Catullus came from a leading equestrian family of Verona in Cisalpine Gaul, and according to St. Jerome, he was born in the town.

It was probably in Rome that Catullus fell deeply in love with the " Lesbia " of his poems, who is usually identified with Clodia Metelli, a sophisticated woman from the aristocratic house of patrician family Claudii Pulchri and sister of the infamous Publius Clodius Pulcher.

Though upon his elder brother's death Catullus lamented that their “ whole house was buried along ” with the deceased, the existence ( and prominence ) of Valerii Catulli is attested in the following centuries.

Indeed, Catullus was never considered one of the canonical school authors, although his body of work is on the reading lists for American Ph. D. programs in the classics, and is still taught at secondary school level in the United Kingdom.

Catullus described his work as expolitum, or polished, to show that the language he used was very carefully and artistically composed.

Catullus was also an admirer of Sappho, a female poet of the 7th century BC, and is the source for much of what we know or infer about her.

Catullus ' love poem " Vivamus mea Lesbia atque amemus " in the translation by Ben Jonson was set to music ( lute accompanied song ) by Alfonso Ferrabosco the younger.

Later Republican writers, such as Lucretius, Catullus and even Cicero, wrote their own compositions in the meter and it was at this time that many of the principles of Latin hexameter were firmly established, ones that would govern later writers such as Virgil, Ovid, Lucan, and Juvenal.

Catullus, in his account of the Minotaur's birth, refers to another version in which Athens was " compelled by the cruel plague to pay penalties for the killing of Androgeos.

Odes by Catullus, as well as other poetry of Catullus, was particularly inspired by Sappho.

One of Sappho's poems ( fragment 31 ) was famously translated by the 1st century BC Roman poet Catullus in his " Ille mi par esse deo videtur " (" He seems to me to be equal to a god ") ( Catullus 51 ).

From Virgil's admiring references to the neoteric writers Pollio and Cinna, it has been inferred that he was, for a time, associated with Catullus ' neoteric circle.

Beckett's only explanation was that he was " fed up with Catullus ".

At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Domitianus and Catullus ( or, less frequently, year 826 Ab urbe condita ).

When no games were being held, the Circus at the time of Catullus ( mid-1st century BC ) was likely " a dusty open space with shops and booths ... a colourful crowded disreputable area " frequented by " prostitutes, jugglers, fortune tellers and low-class performing artists.

Como was the birthplace of many historically notable figures, including the ( somewhat obscure ) poet Caecilius who is mentioned by Catullus in the 1st century BCE, the far more substantial literary figures of Pliny the Elder and the Younger, Pope Innocent XI, the scientist Alessandro Volta, and Cosima Liszt, second wife of Richard Wagner and long-term director of the Bayreuth Festival.

In classical poetry the Tagus was famous for its gold-bearing sands ( Catullus 29. 19, Ovid, Amores, 1. 15. 34, Juvenal, Satires, 3. 55, etc.

Elision was a common device in the works of Catullus.

Simonides was the first to establish the choral dirge as a recognized form of lyric poetry, his aptitude for it being testified, for example, by Quintillian ( see quote in the Introduction ), Horace (" Ceae ... munera neniae "), Catullus (" maestius lacrimis Simonideis ") and Dionysius of Halicarnassus, where he says:

Catullus was influenced by both archaic and Hellenistic Greek verse and belonged to a group of Roman poets called the Neoteroi (" newer poets "), who spurned epic poetry, following the lead of Callimachus, and instead composed brief highly polished poems in various thematic and metrical genres.

Catullus wrote in many different meters including hendecasyllabic and elegiac couplets ( common in love poetry ).

David Campbell has briefly summarized some of the most arresting qualities of Sappho's poetry: Clarity of language and simplicity of thought are everywhere evident in our fragments ; wit and rhetoric, so common in English love-poetry and not quite absent from Catullus ' love poems, are nowhere to be found.

The most common evidence for this connection is the implied charge of incest usually detected in Catullus 79 in comparison to the charges of incest against Clodia Metelli in the Pro Caelio.

Rather, Catullus ’ s reference to the reluctance of Clodius ’ s associates to exchange with him a common social kiss implies connotations of fellatio.

" The meter of this poem is hendecasyllabic, a common form in Catullus ' poetry.

The meter of this poem is hendecasyllabic, a common form in Catullus ' poetry.

The foremost elegiac writers of the Roman era were Catullus, Propertius, Tibullus, and Ovid.

Catullus, a generation earlier than the other three, influenced his younger counterparts greatly.

According to an anecdote preserved by Suetonius, Caesar did not deny that Catullus's lampoons left an indelible stain on his reputation, but when Catullus apologized, he invited the poet for dinner the very same day.

" Catullus at Lesbia's ," by Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema

So, despite seeming frivolity of his lifestyle, Catullus measured himself and his friends by quite ambitious standards.

Catullus 51 follows Sappho 31 so closely that some believe the later poem to be, in part, a direct translation of the earlier poem, and 61 and 62 are certainly inspired by and perhaps translated directly from lost works of Sappho.

Catulli Carmina is a cantata by Carl Orff to the texts of Catullus.

* The epistolary novel Ides of March by Thornton Wilder centers on Julius Caesar, but prominently features Catullus, his poetry, his relationship ( and correspondence ) with Clodia, correspondence from his family and a description of his death.

* The poem " Be Angry at the Sun " by Robinson Jeffers includes the line " You are not Catullus, you know, To lampoon these crude sketches of Caesar.

* Catullus purified: a brief history of Carmen 16 by Thomas Nelson Winter

* SORGLL: Catullus 5, read by Robert Sonkowsky

The classical hendecasyllable is a quantitative meter used in Ancient Greece in Aeolic verse and in scolia, and later by the Roman poet Catullus.

This notion, however, is much more generally expressed in Latin by placere or delectāre, which are used more colloquially, the latter used frequently in the love poetry of Catullus.

) However, it also occurs in some Western metres, such as the hendecasyllable favoured by Catullus, which can be described as:

Published in 1974, this book relates the Sherlock Holmes stories in surprising ways to Nietzsche, Oscar Wilde, Dionysus, Christ, Catullus, John Bunyan, Robert Browning, Boccaccio, Napoleon, Racine, Frankenstein, Flaubert, George Sand, Socrates, Poe, General Charles George Gordon, Melville, Joyce's Ulysses, T. S. Eliot, and many others.

Published in 1974, this book argues for a surprising relationship between the Sherlock Holmes stories and Nietzsche, Oscar Wilde, Dionysus, Christ, Catullus, John Bunyan, Robert Browning, Boccaccio, Napoleon, Racine, Frankenstein, Flaubert, George Sand, Socrates, Poe, General Charles George Gordon, Melville, Joyce's Ulysses, T. S. Eliot, and many others.