic and its public themes. The neoteric
poets used colloquial language to write
about personal experience. Their poems
are mostly smaller lyrics that are
characterized by wit and erudition. Aside
from these facts, what is known of the life of
Catullus comes from the thoughts
expressed in his poems.

5. As we know, he owned property at Sirmio, on the wonderful
Very soon he moved from Lake Garda, though he preferred to live in the Rome and owned
a villa near the Roman suburb of Tibur, in an unfashionable
Verona to the capital neighbourhood.

6. In the capital his poetic circle was formed by young upstart poets like Catullus, all friends and all in
love. They cherished the epithet docti, "learned." Catullus's friends were the poets C. Licinius
Macer Calvus, Furius Bibaculus, and C. Helvius Cinna.
But Catullus did know some greats also. At Rome he almost knew the historians Sallust and Nepos,
and the philosopher/poet Lucretius died at about the same time Catullus did (55 BC).

7. Catullus and Cicero were contemporaries, although Cicero was decidedly older.
He certainly knew Caesar well enough to get into some sort of spat with him; and
the biographer Cornelius Nepos, to whom Catullus dedicated his book of poems.

8. the encounter with lesbia
catullus’ life crucial event

9. ODI ET AMO
Odi et amo. Quare id faciam, fortasse requiris.
nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior.
I hate and I love. Wherefore I do this, perhaps you ask.
I do not know, but I feel it being done and I am tormented.
(Catullus 85)

10. lesbia - clodia
When Catullus went to Rome in 61,
he met and fell in love with Clodia, the
"Lesbia" of the poems, who was a
member of the old aristocratic
Claudian family and the wife of
Metellus Celer.
For this upper-class sophisticate 10
years older than Catullus, the young
poet from Verona was but another
liaison in her constant search for
diversion.

11. A CRYPTONYM AS WAS CUSTOMARY IN ROMAN LOVE
POETRY
“Lesbia” is a pseudonym which recalls Sappho, the
poetess of the Aegean island of Lesbos. Catullus’
name for Clodia, is not only a reference to the most
famous female writer from Greek antiquity. Sappho was
born in Lesbos in ca. 612 BC and her poetry is still
moving today. The poem in which Catullus describes
how he first saw Claudia, in fact, is largely a translation
of a Sapphic ode. As a Roman Sappho, Lesbia
inspired both love and poetry in Catullus and the result
is his legacy to us.

12. He appears to me, that one, equal to the gods,
the man who, facing you,
is seated and, up close, that sweet voice of yours
he listens to
And how you laugh your charming laugh. Why it
makes my heart flutter within my breast,
because the moment I look at you, right then, for me,
to make any sound at all won’t work any more.
My tongue has a breakdown and a delicate
— all of a sudden — fire rushes under my skin.
With my eyes I see not a thing, and there is a roar
that my ears make.
Sweat pours down me and a trembling
seizes all of me; paler than grass
am I, and a little short of death
do I appear to me.
But all may be ventured, since even [the poor]...
(Saffo, fragment 31)

13. CLODIA: ANGEL OR EVIL?
The poet’s Clodia may have been a patrician, one of the three
Clodia sisters of Cicero’s foe Publius Clodius Pulcher, all three
the subject of scandalous rumour, according to Plutarch. If so, she
was the one who married the aristocrat Metellus Celer (consul 60
bce, died 59 bce), who in 62 bce was governor of Cisalpine Gaul. It
may have been at that time that the youthful poet first met her and
possibly fell under her spell.
She is accorded a vivid if unflattering portrait in Cicero’s
Pro Caelio, in which the orator had occasion to blacken her
character in order to defend his client against Clodia’s charge that
as her lover after her husband’s death he had tried to poison her.
The client was Marcus Caelius Rufus.
The poet’s mistress besides being married perhaps moved in
society, enjoyed fashionable amusements, was cultivated and witty,
and was licentious enough to justify Cicero’s attack. On the other
hand, the poet twice appears to have included the protection of his
own rank among the gifts he had laid at her feet.

14. Clodia:
“The Medusa of the
Palatine”
“The Medusa of the
Palatine”
Cicero: Indeed, woman - I'm now addressing you myself without introducing
any imaginary character - if you intend to prove your actions, your words, your
accusations, your intrigues, your claims, you must give an account of such
familiarity, such intimacy and such a close connexion. The prosecutors, to be
sure, are going on about debauchery, love affairs, adulteries, trips to Baiae,
beach parties, banquets, drinking bouts, singing, dance bands, pleasure-boats.
They also indicate that everything they say has your approval. In some unbridled,
reckless frame of mind you wanted these matters aired in the forum and the court.
You must therefore either disprove them, show that they're false, or admit that
neither your charge nor your testimony can in any way be believed.
(Cicero, Pro Caelio, 31-36)

15. "A controlled lyricism"
Catullus's most memorable poems are the ones about
"Lesbia." It is highly tempting to arrange them in an order that
chronicles the poet's affair with Clodia: intense joy at the
beginning, a break, reconciliation, then Catullus's awareness
of his mistress's congenital faithlessness. Next comes
bitterness and despair. The poet nearly loses his sanity but
manages, by a great effort of will, to gain control of himself
and is then slowly healed of his passion.
To read these poems as autobiographical documents is a
mistake, however. Catullus did not record this experience
factually but, rather, used it as a source for poetry. Art and
life were not the same for him. Rather, life was the matrix out of
which a highly wrought art was formed.

16. In 57 Catullus went to Bithynia
on the staff of Memmius, who was to be governor of that Eastern
province. While there Catullus traveled to the Troad to perform rites at
the tomb of his brother, who had died in the East, recording this act of
devotion in a moving poem. After a year in Bithynia he returned to Italy
and probably lived in Rome the rest of his life.

17. Multās per gentēs et multa per aequora vectus...
Carried through many nations and many seas,
I arrive, Brother, at these miserable funeral rites,
So that I might bestow you with the final gift of death
And might speak in vain to the silent ash.
Since Fortune has stolen you yourself from me,
Alas, wretched brother stolen undeservedly from me,
Meanwhile, however, receive these which in the ancient custom
of our parents
were handed down as a sad gift for funeral rites,
dripping much with fraternal weeping,
And forever, Brother, hail and farewell.
(CATULLUS, 101)

18. Catullus's poems were widely appreciated by other poets. He greatly influenced poets such as
Ovid, Horace, and Virgil.
After his rediscovery in the late Middle Ages, Catullus again found admirers. His explicit writing
style has shocked many readers, both ancient and modern.