Catullus gave her the soubriquet Lesbia in his poetry, not only as camouflage but in order to gesture back to the Greek poet Sappho, from the island of Lesbos: ‘Let’s live, my Lesbia, and let’s love / And the mutterings of stern old men / Let’s value them at a single penny … / Give me a thousand kisses’, as one poem starts. Colourful as this material is, it cannot be taken at face value. Part of it is not much more than erotic fantasy. Part of it is a classic reflection of common patriarchal anxieties.
