[Below, Ferguson provides an overview of the Lesbia poems, the elegies, and four long poems; two marriage-hymns ("Poem 61" and "Poem 62'), "Attis" ("Poem 63,"), and "Poem 64."']

The Lesbia-Poems

Catullus chooses to introduce his readers to the woman central to his life in the two poems about her pet sparrow. She is not there identified even by the pseudonym Lesbia, but, whatever other women there may have been in the poet's life, there is no serious doubt that all the six love-poems in the first eleven refer to the same woman. We have come to appreciate that the first of these ('2') is a hymn, the sparrow who drew Aphrodite's carriage taking on her divinity, that it stands within Hellenistic traditions, and that the language is highly erotic in its details. There is one potent ambiguity: strouthos in Greek and its Latin equivalents, turtur and the like, are used of the male sex-organ. This gives a strong ambiguity to the second poem ('3'), where G. Giangrande has argued that the death of the sparrow has an underlying meaning of sexual impotence. Not everyone accepts this, but there is no doubt about the ambiguities of passer, pipiare, mouere, gremium, and mors. The point is not that the poem is about sexual impotence, but that it must be read at more than one level. For the rest the poem shows extraordinary skill: the use of the conversational male: the onomatopoeic tinily pattering it per iter; the elisions conveying the devouring power of death

… qu(ae) omnia bella deuoratis
tam bellum mihi passer(em) abstulistis;

the use of hiatus and chiasmus in o factum male! o miselle passer.

The two kissing-poems are different from one another. The last part of the first ('5') shows Catullus using finger-gestures which both represent the number of kisses and scorn of the old puritans, adoration of the beloved, the aversion of the evil eye while Lesbia keeps the tally with pebbles on a board, which she finally shuffles to confuse the issue.

This is a poem of happy love. The other is not, and the critic who spoke of 'a novitiate entering an Elysium of love' was grotesquely astray. It is a dark poem, in which nox has replaced lux, the desert sand leads to the dead tomb, the love is one of many thefts, and Catullus is mad and in need of the silphium used for hysteria and neurotic conditions. The genius of the poem consists in the poet's capacity to distance himself from himself and observe his condition.

The other two poems are both poems of renunciation, set within a recognized genre. Here again Lesbia is not named; here alone is directly addressed puella; elsewhere she is mea puella. The metre, the scazon or limping iambic, does not normally belong to the genre. The poem is carefully structured and patterned, the vocative Catulle in the first and last lines giving it ring-form. In seeking a mythological precedent he chooses Cyclops in Theocritus, with references also to Callimachus and Sappho. But he does not seek solace in another woman, as mythology and the genre demand. In the first line he charges himself with ineptire. this is not part of traditional love-vocabulary: it is a failure in cultured urbanity. At the last he turns the at tu he has addressed to the woman savagely against himself: the brilliant use of destinatus is ambiguous between 'Stand your ground, be steadfast' and 'Stand your ground; there's nothing else left for you to do'.

So the eleventh poem ('11') starts with a monumental journey across the world from east to west expressed in high liturgical language. For 16 lines he builds up an effect; in 8 he strikes, first in scathing obscenity, then in tender pathos. The poetically rare word identidem ('again, again') appears at the same point of the verse as in the translation of Sappho (51), only here it is linked with brutally harsh elisions. Then at the last the world shrinks to a field and the love which might have changed the world lies broken on the edge of the field (note how ultimi echoes the remote Britons), and the hypermetric elision prat(i) ultimi flos wonderfully expresses the snapping of the stalk which projects into the path of the plough.

It is neither possible nor necessary to explore in detail all the light which has been shed by modern commentators on all the other poems in the Lesbia-cycle, but one or two must be mentioned.

The '51st' is thought by most to be the first poem he wrote to Lesbia, though Wiseman has argued that it is a late poem made sombre by allusions to other poems notably the '11th' in the same Sapphic metre. It is mostly a translation from Sappho, in which the poet identifies himself with the poetess: his self-identification with the feminine, in general so alien from Roman mores, here and elsewhere, is of both poetic and psychological interest. In the very first stanza he adds to the original an allusion to the Roman religious formula fas sit uidisse in relation to an epiphany. This is not mythological and Greek; it is Roman and real, and Clodia … a real goddess (compare '68'.70 candida diua). It has been much disputed whether the otium stanza is a detached fragment, or a part of the original poem. On the whole opinion favours the latter, though there are contrary voices. Nor is it clear what he is saying: otium has been seen as a political term, an ethical term of disapprobation, a linguistic opposite to negotium, an ambivalent attitude to an Epicurean ideal, a condition of literary creation, a negative attitude in love. Such diversity almost compels us to see ambiguity in the poet's mind.

It is worth pausing a moment over the little cri-de-coeur ('58')

Caeli, Lesbia nostra, Lesbia illa,
illa Lesbia, quam Catullus unam,
plus quam se atque suos amauit omnes,
nunc in quadriuiis et angiportis
glubit magnanimi Remi nepotes.

with the ritual threefold repetition of the name, and the agonized inverted order of Lesbia illa illa Lesbia. In the last line we have come to recognize the mock-heroic tone (applied also to Cicero: '49'. 1): it is curiously parallel to Caelius's jibe at Clodia as quadrantaria Clytemnestra where epic dignity is combined with coarseness. But Catullus mutes his coarseness. Wiseman has observed that he never turns on Lesbia the full vocabulary of obscene invective. Glubit is metaphorical: a euphemism, if you like. It means to strip the bark from a tree. So Lesbia strips the nobility of Rome of clothes, money, and potency.

The '68th' poem in its complexity will be treated later. Some of the epigrams apply directly to Lesbia. They are beautifully shaped. '70' owes something in form to Callimachus. It moves from the particular to the general—with particular implications. 'My woman says she wants to marry me.' 'Women aren't to be trusted by men in love.' The last two lines have a powerful contrast between cupido … amanti and rapida … aqua. The lover lusts, but the water commits the rape, and the words embraced by the lusting lover are dissolved in the middle of the speeding stream.

The '72nd' is an expression of conflicting emotions, carefully balanced in two quatrains. In the first he is treating her with amicitia and pietas. In the second he has seen through her: amicitia has become a broken bond, but amor a more intense yearning. It is a marvellous piece of self-examination mightily expressed.

The next poem is something of a curiosity. The language is again the application of political terminology to personal relations, which fits it firmly into the Lesbia-cycle: bene uelle, mereri, pium, ingrata, fecisse benigne, unum atque unicum amicum. The unnamed recipient is one of his rivals, Rufus or Gellius. There are some astonishing sound effects: quoquam quicquam, followed by posse putare pium. A word is lost from the fourth line: we should perhaps read immo etiam taedet, taedet obestque magis. The last line is unique with five elisions in four feet including one across the caesura: quam modo qui me unum atque unicum amicum habuit. It is expressive of controlled contempt. Some of the language, quoquam quicquam and unum atque unicum, make the poem almost a hieratic curse.

The '76th' poem has been, justly, the object of much critical attention. Here we see epigram burgeoning into elegy. A statement of 16 lines is followed by a prayer of 10 lines, each subdivided:

STATEMENT
1-8 General, leading to particular
9-16 Particular

PRAYER
17-22 General, leading to particular
23-6 Particular

Each of these sections is carefully articulated, the cycle of the whole poem being completed by plum ('76'.2) being picked up in pietate ('76'.27), and that of the prayer by the recurrence of o di at start and finish. But 26 lines divide naturally into two blocks divided by the pivotal couplet, which Otto Friess called 'the poem's navel'.

difficile est longum subito deponere amorem.
difficile est, uerum hoc qua lubet efficias.

(It is hard to know whether to punctuate the first line with a query or full stop.) The prayer has none of the accoutrement of the Hellenistic literary prayer—deity, epithet, cult, or site: it is Roman and immediate. The writing is deliberately informal. The first line has a caesura after a trochee in the fourth foot, which is never found in Callimachus or Catullus 64, a violation of Hermann's Bridge. Phrases like uerum hoc qua lubet efficias or siue id non pote siue pote or quod non potis est are conversational. The echoes of his earlier love-poems are clear, but the fever of love has become a fever of disease ('76'.19-22, 51.5-10). Above all, this poem, together with the '109th', applies the language of politics to love.

The Polymetrics

The fourth poem ['4'] is in form an anathematikon, a dedication-epigram; only here, as in Callimachus Epig. 5 Pf, the speaker is the object dedicated. This allows for some ingenious ambiguities ('4'.4 palmulis; '4'.17 imbuisse; '4'.21 pedem), and a suggestion that the ship is whispering (-ss- comes 11 times in the poem, 3 times in one line); the poet keeps acting as interpreter ('4'.2 ait; '4'.6 negat; '4'.15 ait; '4'.16 dicit). The ship is a garrulous slave ('4'. 19 erum). It is a Greek ship, and uses Greek idiom ('4'.2). It stands on its dignity, a little pompous ('4'.4-5 siue … siue), boastful of the places it has visited. Unlikely that the boat itself has reached the Lago di Garda: more likely a painting, as in some Greek epigrams. The poem is shaped in omphalos-form: it starts in the present, moves backwards in time to the poem's centre and forwards again to the present. Metrically it is a tour de force, written in pure iambics with never two consecutive long syllables, no doubt to represent the gentle rocking of the boat. Now the boat has reached haven: the servant has found honourable retirement. What of the poet? 'Dare we think that Catullus is claiming that he too has been tossed on the seas of life, through the darkness of his brother's death and the storm of his love for Lesbia, and has now reached haven? Senet quiete—oh! he was young yet, but it is a young man's thought.'

The thirteenth poem ['13'] is technically a uocatio ad cenam, a standard genre. The first line has all the feel of a genuine dinner invitation, but we soon find that it is whimsical, good-humoured, and parodic. The poet speaks freely, as equal to equal. The first twist is that Fabullus will have a good dinner—if he brings it: food, a pretty girl, wine, salt (a double entendre for wit), and laughter. Catullus likes a hypothesis followed by nam. Here comes the second twist. His purse is empty? No—full—of cobwebs. Eight lines spell out the situation; six provide the conclusion. Fabullus will receive 'pure love'. What does that mean? A girl? But he has been asked to bring one. No—it is something more delightful and cultivated. It's an unguent given meae (i.e. hands off!) puellae by all the powers of love. Not then an unguent, but her natural scent. But Fabullus must not touch; he must be content to smell—and he will wish to become all nose (had he a very large or very small nose?).

One of the most brilliantly illuminating critical articles on particular poems was produced by Niall Rudd on a quite minor poem, the '17th'. The structure of the poem gives 11 lines on the town he calls Colonia and its rickety bridge (structured 4-3-4), 11 lines on an indolent husband and his attractive wife (arranged: husband-simile-wife-simile-husband), 4 lines of conclusion picking up words and ideas from earlier in the poem. But the parallelism of the first two sections runs deep. The bridge is personified as male and equipped with incompetent legs, the town as female, lively, eager for a festival, and full of sexual desires. Catullus wants to throw the husband into the mud underneath as a propitiatory offering, and at the same time receiving a drastic version of current medical treatment for lethargy. H. Akbar Khan has added to this magnificent analysis the fact that the language is sexually highly charged, as one would expect of a poem in the Priapean metre. We should note also the characteristic use of expressive elision for the tenacious effects of the mud, praecipit(em) in lutum ('17'.9), and especially the last two lines

et supin(um) anim(um) in graui derelinquere caeno, ferre(am) ut soleam tenac(i) in uoragine mula. ('17'.25-6)

The 29th poem ['29']is seen by some commentators as a key poem both for the poet's political stand and for his use of sexual invective. It is not totally clear precisely to whom the poem is addressed—Caesar and Pompey; Caesar, Pompey, and Crassus; Caesar, Pompey, and the people of Rome. The poem (in pure iambics again, and a tour de force) is shaped as a riddle, with a series of questions, such as P. Clodius used in political mob-oratory[,] eliciting the answers he wanted from the crowd. But the poem is an attack on Mamurra, lackey to his patrons and the real power behind them. He is called diffututa mentula ('a far-fucked cock'), and charged with lust of money, as he is later charged (assuming he is the Mentula of 94, 105, 114-15) with lust for land, other people's wives, and poetic glory. At the end perdidistis, expressly of Pompey and Caesar, and a current political term to describe their policies puts them in the same boat as Mamurra.

The hymn to Diana ('34') has been the subject of some interesting recent observations. Wiseman notices how the lex Gabinia Calpurnia of 58 B.C. made much of the ancient sanctity of Delos as birthplace of Apollo and Artemis, and the importance of the island practically for the corn-supply as well as religiously, and notes how in Catullus Diana, not normally a goddess of agriculture, 'fills the farmer's barns with grain'. Critical opinion is hardening that this was not a literary exercise but a genuine hymn.

Acme and Septimius ('45') is a good example of a poem in which critical opinion has shifted. Until comparatively recently the normal (but not universal) view was that it was a charming account of mutual love. It is indeed a carefully constructed symmetrical poem with three stanzas, the first two of 9 lines each, 7 followed by a refrain, and a carefully shaped 8—line comment by an observer. The formulaic language of marriage is introduced. In the first line and a half the lovers seem to intertwine: Acmen Septimius suos amores/tenens in gremio. But more recent interpreters have noted irony throughout. The omens which form the refrains are odd: is sinistra well-omened with Roman use or ill-omened with Greek use, when she bears a Greek name, he a Roman? How many omens are there? Is the sneeze right and left doubly favourable or ambiguous? The long abstract approbationem is an effect Catullus always uses with a dark shadow ('7'.1, '12'.12, '21'.1, '21'.8, '23'.14, '32'.18, '38'.5, '38'.7, '47'.5 and probably '48'.6). Septimius is full of exaggerated rhetoric. Acme is fidelis, Septimius is misellus. The accounts do not precisely balance. The poem is about Acme, and the poet is identified with her—a psychologically important point which recurs through the poems. The poem is datable to 55 by reference to the lion (Pompey used 600 in the 'games' that year) and Britain. We have another poem from the same year, full of references to India and Africa, Syria and Britain: and it is a bitter rejection of love ('11'). Acme and Septimius ends not on an affirmation hut a question. Catullus knows the answer.

Francis Cairns has helped us to understand the next poem ('46'). It is a syntaktikon, a poem for a journey, in this instance between two places abroad, though on the way from abroad home. Cairns notes the variants introduced by Catullus. A statement about the spring weather replaces the normal prayer for a safe voyage at the outset. He does not address the people of the province, but himself: this makes the poem much more internalized. He expresses joy instead of the conventional regret at leaving. Wiseman has further noted that here and elsewhere Catullus tends to allude to foreign parts in terms of their economic assets. Cairns suggests that the poet's innovations allow him to use a genre not normally associated with pleasure for an expression of joy. This is indeed typical of Catullus's often unexpected use of his medium. There are two other points to notice. Bithynia was the scene of his brother's death and the line which he refers to it is extraordinary in its sound effects: Nicaeaeque ager uber aestuosae. The other is the tinge of Epicureanism at the last. The governor, Memmius, was an Epicurean patron; friendship was a strong Epicurean quality; dulces a favourite Epicurean term. Like the atoms, the friends are to be scattered; in the end omnes manetnox. Pleasure is not unalloyed; happiness is the greatest excess of pleasure over pain—or the smallest excess of pain over pleasure.

It is hard to see how readers have failed to detect the irony which underlies the address to Cicero ('49'), though some have taken it as a literal expression of gratitude. Catullus belonged to a different literary circle to Cicero; he was less compromising towards the triumvirs, and would not have liked Cicero's volte-face over Vatinius; and Cicero's relations with Clodia had oscillated from possible sexual involvement to the exposure of her as a worthless nymphomaniac. The poem begins with a highflown ironic phrase disertissime Romuli nepotum (cf. '58'.5); Cicero was inquilinus ciuis. It passes into another mock-heroic formula. It uses a mode of address (Marce Tulli) appropriate to state occasions and ludicrously incongruous in hendecasyllabics. It pivots on gratias tibi maximas Catullus with a grotesque near-rhyme to Marce Tulli. It ends with a doubly ambiguous compliment. Catullus does not believe he is pessimus poeta; in which case Cicero is not optimus patronus. But he was omnium patronus, who took all cases, good or bad.

This is a small selection only of recent interpretations of the polymetrics, but sufficiently indicative of contemporary approaches.

The Second Book

The four longer poems which constitute the second scroll have received their share of attention. Apart from the standard commentaries, the wedding-hymn for Manlius Torquatus and Junia Aurunculeia has been the subject of an extended commentary by P. Fideli and some pertinent remarks by Gordon Williams; the second wedding-hymn elicited a major article by no less a scholar than E. Fraenkel; Attis and Peleus and Thetis have attracted a host of interpreters.

The first of the marriage-hymns is strongly personal, Greek in form, Roman in ritual content, almost as if the poet were creating a new world. The poem is dramatic. The marriage has not yet taken place; we pass from an indeterminate scene via the bride's house to the groom's; the whole is a brilliant literary construct. It is truly hymnic, starting with a formulaic address to the deity, and later uses hieratic, archaic language. There are brilliant visual and colour effects throughout. The poet's characteristic diminutives (and pseudo diminutives such as tremulus) express tenderness. Elision is exquisitely used to express union:

qui rapis tener(am) ad uirum
uirgin(em), o Hymenae(e) Hymen ('61'.3-4)

or

ment(em) amore reuinciens
ut tenax heder(a) huc et huc
arbor(em) implicat errans ('61'.33-5)

The repetition of a single word or root is skilfully used, as in domum dominam uoca ('61'.31) or quod cupis cupis ('61'.197). But Manlius was at least probably the friend in whose house Catullus enjoyed union with Lesbia ('68'.67), and we cannot help but note allusions to his own experience. After all Sappho was the great exponent of the marriage-hymn, and Sappho was inescapably associated with the Lesbia he named after her (see '61'.64-5; '51'. 1 and '68'.141; '61'.212: '51'.5; '61'.199-203: '7'.3-8; '61'.89, '188'; '11'.23; '61'.180: '68'.71; '61'.225; '68'.2). Behind his prayer for his friend's happiness lurks his own pain, and that adds power to his feelings and his writing.

There is less to say about '62'. It is less personal, more artificial. The singing competition stands in the traditions of pastoral poetry: it is carefully but not precisely balanced, and contains some magnificent imagery and writing. Catullus has put remarkable imaginative power into differentiating the girls from the boys. Fraenkel's conclusion is an excellent appreciation: 'Lovers of Catullus may disagree about the relative merits of the two wedding poems, "LXI" and "LXII". Many will prefer the lyric poem on account of its wealth of realistic detail, its vigorous humour, its precious information about very ancient rituals, and its winged and gay rhythms, which somehow call to mind another song, "Quart' e bella giovinezza, che si fugge tuttavia!" There are others to whom the softer notes of "LXII" will appeal with equal force. A scholar must not pretend to be a judge on such matters. I will rather conclude by saying that Vesper adest has one important characteristic in common with all that is best in Roman poetry: it could never have come into being without the Greek seed, and at the same time it owes its strength, its freshness, and its particular flavour to the soil of Italy out of which it grew.'

Attis has always fascinated, not least as a metrical tour deforce. The galliambic metre requires a minimum of 10 short syllables in every 16, 4 or 5 of them consecutive, an exceedingly difficult effect to maintain over all but 100 lines in a language as weighty as Latin. The poem is carefully constructed:

(a) Narrative introduction 1-5
    (b) The frenzy of Attis 6-11
              (c) Attis sings in ecstasy 12-26
    (d) The frenzy of the Gallae 27-34
(e) Sleep 35-8
    (f) Sanity: return to shore 39-47
              (g) Attis speaks in despair 48-73
    (h) Frenzy: return to mountain 74-90
(i) Poet's closing prayer 91-3

The alternation between narratio and oratio is carefully controlled, and narrative is kept to a minimum. There is a constant seesaw between the subjective and the objective. The poem is about speed, desire, and madness; all three are contained in the opening sentence. Citatus is a keyword; there is an astonishing poetical effect in citato cupidepede tetigit ('63'.2), and throughout a striking succession of verbs of motion.

Nature is the backcloth to this drama. The other keyword is remora, areas of the wildwood sacred to its deity. Dawn is symbolic of an awakening to the truth. Attis goes down to the sea. But the sea is ferum, and Attis himself liquida mente and animo aestuante. His words are formally an epibaterion, an address on reaching the end of a journey. But it is inverted. He praises the place he has left, its people, its buildings, its life. He attacks the place he has reached, a snowy wilderness, whose only citizens are wild animals, cerua siluicultrix and aper nemoriuagus—the compound epithets, generally clumsy in Latin, are brilliantly evocative. Animal imagery dominates the poem. Citatus and stimulatus are habitually used of animals. A nemus was a place for grazing. Attis calls the initiates uaga pecora ('63'.13). They break into animal noises (reboant, ululatibus, remugit). Only he is no herdsman, but to be compared to a heifer ('63'.33).

The poem is wrung from the poet's own experience. It is surely a product of his visit to Asia. In '68' Asia, his brother's death, and his own unhappy love are intertwined. The furor which seized Attis had seized him too in his love ('7'. 10 uesano). Fanatical devotion and despairing disillusion were marks of his own state. This book has comprised two marriage-songs: it will go on to the uncertain blessings of the union between Peleus and Thetis. This too is a marriage-song of a sort, since Attis was consort to Cybele; it is a kind of anti-epithalamium. Catullus can feel the loss of sex; in a curious way he can identify with the female in Attis. Both regret their furor. But Attis cannot escape. Catullus can; the final prayer is his, and it is parallel to the prayer for healing in '76'.3

The '64th' poem is by a long way the longest of the long poems, and almost certainly one of the latest, and has attracted a good deal of attention. Wilamowitz wrote 'This poem is the work in which Catullus wanted to write his masterpiece.' Our evidence is of course internal, but it is clear enough. Richard Jenkyns in a wide-ranging study justified the opinion: 'In Peleus and Thetis Catullus aims for a continuous brilliance over a length of four hundred lines; and the extent of his success is astonishing.' Old scholars were less than enthusiastic about it. Positive appreciation starts with a sensitive study by F. Klingner in 1956.

The poem is often called an epyllion or short epic, but that is misleading; it implies that this was a recognized Alexandrian genre, for which the evidence is slight, and that Catullus was writing a work to be judged by the critical canons appropriate to epic, combined with brevity and polish. The poem we have is not really a narrative poem, but a series of tableaux, not a miniature Iliad but sui generis.

It has two major subjects, the marriage of Peleus and Thetis ('64'.151, 265-408) and Ariadne's desertion by Theseus in between. A digression of this sort, producing a literary sonata-form, is not uncommon, but nowhere else does it occupy half the poem.

The whole poem is meticulously shaped.

1 INTRODUCTION 1-30

         (a) The Argonauts 1-11
                 (b) Peleus and Thetis 12-21
         (c) The Argonauts 22-30

2 THE WEDDING 31-408
   (i) Human guests 31-277
          (a) Arrival 31-49
                   (b) Coverlet 50-266
           (c) Departure 267-77
   (ii) Divine guests
           (a) Arrival 278-302
                   (b) Fates 303-83
           (c) Absence today 384-408

Subsections, and especially the Ariadne episode, are planned with a comparable symmetry of structure. Throughout there are careful verbal effects, onomatopoeia, deliberate reminiscences of earlier poets, alliteration and assonance, puns and the like. Jenkyns must be correct in maintaining that this is essentially a poem in its own right, composed with sustained brilliance.

But is that all that can be said? Is it self-contained? J. C. Bramble in an excellent paper pointed to its ambiguities of mood. A number of critics have seen in the poem something more than l 'art pour I 'art meme—a critique of the Rome of the poet's own day, or the concept of the domus, or his grief for his dead brother and the ambiguities of his relationship to Lesbia. To suggest that any of these is the theme of the poem is a large overstatement, and Jenkyns for one sweeps them aside. But this allows too little for the ambiguities of tone, the allusions to Lesbia poems (which can hardly be accidental), the darkness which underlies some of the brighter passages. Jenkyns having dismissed Catullus as a moralist, accepts (he can hardly do otherwise) that the conclusion is moralizing: but, if so, it is not impossible that there may be moralizing judgements underlying some of the earlier writing; it would be surprising if there were not.

In short, a poem may serve more than one purpose for a poet. If it is to be his deliberate masterwork he can hardly help pouring into it experiences and attitudes from past and present.

The Elegiac Poems

Catullus began his third volume with a mini-dedication, to Q. Hortensius Hortalus, lawyer, patron, and poet of a very different approach. Catullus had lost his brother. Hortensius tried to encourage him into returning to poetry. Catullus apologized for essaying a translation only, but that translation was of Callimachus. In this way he opens his book of elegiacs with his Greek exemplar, as he will close it with Callimachus and the threat to translate another poem, the vituperative Ibis. The opening poem ('65') would not be the favourite of many, but there is much to admire in it. He leads gently to his loss: namque mei nuper Lethaeo gurgite fratris ('65'.5), where the separation of mei from fratris by the stream of Lethe, and the juxtaposition of gurgite fratris are equally moving; in the next line we hear the water lapping in pallidulum … alluit. He uses the language of love: uitafrater amabilior ('65'.10). The stock image of the nightingale is not a mere cliche, for he feels that the domus has indeed been violated. The glory of the poem is its final image, of the girl who has concealed the love-gift of an apple, jumps up to meet her mother, and to her chagrin sees the apple fall:

atque illud prono praeceps agitur decursu,
   huic manat tristi conscius ore rubor.
('65'.23-4)

In the first line the apple seems to hover for an age, then rushes down and bumps heavily on the floor. In the second the bringing together of tristi conscius and ore rubor shows Latin poetry at its subtlest.

The '67th' poem is something of a riddle: of many explanations Giangrande's is the best, especially with the reading matronae for Veronae ('67'.34) which eliminates a puzzling reference. A man named Caecilius has married. A visitor hears rumours of the wife's infidelity, and questions the house-door, the traditional guardian of faithfulness. The door protests that the lady was deflowered before coming under its protection by her future father-in-law, more vigorous than his son and perhaps even invited to perform the original penetration. But she has been long promiscuous, and that is to be attributed to her character not to the door's negligence. This is an original poem, not least in the portrayal of the door as a garrulous, gossiping, grumbling janitor. It seems to portray a real situation, or there would be no point in the reference to an anonymous adulterer with ginger eyebrows (no doubt identifiable to the readers). The poem ends with a massive double entendre (longus homo est), and a four-word pentameter forming an ironical contrast between noble form and ignoble content.

The next poem is, as Lachmann once said, the shibboleth of Catullus's interpreters. The basic question (or questions) is: Are '104', 41-160 a single poem or two and is the Mallius of the first identical or not with the Allius of the second?

Probably the best explanation is that we have an example of enclosed form, 41-148, addressed to the Muses, being sandwiched between 1-40 and 149-60 (the munus of 149 picks up 10 and 32). At '68'.41 me Allius would be indistinguishable in pronunciation from Mallius. At lines 11 and 30 then read with Schöll mi Alli for MS mali. But this does not prevent Allius, a name in its own right, from being a covername for Mallius or Manlius. There can be no certainty: but this preserves the unity of the poem most economically.

The central section brings together the themes of Laudamia, Troy, the poet's dead brother, and the poet's love. It is constructed with a scrupulous care:

41-50 foedus of Allius and Catullus—10 lines
51-6 Catullus's own love: torture of desire—6
57-72 Allius's relief compared: epiphany of thedina—16 (13 + 3)
73-86 Laudamia and Protesilaus—14
87-8 Helen—2
89-90 Troy: tomb—2
91-100 dead brother—10
101-2 Greek youth: hearth—2
103-4 Paris—2
105-18 Laudamia and Protesilaus—14
119-34 Laudamia's love compared: epiphany of diua—16 (13 + 3)
135-40 Catullus's own love: torture of self—6
141-60 foedus of Catullus and his message—10

Wheeler compared it to a nest of Chinese boxes. Quinn called it an early experiment in stream of consciousness technique, but it is more carefully controlled than that.

Imagery is intensive throughout and leads to the epiphany of the poet's candida diua. She was a goddess to him—that goes back to 51 and candida goes back to many 'golden' compounds in Sappho. But the omens are not unequivocally favourable. She halts on the threshold, which no bride should do, and her sandal creaks. She reminds the poet of Laudamia, whose husband Protesilaus was doomed to death at Troy—like Catullus's own brother. When the goddess comes back she is identified with Venus. But the mood is strange. She is lux mea; but light fades. And then, in an astonishing inversion, she is the promiscuous Jupiter and he the patient Juno. His weary complaisance is a mood unique in Republican poetry, though Propertius can match it. Behind it is a fundamental honesty of outlook. He ends with an assertion of love over infidelity, light over darkness, life over death, joy over sorrow.

An uneven poem, and yet in many ways the climax of the poet's achievement.

A number of the key epigrams have been treated or touched on in other parts of this survey. It remains to mention one or two only of the others.

'80' is typical of the poet's eight-line verses, dividing into two quatrains. It is addressed to one of his betesnoires, Gellius. It is a riddle and answer. The riddle gives no hint of the answer. Gellius's dear little lips, normally rosy, are white as snow. There is one hint only: the day is mollis, enervating. The answer starts from rumour, and, as Latin permits, Catullus builds his effect word by word: 'it's big—you do something—it belongs to the middle—it's stiff—you devour it—it belongs to a male.' Gellius is a homosexual practicing fellation, and the final couplet turns the rumour into a certainty, and drives home the obscenity with a pun on labra (lips and vats) and agricultural language. Catullus could hate powerfully, and without that we do not understand him.

'84' is a poem which continues to fascinate, about a social climber named Arrius. Latin had lost the aspirated consonants which Greek retained. Initial aspirates did exist in Latin, but had tended to drop out in popular speech. The upper classes restored the aspirate: Augustine tells us that in his day it was less serious to hate a homo than to pronounce the word omo. Sometimes the aspirates were wrongly placed, as in (h)umidus and (h)avere, pulc(h)er and triump(h)us. To place them wrong was the mark of a social climber. Arrius was hoping for a career as an orator: he projected his voice ('84'.4, 7) and used the commonplaces of political oratory, commoda and insidias (chormmoda and hinsidias). his oratory was a string of mispronounced cliches. So to the point of the poem. A horribilis communication has come, that the Ionian waves are now Hionian. It is an elaborate pun. Horribilis is used of tossing waves, and chilling news—but there is a further implication that the spiritus asper, aspiration or rough wind, has roughened the waves, which have become Hionian or wintry, snowy. And this in turn implies that Arrius's oratory has been a frigus or frost. The poem is almost certainly directed against Q. Arrius, 'a man of low birth who without natural ability or higher education, achieved high office, wealth and influence', a hanger-on of Crassus who may have gone to the east with him.

'93', a couplet on Caesar, is one of the best-known of the epigrams: Quintilian alluded to it without remembering who wrote it ('11'. 1.38). The first line is carefully shaped. Caesar is central with three words on either side, the outer words giving the basis emphasis (nil.… placere). In the second line Catullus does not care to know whether Caesar is albus an ater homo. The phrase is said to be proverbial, but Catullus seems to have coined the proverb, borrowing the contrast from wine. Applied to people the words are ambiguous. Perhaps 'brunette' or 'blond', a pleasing thought in the light of Caesar's baldness. Perhaps 'unlucky' or 'lucky': Caesar's luck, like Sulla's, was notorious. The words do not mean 'vicious or virtuous', which is niger an candidus. Catullus knows that Caesar is vicious; there is no alternative to that. No need to explore the verses on his henchman Mentula, 'Old Cock' (probably Mamurra); they play wittily on the name.

There is little fresh to say on the moving lines on the poet's dead brother ('101'). It is not an epitaph, but it is an adaptation of the genre. The poem is an omphalos-form. Catullus starts from his journey, passes through the inferiae and his own munus to the central couplet which speaks of his loss in language taken from '68'.92, and back through the munus and the inferiae to the final uale as he sets out on the journey back. There are some magical touches: the juxtaposition of mihi tete; the ambiguity of indigne referring both to miser and adempte, to his brother and himself; the ambiguity of the central couplet, which can follow on from nequiquam or anticipate tamen. The sound of the poem is carefully contrived. In ten lines twelve words begin with m and nine end with m; it is a mournful letter, says Quintilian. The f and t of frater, fortuna, fletu add a touch of bitterness. At the last a gentle wind breathes through aue atque uale.