Gaius Valerius Catullus and his Poetry

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Gaius Valerius Catullus and his Poetry
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Catullus Life and Times

• 84-54 B.C.E.
• Born in Verona to
• equestrian family
• Served in province of
• Bithynia in 57-56
• Father was friends with
• Julius Caesar
• Wrote during period of Late Republic,
• a time of great political and social upheaval
• Four loves in life poetry, brother, friends,
  Lesbia (Clodia)

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Catullus Life and Times (cont.)

• Had affair with Clodia, presumably
• Clodia attacked in Ciceros speech Pro Caelio
• Rumored to have murdered her husband Metellus
  Celer, consul 60
• Sister of P. Clodius Pulcher

Catullus at Lesbias by Alma Tadema
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Poetry

• Novi Poetae circle of new poets
• C. Helvius Cinna and C. Licinius Calvus other
  important novi poetae
• Influenced by Alexandrian poets of Hellenistic
  period (323-31BCE.), particularly Callimachus
• Short poems, personal, learned (doctus),
  allusive, sophisticated, light (lepidum)
• Neoteroi (new ones)
• Lyric poet/epigrammatist
• Epigram is lowest in hierarchy of poetic genres
  invective, obscene
• Attacked powerful e.g. Julius Caesar

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Collection of Poetry

• Only one copy survived in Verona
• 116 poems
• Not written in chronological order
• Not based on theme, but meter generally
• I-LX short poems in various meters (Polymetra)
• LXI-LXVIII long poems, epyllion
• LXIX-CXVI epigrams in elegaic couplet

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Collection (cont.)

• Most likely appeared in three papyrus scrolls
  (libelli)
• Most likely edited and published by Catullus

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Interpreting Catullus Poetry

• Biographical references are to be accepted as
  true (19th c.)
• Poetry has no relation to real life, but exists
  in a self-referential vacuum (20th)
• Intentional Fallacy
• Most likely somewhere in between