The Poems Translated With An Introduction By Peter Whigham (Penguin Classics)

One of the most versatile of Roman poets, Catullus wrote verse of an almost unparalleled diversity and stylistic agility, from the brevity of the epigram to the sustained elegance of the elegy. This collection contains all of Catullus' extant work and includes his lyrics to the notorious Clodia Metelli - married, seductive and corrupt - charting the course from rapturous delight in a new affair to the torment of love gone sour; poems to his young friend Iuventius; and longer verse, such as the extraordinary tale of Attis, a Greek youth who castrates himself in a fit of religious ecstasy. Ranging from the tender, moving and passionate to the vicious and even obscene, these are poems of astonishingly modern force and content.

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Very little is kown about Gaius Valerius Catullus, though he was probably born around 84BC. he writes as a friend of Cicero and other leading figures, and appears as a leader of the new movement in poetry and a lover of the notorious Clodia Metelli, who was probably the Lesbia of the poems. He strated writing in 69 or 68 and died around 54BC.

Peter Whigham taught on verse composition at the University of California, but was essentially a poet full-time. Other publications include The Blue Winged Bee and ASTAPOVO or What We Are To Do. He died in 1987.