List of poems by Catullus

This article lists the poems of Catullus and their various properties.

Catullus' poems can be divided into three groups:[1]

• the polymetrics (poems 1–60)
• the long poems (poems 61–68)
• the epigrams (poems 69–116)

Historical context

Catullus (c. 84 BC - c. 54 BC) lived in the waning days of the Roman Republic, just before the Imperial era that began with Augustus. Catullus is the chief representative of a school of poets known as the poetae novi or neoteroi, both terms meaning "the new poets". Their poems were a bold departure from traditional models, being relatively short and describing everyday occurrences and intense personal feelings; by contrast, traditional poetry was generally large and epic, describing titanic battles among heroes and gods. These avant-garde poets drew inspiration from earlier Greek authors, especially Sappho and Callimachus; Catullus himself used Sapphic meter in two poems, Catullus 11 and 51, the second of which is almost a translation. His poems are written in a variety of meters, with hendecasyllabic verse and elegiac couplets being the most common by far.

Catullus is renowned for his love poems, particularly the 25 poems addressed to a woman named Lesbia, of which Catullus 5 is perhaps the most famous. Scholars generally believe that Lesbia was a pseudonym for Clodia Metelli and that the name Lesbia is likely an homage to Sappho, who came from the isle of Lesbos. Catullus is also admired for his elegies, especially Catullus 101 and Catullus 96, for his hymn to his homeland, Sirmio, in Catullus 31, and for his many depictions of everyday life in ancient Rome, such as Catullus 4, Catullus 10, and Catullus 13. Finally, he was well-nigh infamous even in his own time for his fierce, sometimes obscene, invectives against faithless friends (e.g., Catullus 12, Catullus 16, and Catullus 116), faithless lovers (Catullus 8, Catullus 30, Catullus 58, and Catullus 70), corrupt politicians (Catullus 28, Catullus 29), and bad poets (Catullus 14 and Catullus 44).

Catullus was admired in ancient times for his elegantly crafted poems, and inspired many of the next generation of poets, especially Ovid, Tibullus, and Sextus Propertius. Even Virgil and Horace are also known to have adopted some elements of his poetry, although the latter was also critical of his work. Martial seems to be the only later Latin poet to be influenced significantly by Catullus. Catullus is mentioned by a few other Roman scholars, such as Pliny the Younger and Quintilian, and by St. Jerome. Since Catullus' work was not adopted as part of a classical curriculum, it was gradually forgotten over time, although one Bishop Rather of Verona is said to have delighted in reading his poems c. 965 AD. That changed c. 1300 AD, with the discovery of a manuscript that contained 116 poems by Catullus.

Manuscript tradition

Almost all of Catullus' poems survived from antiquity in a single manuscript discovered c. 1300 in the Chapter Library of Verona, conventionally called "V" for the "Verona codex"; legend has it that the manuscript was found underneath a beer barrel. Two copies were made from the V manuscript, which was then lost. One of the copies was itself copied twice, after which it was lost in turn. Hence, Catullus' works depend on three surviving copies of the single V manuscript. The first printed edition (edito princeps) of Catullus appeared in Venice in 1472; the following year, Francesco Puteolano published the second printed edition in Parma.

For fourteen centuries (c. 1st century BC- c. 14th century AD), the poems of Catullus were copied by hand from other hand-written copies, a process that gradually led to a few errors in the received text. Scholars have applied methods of textual criticism to undo these errors and reconstruct Catullus' original text as much as possible. As an early example, Puteolano stated in the second edition (1473) that he made extensive "corrections" of the previous (1472) edition. In 1577, J. J. Scaliger published an emended version of Catullus' works, using the then novel genealogical method of textual criticism. Scholars since then have worked to emend these reconstructions to approximate more closely the original poems of Catullus; examples of these variant readings and emendations are given in the footnotes to the text below.

Main list

The table below lists all of Catullus' extant poems, with links to the full text, the poetic meter, the number of lines, and other data. The entire table can be sorted according to any column by clicking on the arrows in the topmost cell. The "Type" column is color-coded, with a green font indicating poems for or about friends, a magenta font marking his famous poems about his Lesbia, and a red font indicating invective poems. The "Addressee(s)" column cites the person to whom Catullus addresses the poem, which ranges from friends, enemies, targets of political satire, one sparrow and, of course, Lesbia.

Poems of Catullus

Poem	Text	Meter[2]	# lines	Type	Themes	Addressee(s)
1	Latin English	hendecasyllabic	10	Friends	Gifts to friends, poems	Cornelius Nepos
2	Latin English	hendecasyllabic	13 (10)	Lesbia	A young woman and her pet bird	Lesbia's sparrow
2b	Latin English	hendecasyllabic	3	Lesbia	Atalanta
3	Latin English	hendecasyllabic	18	Lesbia	Eulogy to the girlfriend's pet bird	Orcus
4	Latin English	iambic trimeter (senarius)	27	Miscellaneous	An old boat, once fast, entering retirement	A little boat
5	Latin English	hendecasyllabic	13	Lesbia	Brief lives and many kisses	Lesbia
6	Latin English	hendecasyllabic	17	Friends	Uncovering a friend's love life	Flavius
7	Latin English	hendecasyllabic	12	Lesbia	Never growing tired of kissing	Lesbia
8	Latin English	choliambic	19	Lesbia	Getting over being dumped	Himself
9	Latin English	hendecasyllabic	11	Friends	A friend's homecoming	Veranius
10	Latin English	hendecasyllabic	34	Invective	Caught in a boast	Varus' girlfriend
11	Latin English	Sapphic stanza	24	Lesbia	Dumping a promiscuous girlfriend	Furius and Aurelius
12	Latin English	hendecasyllabic	17	Invective	Shaming a napkin thief	Asinius Marrucinus
13	Latin English	hendecasyllabic	14	Friends	Partying on a friend's dime	Fabullus
14	Latin English	hendecasyllabic	23	Invective	Despising pompous poetry	Bad poets
14b	Latin English	hendecasyllabic	3	Miscellaneous	Risqué poetry	His readers
15	Latin English	hendecasyllabic	19	Invective	Hands off my boy-toy (cf. 21)	Aurelius
16	Latin English	hendecasyllabic	14	Invective	Nasty reply to critics	Aurelius and Furius
17	Latin English	priapean	26	Invective	My acquaintance, the utter dunce	Verona
21	Latin English	hendecasyllabic	13	Invective	Hands off my boy-toy (cf. 15)	Aurelius
22	Latin English	choliambic	21	Invective	Everyone deceives themselves	Suffenus
23	Latin English	hendecasyllabic	27	Invective	Nasty insults to whole family	Furius
24	Latin English	hendecasyllabic	10	Invective	Don't give in to his seductions!	Juventius
25	Latin English	iambic tetrameter catalectic	13	Invective	Give me back my stuff, expressed beautifully	Thallus
26	Latin English	hendecasyllabic	5	Invective	Losing the farm to debt	Furius
27	Latin English	hendecasyllabic	7	Miscellaneous	Out with water, in with wine!	His cupbearer
28	Latin English	hendecasyllabic	15	Invective	Screwed over by politicians	Memmius
29	Latin English	iambic trimeter (senarius)	25	Invective	Waste of money by politicians	Mamurra
30	Latin English	greater Asclepiadean	12	Invective	Boyfriends can't be trusted (cf. 70)	Alfenus
31	Latin English	choliambic	14	Miscellaneous	A hymn to homecoming	Sirmio
32	Latin English	hendecasyllabic	11	Friends	Get ready for me	Ipsitilla
33	Latin English	hendecasyllabic	8	Invective	Father thief, son gigolo	Vibennius, Sr. and Jr.
34	Latin English	glyconic (3) / pherecratean (1)	24	Miscellaneous	Hymn to Diana	Diana
35	Latin English	hendecasyllabic	18	Friends	Please don't go	His papyrus
36	Latin English	hendecasyllabic	20	Lesbia	Burning bad poetry to win love	Annals of Volusius
37	Latin English	choliambic	20	Lesbia	Girlfriend left for richer men	Egnatius
38	Latin English	hendecasyllabic	8	Friends	Why aren't you comforting me?	Cornificius
39	Latin English	choliambic	21	Invective	Smiling hypocrite	Egnatius
40	Latin English	hendecasyllabic	8	Invective	Threatening a romantic rival	Ravidus
41	Latin English	hendecasyllabic	8	Invective	woman asking for money (political)	Ameana
42	Latin English	hendecasyllabic	24	Invective	the effectiveness of politeness	His own verses
43	Latin English	hendecasyllabic	8	Invective	Insulting Mamurra's girlfriend	Ameana
44	Latin English	choliambic	21	Invective	Head colds and cold writing	Sestius
45	Latin English	hendecasyllabic	26	Friends	Over-the-top love poem
46	Latin English	hendecasyllabic	11	Miscellaneous	the springtime urge to wander	His friends
47	Latin English	hendecasyllabic	7	Invective	unworthy become rich	Porcius and Socration
48	Latin English	hendecasyllabic	6	Juventius	Not tiring of kissing	Juventius
49	Latin English	hendecasyllabic	7	Invective	Praise of a politician-or not	Cicero
50	Latin English	hendecasyllabic	21	Friends	Exchanging poetry between friends	Calvus
51	Latin English	Sapphic stanza	16	Lesbia	The feeling of love; translation of Sappho	Lesbia
52	Latin English	iambic trimeter	4	Invective	Suicidal thoughts at the current political situation	Self
53	Latin English	hendecasyllabic	5	Invective	The crowd's thoughts on a friend's rhetoric	Calvus, Vatinianus
54	Latin English	hendecasyllabic	7	Invective	Direct attack on Julius Caesar's followers	Otho, Libo, Sufficius, and Julius Caesar
55	Latin English	hendecasyllabic (decasyllabic)	33	Friends	Tracking down a lover	Camerius
56	Latin English	hendecasyllabic	7	Friends	Surprise threesome	Cato
57	Latin English	hendecasyllabic	10	Invective	Abominable sodomites	Julius Caesar and Mamurra
58	Latin English	hendecasyllabic	5	Lesbia	My (our) ex is a slut now	Caelius
58b	Latin English	hendecasyllabic (decasyllabic)	10	Friends	Tracking down a lover, part II	Camerius
59	Latin English	choliambic	5	Invective	Adultery and graverobbing	Rufa and Rufulus
60	Latin English	choliambic	5	Invective	Hard-hearted benefactor
61	Latin English	glyconic (4) / pherecratean (1)	231	Friends	Marriage hymn on occasion of friends' wedding	Junia and Manlius
62	Latin English	dactylic hexameter	66	Miscellaneous	Girls and boys share views on marriage	Wedding guests
63	Latin English	galliambic	93	Miscellaneous	Attis, who castrated self to be with Cybele	Attis
64	Latin English	dactylic hexameter	408	Miscellaneous	Mini-epic about the wedding of Peleus and Thetis	Theseus, Ariadne, Peleus and Thetis
65	Latin English	elegiac couplets	24	Friends	Writing poetry after his brother's death	Hortalus
66	Latin English	elegiac couplets	94	Miscellaneous	translation of Callimachus	Berenice
67	Latin English	elegiac couplets	48	Miscellaneous		A door
68	Latin English	elegiac couplets	160	Lesbia	To M' Allius, with thanks	Manius Allius
69	Latin English	elegiac couplets	10	Invective	Clean up your act!	Rufus
70	Latin English	elegiac couplets	4	Lesbia	Girlfriends can't be trusted (cf. 30)
71	Latin English	elegiac couplets	6	Invective	On the contagiousness of gout and stink
72	Latin English	elegiac couplets	8	Lesbia		Lesbia
73	Latin English	elegiac couplets	6	Invective	Can't trust anybody
74	Latin English	elegiac couplets	6	Invective	Poor uncle	Gellius
75	Latin English	elegiac couplets	4	Lesbia	Helpless in love	Lesbia
76	Latin English	elegiac couplets	26	Lesbia		The gods
77	Latin English	elegiac couplets	6	Invective	I thought we were friends!	Rufus
78	Latin English	elegiac couplets	6	Invective		Gallus
78b	Latin English	elegiac couplets	4	Invective
79	Latin English	elegiac couplets	4	Lesbia	She loves her brother a little too much	Lesbius
80	Latin English	elegiac couplets	8	Invective		Gellius
81	Latin English	elegiac couplets	6	Juventius	How could you prefer him to me?	Juventius
82	Latin English	elegiac couplets	4	Friends		Quintius
83	Latin English	elegiac couplets	6	Lesbia	She insults me because she still cares	Lesbia's husband
84	Latin English	elegiac couplets	12	Invective	Making fun of pronunciation	Arrius
85	Latin English	elegiac couplets	2	Lesbia	Inner turmoil
86	Latin English	elegiac couplets	6	Lesbia	What's beauty without charm?
87	Latin English	elegiac couplets	4	Lesbia	Depth of my love	Lesbia
88	Latin English	elegiac couplets	8	Invective	Incest in the family	Gellius
89	Latin English	elegiac couplets	6	Invective	Incest in the family II	Gellius
90	Latin English	elegiac couplets	6	Invective		Gellius
91	Latin English	elegiac couplets	10	Lesbia	Since she's not your relative, I thought you'd stay away	Gellius
92	Latin English	elegiac couplets	4	Lesbia	Lesbia and I are the same
93	Latin English	elegiac couplets	2	Invective	I don't like you	Julius Caesar
94	Latin English	elegiac couplets	2	Miscellaneous		Cock
95	Latin English	elegiac couplets	10	Invective		Volusius
95b	Latin English	elegiac couplets	10	Miscellaneous		Antimachus
96	Latin English	elegiac couplets	6	Friends	On the death of Calvus' wife	Calvus
97	Latin English	elegiac couplets	12	Invective	On Aemilius's oral hygiene	Aemilius
98	Latin English	elegiac couplets	6	Invective		Victius
99	Latin English	elegiac couplets	16	Juventius	Regretting a stolen kiss	Juventius
100	Latin English	elegiac couplets	8	Friends		Caelius
101	Latin English	elegiac couplets	10	Friends	An elegy for a brother	His brother
102	Latin English	elegiac couplets	4	Friends		Cornelius Nepos
103	Latin English	elegiac couplets	4	Invective	Give me back my money	Silo
104	Latin English	elegiac couplets	4	Lesbia
105	Latin English	elegiac couplets	2	Miscellaneous		Cock
106	Latin English	elegiac couplets	2	Miscellaneous
107	Latin English	elegiac couplets	8	Lesbia		Lesbia
108	Latin English	elegiac couplets	6	Invective	A fitting punishment	Cominius
109	Latin English	elegiac couplets	6	Lesbia	Lifelong love	Lesbia and the gods
110	Latin English	elegiac couplets	8	Invective		Aufilena
111	Latin English	elegiac couplets	4	Invective		Aufilena
112	Latin English	elegiac couplets	2	Invective		Naso
113	Latin English	elegiac couplets	4	Invective		Maecilia
114	Latin English	elegiac couplets	6	Miscellaneous		Cock
115	Latin English	elegiac couplets	8	Miscellaneous		Cock
116	Latin English	elegiac couplets	8	Invective		Gellius

References

1. Forsyth, pp. 2–3.
2. Taken from Green (2005) and checked against Forsyth (1986).

Bibliography

• Forsyth PY (1986). The Poems of Catullus: A Teaching Text. Lanham, MD: University Press of America. ISBN 978-0-8191-5151-3.
• Green P (2005). The Poems of Catullus: A Bilingual Edition. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-24264-7.

Further reading

The following is merely a listing of a few sources that English-speaking readers may find useful in pursuing further research on Catullus.

Critical edition/textual criticism

• Trappes-Lomax JM (2007). Catullus: A Textual Reappraisal. Swansea: The Classical Press of Wales. ISBN 978-1-905125-15-9.
• Thomson DFS (1997). Catullus. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. ISBN 978-0-80200-676-9.

Latin editions

• Garrison DH (2004). The Student's Catullus (3rd ed.). Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press. ISBN 978-0-8061-3635-6.
• Ancona R (2004). Writing Passion: A Catullus Reader. Wauconda, IL: Bolchazy-Carducci. ISBN 978-0-86516-482-6.
• Quinn K (1976). Catullus: The Poems. New York: Macmillan; St. Martin's Press. ASIN B000K1UE9G.

English translations

• Balmer J (2004). Catullus: Poems of Love and Hate. Highgreen, Tarset, Northumberland: Bloodaxe Books. ISBN 978-1-85224-645-7.
• Mulroy D (2002). The Complete Poetry of Catullus. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press. ISBN 978-0-299-17770-6.
• Martin C (1990). The Poems of Catullus. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 978-0-8018-3925-2.
• Raphael F, McLeish K (1978). The Poems of Catullus. London: Jonathan Cape. ISBN 978-0-224-01599-8.
• Sisson CH (1966). Catullus. London: MacGibbon and Kee. ASIN B000PHOUEU.
• Copley FO (1957). Gaius Valerius Catullus: The Complete Poetry. Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press. LCCN 57010149.

Bilingual editions

• Green P (2005). The Poems of Catullus: A Bilingual Edition. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-24264-7.
• Sesar C (1974). Selected Poems of Catullus. New York: Mason and Lipscomb. ISBN 978-0-88405-077-3.
• Gregory H; Gay Z (1931). The Poems of Catullus. New York: Covici-Friede. ASIN B000NXJ7IU.

Catullus' vocabulary

• Wetmore MN (1961). Index Verborum Catullianus (reprint of the 1912 edition published by Yale University Press and by Oxford University Press ed.). Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlagsbuchhandlung. ASIN B0007ITYOI. A concordance specifying the poem, line and case in which each word appears, e.g., hortulus appears in the ablative case hortulo in line 88 of Catullus' poem 61. Definitions for the words are not given.
• Mulroy DD (1986). Comites Catulli: Structured Vocabulary Lists for Catullus 1–60. Lanham, MD: University Press of America. ISBN 978-0-8191-5448-4. This book lists the vocabulary, with definitions, needed to read Catullus' polymetric poems. After a general introduction to Catullus' vocabulary, a separate vocabulary list is given for subsets of 2–3 poems, e.g., poems 6–8 and 9–10. The words in each list is grouped by declension and gender for nouns and by conjugation for verbs.

Scholarship

• Burl A (2004). Catullus: A Poet in the Rome of Julius Caesar. New York: Carroll and Graf Publishers. ISBN 978-0-7867-1472-8.
• Hurley AK (2004). Catullus. London: Bristol Classical Press. ISBN 978-1-85399-669-6.
• Claes CC (2002). Concatenatio Catulliana. Amsterdam: Gieben. ISBN 90 5063 288 2.
• Dettmer H (1997). Love by the Numbers: Form and the Meaning in the Poetry of Catullus. New York: Peter Lang. ISBN 978-0-8204-3663-0.
• Gaisser JH (1993). Catullus and his Renaissance Readers. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ISBN 978-0-19-814882-1.
• Wiseman TP (1985). Catullus and his World: A Reappraisal. New York: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-26606-2.
• Harrington KP (1963). Catullus and His Influence. 1963: Cooper Square. LCCN 63010267.CS1 maint: location (link)
• Wheeler AL (1934). Catullus and the Traditions of Ancient Poetry. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. ASIN B000QY4290.