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, as was common to his era, was greatly influenced by stories from Greek and Roman myth.

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, 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:

* The new musical TULLY ( In No Particular Order ), which appeared in the 2007 New York Musical Theatre Festival, loosely adapts the poems of Catullus while retaining the non-linear structure of the published edition, exploring his relationships with both Clodia and Juventius, renamed Julie, and the timeless nature of memory and love.

Authors whose epigrams survive include Catullus, who wrote both invectives and love epigrams – his poem 85 is one of the latter.

Students may elect to take the Virgil or Catullus Horace Exam or both for 6 – 18 hours of college credit.

He is credited with introducing Hellenistic epigram to Rome and fostering a taste for short, personal poems that comes to fruition with the lyric oeuvre of Valerius Catullus in the 50s BC.

The Europa, along with Callimachus ' Hecale and such Latin examples as Catullus 64, is a major example of the Hellenistic phenomenon of the epyllion.

The epyllion was a popular style of composition which seems to have developed in the Hellenistic age ; surviving examples can be found in Theocritus and Catullus.

The orchestra only plays in the framework story, whereas in the Catullus play itself, the soloists are only accompanied by the chorus, who takes the part of a Greek choros.

About 2 / 3 of the Greek original is now lost, but the full version was translated to Latin by the Roman poet Catullus, and his version exists to this day.

Most ancient Greek and Roman chroniclers, poets, grammarians and scholars ( Eratosthenes, Varro, Apollodorus of Athens, Ovid, Censorinus, Catullus, and Castor of Rhodes ) believed in a threefold division of history: ádelon ( obscure ), mythikón ( mythical ) and historikón ( historical ) periods.

The texts are based on Latin wedding poems by Catullus, as well as Greek poems by Sappho and a small part by Euripides.

In Latin, the epithalamium, imitated from Fescennine Greek models, was a base form of literature, when Catullus redeemed it and gave it dignity by modelling his Marriage of Thetis and Peleus on a lost ode of Sappho.

At 13 he began to circulate Latin letters ; at 17 he wrote essays in Greek versification ; and at 18 he published an edition of Catullus.

Horace, whose career crossed the divide between republic and empire, followed Catullus ' lead in employing Greek lyrical forms, identifying with Alcaeus of Mytilene, composing Alcaic stanzas, and also with Archilochus, composing poetic invectives in the Iambus tradition ( in which he adopted the metrical form of the Epode or ' Iambic Distich ').

The poem Coma Berenices by Greek poet Callimachus ( lost, but known in a Latin translation or paraphrase by Catullus ), apparently refers to her killing of Demetrius: " Let me remind you how stout-hearted you were even as a young girl: have you forgotten the brave deed by which you gained a royal marriage?

However, the elegy couplet was originally used by ancient Greek poets to express grief and lamentation, making it an entirely suitable form to express Catullus ' mourning.