Catullus

• Gaius Valerius Catullus (c.84-c.54 BCE) was a Latin Poet of the Late Roman Republic whose poems are dived into four groups: poems about his friends, erotic poems, obscene poems and poems about condolences.
• Catullus served as an Officer in Bythinia between 57-56 BCE, under the Commander Gaius Memmius.

Poetry

• Cicero, Julius Caesar and Pompey are mentioned in his poems.
• Catullus was part of a group known as the ‘New Poets’ who wrote short poems about ordinary events and describing personal feelings, in a departure from Heroic Epic Poems about Mythical events. The New Poets imitated the style of the Greek Poets Callimachus and Sappho
• In Rome he wrote 25 poems about his great love  ‘Lesbia’, who has been assumed to be Clodia Metelli. It seems that Lesbia had perhaps five other lovers as well as her husband, and Catullus’ poems describe his feelings of passion, rejection and loss.

Works

• Catullus’ Works are divided into three Groups:
  • The Polymetrics (Poems 1-60)
  • The Long Poems (Poems 61-68)
  • The Epigrams (69-116)

.