Catullus Research Paper

Catullus is a famous Roman neoteric poet during the Hellenistic Period. Neoteric poetry is about one’s life other than the popular poetry on history. Catullus influenced many other famous poets such as Ovid, Horace, and Virgil. What is most interesting about Catullus is his love life and his ways of expressing his love for his love interest. Catullus started writing poetry as young as 16. Love is his main topic and also poems of hatred for Caesar and other high authorities. His lover was Clodia who is known as Lesbia in his poems. She was married to Metellus Celer and was apart of the upper-class. He showed his love for her in 25 of his poems. In Catullus 5, Catullus tells her to, “Give me a thousand kisses” and writes about his love for her. Later she replaces Catullus with Caelius Rufus, a protege of Cicero. Lesbia has many other lovers other than Catullus and he writes harshly about them in a few of his poems. After many of his love poems for Lesbia, it is obvious they did not end on good terms as he writes about her faithlessness and grieves over losing her to another man. He still writes about Lesbia even though they are not together anymore. In Catullus 86 he says that, “she alone’s stolen all charm from all other women” so clearly he still has feelings for her even though she has already moved on to other men. Catullus does not approve of these other men in Lesbia’s life so he writes poems talking bad about the men such as Egnatius, Gellius and Lesbius. Even though Lesbia felt indifferent about Catullus and did not show the same amount of interest towards him, he still showed his love for her through poetry. In …show more content…
His love life was very interesting because the feelings were not mutual between the two lovers. His love for her was very strong though she had many other lovers. My creative project will be a photoshopped photo of Catullus and Lesbia to show what their love was like and to clear it up a little