Catullus (1), Gaius Valerius, Roman poet

Gaius Valerius Catullus (c. 84–54 bce) was a Roman poet. A major figure in the group known as the neoteric poets, he is the only one of them for whom a substantial body of work remains extant. This corpus, whose present order may or may not preserve an arrangement by Catullus himself, is unparalleled in its variety. Catullus’s collection includes tender love poetry, obscene invective, humorous anecdote, and learned mythological narrative; lyric, iambic, and dactylic metres; epigrams, hymns, and a miniature epic. His poems respond to literary influences from archaic Greece, Hellenistic Alexandria, and earlier Rome, and reflect the social and political world of the late Roman Republic. Their common quality is an intensity and apparent sincerity of feeling combined with artful technique. Catullus’s presentation of his love for the woman he calls Lesbia was particularly influential on Latin love elegy and on his own later reception, but the role played by sexuality and gender in his work is a wide-ranging and complex one. Catullus’s poetry greatly influenced the Augustan poets, but (except for one anthologized poem) survived the Middle Ages in a single manuscript. Modern reception has often focused at least as much on Catullus the person or biographical subject as on his poetry.