What do you think?
Rate this book
Catullus
This work contains a major revision of Douglas Thomson's A Critical Edition (1978), with the addition of a full commentary and a wholly new introduction. For the introduction and for each of the poems there is an extensive and current bibliography. In the introduction, apart from sections on the life of Catullus, on the arrangement of the poems, and on their literary background, there is a lengthy discussion of the history of the text, as well as a review of the progress of Catullan studies from the editio princeps to the present day. There are about seventy changes from the previous edition in the text of the poems. The critical apparatus has also been extensively revised. In addition, the Table of Manuscripts, which has come to be regarded as standard, has been updated without alteration to the numbering sequence. Though this is not primarily intended as a 'school edition,' the commentary includes, in addition to critical judgments, translations and interpretations of words and phrases that may help to illuminate readings in the text. Catullus offers readers a new text of the poems, with a commentary, a codicology of the manuscript tradition, and a thorough review of Catullus scholarship.
578 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1904
5 people are currently reading
214 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
November 2, 2008
Helps to have read a "normal" translation perhaps, because it actually makes no sense. But it is a brilliant not making sense. I liked the idea of knowing the original somewhat as a sort of palimpsest.
September 14, 2025
I expected this to be a drag, and to DNF quickly, but something about it kept me intrigued. Like gold panning.
Realistically 98% of what I read was drivel (to me). Yet I have to give it 3 stars because it never became tedious. I can’t explain it.
Notes from commentaries:
- Love poems were inspired by Sappho (brings intimacy to poetry).
- Satires inspired by native Italian skits.
- Mid-length allusive poems inspired by Callimachus, a contemporary of Apollonius who wrote short, dense poetry (instead of epic sagas). Part of movement called neoteric poetry.
Catullus changed expectations of love. That it should be the core focus of a life. That the expectations of pederasty should also apply to heterosexual love - of reciprocity, contracts and sacred friendship
Notes:
Introduction:
The explanation for Catullus' eclipse seems to be - not censorship, as is sometimes suggested - but merely literary taste and a change in fashion. The qualities that the modern age, at least, values in him - his elegant urbanity, his learned Alexandrianism, his passionate emotion - had not appealed to Martial and his contemporaries in the Silver Age.
Instead they admired and promoted him exclusively as a poet of light verse. Before long, he was supplanted by his chief imitator. Why read an old-fashioned and sometimes difficult poet like Catullus, when one could so easily enjoy Martial's smooth and racy epigrams? In any era a poet with few readers soon becomes unavailable. No doubt texts were already becoming scarce in the time of Apuleius and Aulus Gellius, and we can be sure that fewer still were preserved when scribes transferred the works of ancient authors from roll to codex around the fourth century AD.
We know that Catullus made the journey from antiquity to the Renaissance - he arrived, after all - but we do not know how or by what route.
[In Italy] Catullus' sparrow and kiss poems had been popular in antiquity. In the Renaissance they inspired almost as many imitations as the stars and sands invoked as images of innumerability by the poets. There were scores of poems on sparrows and doves and literally hundreds on kisses, including nearly a dozen kiss poems by Pontano as well as the influential Latin kiss cycle (Basia) by the Dutch poet Johannes Secundus (ISII-
36), which inspired still more imitations in both Latin and the vernaculars. Often, the sparrow (or dove) was combined with the kissing theme to speak more or less openly of both homosexual and heterosexual intercourse.
[In England] Modern Catullan poets imitated each other as well as Catullus; by now many of Catullus' themes had been treated so often that they had become part of a general poetic currency. As a consequence, when we find them in English poems, it is not always possible to identify Catullus as the primary model, or even as a model at all
Only Burton saw that Catullus was not a nineteenth-century English gentleman complete with 'boiled shirt, dove-tailed coat, black-cloth clothes, white pocket-handkerchief, and diamond ring'.
By the early twentieth century Catullus had become a full-blown Romantic. In both Symons and Yeats (see Appendix) we find him a passionate lover scornful of the limits of bourgeois society. (The American Catullus at the same period is generally a lighter and more cheerful character, to judge from the translations of Field, Stewart and Adams.) After about 1930 Catullus began to speak in many voices, American and Australian as well as English, and to take on a variety of characters from the austere (Lucas) to the jokey (Copley). Since around 1960 he has become increasingly and sometimes defiantly explicit in his language and hostile in his invective, more devoted to his brother, and correspondingly more cynical about Lesbia - in both his variety and his emotions, a Catullus of our time.
The poems:
[Sir Walter Raleigh]: That Man is (as it were) a little world: with a digression touching our mortalitie... For this tide of mans life, after it once turneth and declineth, ever runneth with a perpetuall ebbe and falling streame, but never floweth againe: our leafe once fallen, springeth no more, neither doth the Sunne or the Summer adorne us againe, with the garments of new leaves and flowers ... of which Catullus, Epigram 53:
The Sunne may set and rise:
But we contrariwise
Sleepe after our short light
One everlasting night.
[Thomas Moore]:
As many stellar eyes of light,
As through the silent waste of night,
Gazing upon the world of shade,
Witness some secret youth and maid
[Leigh Hunt]:
Oh where's the luxury like a loosened heart, When the mind, breathing, lays its load apart,
When we come home again, tir'd out, and spread
The greedy limbs o'er all the wish'd for bed!
This, this alone is worth an age of toil.
Hail, lovely Sirmio! Hail, paternal soil!
Joy, my bright waters, joy: your master's come!
Laugh every dimple on the cheek of home!
[Hugh Macnaghten]:
God send a little son
Stretching soft hands anon
From mother's lap, to greet
Father with infant-sweet
Glimmer of laughter fleet.
[Mary Stewart]:
'Twas yesterday, Licinius mine,
While idling at our nuts and wine,
As gay young bloods think proper,
In sportive vein we teased the Muse
To scribble verses so profuse,
My faith, we scarce could stop her.
And when at last I left the place,
So fired with your rare wit and grace -
Or wine, you say - you dare it? -
I tossed upon my bed all night,
Impatient for the morning light
And you - by Jove, I swear it.
Twas you I longed again to see,
To hear the clever repartee,
The thrust and answer ready,
I rose, my brain half dead for rest,
And scrawled these rhymes that might attest
My hand, at least, was steady.
Then speed the hour, sweet friend of mine, When we shall meet at nuts and wine,
With wit and jest distracting.
And if you scorn a love like this,
Then, oh, beware of Nemesis,
A lady most exacting.
[Robert Clayton Casto]:
... And cast his loins upon the Phrygian shore
and split 'em with a stone,
Attis who once was young and brown,
and at a crossroads of that land
his soft seed tickling the Asian sand
hoisted under his bloody thumb
the timbrel the light mysterious drum
which is the sign of Cybelè
and with his fingers slippery and numb
struck those vacant hollow skins
and piped with white lips mincingly
to that sensual sodality:
…
Up the raw hills where monster images
skim the red woodland and the speckled pine,
he raced those wild anatomies,
the moist she-misters, and they twitched
in service on the grass's lip
all rare with frenzy dancing and divine
until upon a black plateau
where casually the gristled snow
begins to seep
Inspired by Catullus (not translations):
[Thomas Twining]:
Exchanged for Fordham's rustic nook,
The lonely walk, the silent book,
The quiet lane, so grassy green,
Where waddling geese alone are seen,
Realistically 98% of what I read was drivel (to me). Yet I have to give it 3 stars because it never became tedious. I can’t explain it.
Notes from commentaries:
- Love poems were inspired by Sappho (brings intimacy to poetry).
- Satires inspired by native Italian skits.
- Mid-length allusive poems inspired by Callimachus, a contemporary of Apollonius who wrote short, dense poetry (instead of epic sagas). Part of movement called neoteric poetry.
Catullus changed expectations of love. That it should be the core focus of a life. That the expectations of pederasty should also apply to heterosexual love - of reciprocity, contracts and sacred friendship
Notes:
Introduction:
The explanation for Catullus' eclipse seems to be - not censorship, as is sometimes suggested - but merely literary taste and a change in fashion. The qualities that the modern age, at least, values in him - his elegant urbanity, his learned Alexandrianism, his passionate emotion - had not appealed to Martial and his contemporaries in the Silver Age.
Instead they admired and promoted him exclusively as a poet of light verse. Before long, he was supplanted by his chief imitator. Why read an old-fashioned and sometimes difficult poet like Catullus, when one could so easily enjoy Martial's smooth and racy epigrams? In any era a poet with few readers soon becomes unavailable. No doubt texts were already becoming scarce in the time of Apuleius and Aulus Gellius, and we can be sure that fewer still were preserved when scribes transferred the works of ancient authors from roll to codex around the fourth century AD.
We know that Catullus made the journey from antiquity to the Renaissance - he arrived, after all - but we do not know how or by what route.
[In Italy] Catullus' sparrow and kiss poems had been popular in antiquity. In the Renaissance they inspired almost as many imitations as the stars and sands invoked as images of innumerability by the poets. There were scores of poems on sparrows and doves and literally hundreds on kisses, including nearly a dozen kiss poems by Pontano as well as the influential Latin kiss cycle (Basia) by the Dutch poet Johannes Secundus (ISII-
36), which inspired still more imitations in both Latin and the vernaculars. Often, the sparrow (or dove) was combined with the kissing theme to speak more or less openly of both homosexual and heterosexual intercourse.
[In England] Modern Catullan poets imitated each other as well as Catullus; by now many of Catullus' themes had been treated so often that they had become part of a general poetic currency. As a consequence, when we find them in English poems, it is not always possible to identify Catullus as the primary model, or even as a model at all
Only Burton saw that Catullus was not a nineteenth-century English gentleman complete with 'boiled shirt, dove-tailed coat, black-cloth clothes, white pocket-handkerchief, and diamond ring'.
By the early twentieth century Catullus had become a full-blown Romantic. In both Symons and Yeats (see Appendix) we find him a passionate lover scornful of the limits of bourgeois society. (The American Catullus at the same period is generally a lighter and more cheerful character, to judge from the translations of Field, Stewart and Adams.) After about 1930 Catullus began to speak in many voices, American and Australian as well as English, and to take on a variety of characters from the austere (Lucas) to the jokey (Copley). Since around 1960 he has become increasingly and sometimes defiantly explicit in his language and hostile in his invective, more devoted to his brother, and correspondingly more cynical about Lesbia - in both his variety and his emotions, a Catullus of our time.
The poems:
[Sir Walter Raleigh]: That Man is (as it were) a little world: with a digression touching our mortalitie... For this tide of mans life, after it once turneth and declineth, ever runneth with a perpetuall ebbe and falling streame, but never floweth againe: our leafe once fallen, springeth no more, neither doth the Sunne or the Summer adorne us againe, with the garments of new leaves and flowers ... of which Catullus, Epigram 53:
The Sunne may set and rise:
But we contrariwise
Sleepe after our short light
One everlasting night.
[Thomas Moore]:
As many stellar eyes of light,
As through the silent waste of night,
Gazing upon the world of shade,
Witness some secret youth and maid
[Leigh Hunt]:
Oh where's the luxury like a loosened heart, When the mind, breathing, lays its load apart,
When we come home again, tir'd out, and spread
The greedy limbs o'er all the wish'd for bed!
This, this alone is worth an age of toil.
Hail, lovely Sirmio! Hail, paternal soil!
Joy, my bright waters, joy: your master's come!
Laugh every dimple on the cheek of home!
[Hugh Macnaghten]:
God send a little son
Stretching soft hands anon
From mother's lap, to greet
Father with infant-sweet
Glimmer of laughter fleet.
[Mary Stewart]:
'Twas yesterday, Licinius mine,
While idling at our nuts and wine,
As gay young bloods think proper,
In sportive vein we teased the Muse
To scribble verses so profuse,
My faith, we scarce could stop her.
And when at last I left the place,
So fired with your rare wit and grace -
Or wine, you say - you dare it? -
I tossed upon my bed all night,
Impatient for the morning light
And you - by Jove, I swear it.
Twas you I longed again to see,
To hear the clever repartee,
The thrust and answer ready,
I rose, my brain half dead for rest,
And scrawled these rhymes that might attest
My hand, at least, was steady.
Then speed the hour, sweet friend of mine, When we shall meet at nuts and wine,
With wit and jest distracting.
And if you scorn a love like this,
Then, oh, beware of Nemesis,
A lady most exacting.
[Robert Clayton Casto]:
... And cast his loins upon the Phrygian shore
and split 'em with a stone,
Attis who once was young and brown,
and at a crossroads of that land
his soft seed tickling the Asian sand
hoisted under his bloody thumb
the timbrel the light mysterious drum
which is the sign of Cybelè
and with his fingers slippery and numb
struck those vacant hollow skins
and piped with white lips mincingly
to that sensual sodality:
…
Up the raw hills where monster images
skim the red woodland and the speckled pine,
he raced those wild anatomies,
the moist she-misters, and they twitched
in service on the grass's lip
all rare with frenzy dancing and divine
until upon a black plateau
where casually the gristled snow
begins to seep
Inspired by Catullus (not translations):
[Thomas Twining]:
Exchanged for Fordham's rustic nook,
The lonely walk, the silent book,
The quiet lane, so grassy green,
Where waddling geese alone are seen,
December 26, 2007
Zukofsky tries to preserve both the sound and sense of the original Latin. He fails. My copy had a madman's scrawls in it -- bescrawled is the best way to read these poems.
May 29, 2024
What a delight. I must admit, my assumption has always been toward having at least two of these three things when it comes to poems by the ancients:
1) completeness, i.e. an attempt to cover the canon
2) modernity, thus allowing for perhaps more nuance and range than was allowed in more censorious eras of the past
3) fame, where a particular past author may not meet criteria #2 but their particular translations have become part of the bedrock of the work on the particular poet or poets.
I had never thought, really, about an anthology of this type until I stumbled upon it in a second-hand bookstore. Catullus has been one of my homeboys since highschool, and this Penguin edition brings together a vast range of approaches to his texts. At least one translation of every poem among his Carmina is here, ranging from full-length to excerpts, from the earliest translators to the present day (at time of publication), from witty to sorrowful, from direct to roundabout translations. With useful introductions, this provides the joy of Catullus while also allowing us an exploration of how poetry, translation, and culture intersect.
No volume is perfect, and this cannot be so either. For a start, the poems are not in 'order' nor are they necessarily all presented in the best possible version (that's the very nature of this anthology). Second, as the back cover says, much of Catullus' history in English has been about avoiding his more sordid or shocking elements; this was over by 2001, but nevertheless this volume cannot capture all of the poems in perhaps their most honest translations. And finally, but unsurprisingly, this doesn't include Latin texts of the poems. Again this is understandable, as it won't be of interest to most readers, and those us who can read the language will already have an edition. But just worth noting. The book says what it does on the cover.
A gem.
1) completeness, i.e. an attempt to cover the canon
2) modernity, thus allowing for perhaps more nuance and range than was allowed in more censorious eras of the past
3) fame, where a particular past author may not meet criteria #2 but their particular translations have become part of the bedrock of the work on the particular poet or poets.
I had never thought, really, about an anthology of this type until I stumbled upon it in a second-hand bookstore. Catullus has been one of my homeboys since highschool, and this Penguin edition brings together a vast range of approaches to his texts. At least one translation of every poem among his Carmina is here, ranging from full-length to excerpts, from the earliest translators to the present day (at time of publication), from witty to sorrowful, from direct to roundabout translations. With useful introductions, this provides the joy of Catullus while also allowing us an exploration of how poetry, translation, and culture intersect.
No volume is perfect, and this cannot be so either. For a start, the poems are not in 'order' nor are they necessarily all presented in the best possible version (that's the very nature of this anthology). Second, as the back cover says, much of Catullus' history in English has been about avoiding his more sordid or shocking elements; this was over by 2001, but nevertheless this volume cannot capture all of the poems in perhaps their most honest translations. And finally, but unsurprisingly, this doesn't include Latin texts of the poems. Again this is understandable, as it won't be of interest to most readers, and those us who can read the language will already have an edition. But just worth noting. The book says what it does on the cover.
A gem.
June 3, 2017
This is not actually a translation of Catullus, but a scholarly book ABOUT Catullus (by Charles Martin, who HAS written a translation, but, as I said, this is not it). It does INCLUDE translations, but only as they happen to come up in the discussion.
My problems with this book are threefold. First, it wasn't sure whether it wanted to be an introduction or a focused scholarly argument, so it ends up being a not-quite-there version of both. This led to the second issue, that even where I was already inclined to agree with something Martin was selling about Catullus, he was not always convincing. Lastly, in terms of dealing with the sexual violence inherent in some of the poems, Martin has a tendency to stress Catullus' formal cleverness at the expense of grappling with what makes certain poems distasteful to a modern reader. Yes, the types of sexual activities Catullus threatens his frenemies with in poem 16 may form a clever chiasmus (though that's debatable depending on how you define your terms), but let's not downplay the fact that he's talking about rape.
My problems with this book are threefold. First, it wasn't sure whether it wanted to be an introduction or a focused scholarly argument, so it ends up being a not-quite-there version of both. This led to the second issue, that even where I was already inclined to agree with something Martin was selling about Catullus, he was not always convincing. Lastly, in terms of dealing with the sexual violence inherent in some of the poems, Martin has a tendency to stress Catullus' formal cleverness at the expense of grappling with what makes certain poems distasteful to a modern reader. Yes, the types of sexual activities Catullus threatens his frenemies with in poem 16 may form a clever chiasmus (though that's debatable depending on how you define your terms), but let's not downplay the fact that he's talking about rape.
September 19, 2022
Catullus in English
Brilliant, as are all the books in this series.
Catullus is alongside Horace and Ovid, the finest of Latin poets
Brilliant, as are all the books in this series.
Catullus is alongside Horace and Ovid, the finest of Latin poets
July 22, 2017
Before reading this book, my understanding of Catullus was that he was this clever, wink-at-the-reader kind of poet whose writing was unbelievably ahead of its time (you could easily mistake it for the writing of a contemporary author) and who occasionally dipped into some erotic content. Truly, he's great in sound bytes.
Now my understanding of Catullus is that he seemed to be a master of three kinds of writing: that clever wink-at-the-reader playfulness, no-holds-barred crudeness (sometimes for humor, sometimes not), and then, incredibly, the cerebral genius who designed a perfectly chiastic series in poems 61-68.
This book often presents the Latin but will never feel inaccessible to those who don't read Latin. The English translation really plays up the coarseness of the language, which is important when trying to understand the impact of some of his lines. There is so much we don't know about Catullus the man but this book is a great study on the writing itself. 4.5 stars, I'd recommend to anyone who enjoys Latin poetry or who has enjoyed a quote/sound byte of Catullus at some point.
I want to copy for you a paragraph from the final pages of this book: "Catullus differs from the other figures examined in the Hermes series in two important ways: one is his accessibility to the general reader, and the other is his relative lack of influence on our literary culture before the beginning of the modern era. While Horace, Virgil, and Ovid shaped our poetic meters and matters, Catullus lay hidden under his bushel. Discovered (as a source of influence) by the Victorians and championed by the early modernists, he is now in a real sense one of us, a Latin poet who speaks to our age with a singular directness."
Now my understanding of Catullus is that he seemed to be a master of three kinds of writing: that clever wink-at-the-reader playfulness, no-holds-barred crudeness (sometimes for humor, sometimes not), and then, incredibly, the cerebral genius who designed a perfectly chiastic series in poems 61-68.
This book often presents the Latin but will never feel inaccessible to those who don't read Latin. The English translation really plays up the coarseness of the language, which is important when trying to understand the impact of some of his lines. There is so much we don't know about Catullus the man but this book is a great study on the writing itself. 4.5 stars, I'd recommend to anyone who enjoys Latin poetry or who has enjoyed a quote/sound byte of Catullus at some point.
I want to copy for you a paragraph from the final pages of this book: "Catullus differs from the other figures examined in the Hermes series in two important ways: one is his accessibility to the general reader, and the other is his relative lack of influence on our literary culture before the beginning of the modern era. While Horace, Virgil, and Ovid shaped our poetic meters and matters, Catullus lay hidden under his bushel. Discovered (as a source of influence) by the Victorians and championed by the early modernists, he is now in a real sense one of us, a Latin poet who speaks to our age with a singular directness."
May 7, 2013
This is a biography of Catullus within the backdrop of ongoing troubles at Rome of Catullus’ time. It also has a selection of Catullus’ poems and some interesting info like how Catullus’ poems were lost for more than thousand years but miraculously survived after the discovery of one manuscript in 14th/15th century.
According to one book (‘My mistress Sparrow is Dead’, edited by Jeffrey Eugenides) Catullus is the 1st author to writer of Love story. It is presented in his Lesbia poems. Lesbia was his love. She was a married woman with real name Clodia. Initial Lesbia poems are happy and celebrating Catullus’ love for her. While Catullus was treating it as committed love or should we infidelity with certain fidelity. However Lesbia was more open to have more lovers including Catullus’ friend Rufa or Rufus. Catullus was distraught with Lesbia’s philandering’s and Rufa’s treachery. His later Lesbia poems are thus full of invectives against Lesbia and Rufa.
Catullus’ poems are surprisingly modern due to their candidness, humor, and prose style and therefore highly readable and enjoyable even today.
According to one book (‘My mistress Sparrow is Dead’, edited by Jeffrey Eugenides) Catullus is the 1st author to writer of Love story. It is presented in his Lesbia poems. Lesbia was his love. She was a married woman with real name Clodia. Initial Lesbia poems are happy and celebrating Catullus’ love for her. While Catullus was treating it as committed love or should we infidelity with certain fidelity. However Lesbia was more open to have more lovers including Catullus’ friend Rufa or Rufus. Catullus was distraught with Lesbia’s philandering’s and Rufa’s treachery. His later Lesbia poems are thus full of invectives against Lesbia and Rufa.
Catullus’ poems are surprisingly modern due to their candidness, humor, and prose style and therefore highly readable and enjoyable even today.
September 16, 2013
On a dreary October day in Newcastle, Paul has no idea that his life is about to change forever. Reluctant to attend the party of an old university friend, a chance encounter finds Paul in the company of his dream girl and causes him to question his life, his goals and whether he can live without her. The two soul mates embark on their journey with destiny, but without her name, address or any way of making contact, will Fate ensure that they meet again? Paul undertakes a journey of discovery in trying to find his mystery woman, but in the words of Dinah Washington, "Love brings such misery and pain, I guess I'll never be the same, since I fell for you."
September 3, 2008
Odi et amo. Quare id faciam, fortasse requiris?
Nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior.
Catullus taught me that just because you're in emotional turmoil because the love of your life, an unstable, married, possibly incestuous woman, breaks your heart and your homeland is going through some of the worst political turmoil in its long history, doesn't mean you can't be pithy.
For this and also all of the sex jokes, Manuel is a dick because of Catullus.
Nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior.
Catullus taught me that just because you're in emotional turmoil because the love of your life, an unstable, married, possibly incestuous woman, breaks your heart and your homeland is going through some of the worst political turmoil in its long history, doesn't mean you can't be pithy.
For this and also all of the sex jokes, Manuel is a dick because of Catullus.
February 11, 2010
Authoritative critical edition of the Latin text with textual and interpretive commentary.
January 6, 2011
For Latin poetry, it's pretty damn good.
Read
November 11, 2012Oh. My. Gosh...
Catullus is my one true love..... seriously... lol
I am in love with his poetry...
Catullus is my one true love..... seriously... lol
I am in love with his poetry...
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews