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3 unusual facts about Catullus


Agnieszka's Dowry

Accepted instances include a brief take-off on Christina Rossetti's long poem "Goblin Market" (the complete text is of course included), a free-verse meditation dovetailing with the "Holy Sonnet XIV" by John Donne, and an English-language invention on Catullus' erotic poem "Number 51" (submitted in the original Latin), itself inspired by Sappho's Ancient Greek (Aeolic) fragment Sappho 31.

Concubinage

In one of his wedding poems, Catullus (fl. mid-1st century BC) assumes that the young bridegroom has a concubinus who considers himself elevated above the other slaves, but who will be set aside as his master turns his attention to marriage and family life.

Rudolf Westphal

He made translations of Catullus (1870) and of Aristophanes' Acharnians (1889), in which he successfully reproduced the Dorisms in Low German.


Catullus 101

This poem, as translated by Aubrey Beardsley, was set by the composer Ned Rorem under the title "Catullus: On the Burial of his Brother".

Catullus 2

The disjunction between Catullus 2 and 2b was first noted by Aquiles Estaço (Achilles Statius) in 1566; however, the first printed edition to show a lacuna between poems 2 and 2b (by the editor Karl Lachmann) appeared quite late, in 1829.

The following lines 11-13 (Catullus 2b) refer to the Greek myth of Atalanta, a young princess who was remarkably swift of foot.

Celia de Fréine

De Fréine has translated many European poets into Irish and English, including: Sreko Kosovel, Rainer Maria Rilke, Xohana Torres, Itxaro Borda, Irina Alekseyeva, and Catullus, as well as the Chinese poet Shi Tao and the Gujarati poets, Ramesh Parekh, Pranjivan Mehta, Dileep Jhaveri, Nitin Mehta, Hemant Dhorada, and Kamal Vora.

François Noël

Noël translated Catullus and Gallus (1803, 2 vol. in-8°), and (with Dureau de La Malle's son) completed the translation of Livy by Dureau de La Malle (1810–1824, 17 vol. in-8°).

Joseph Justus Scaliger

His editions of the Catalecta (1575), of Festus (1575), of Catullus, Tibullus and Propertius (1577), are the work of a man determined to discover the real meaning and force of his author.

Lauro De Bosis

Thornton Wilder dedicated his novel Ides of March (1948) to him, suggesting a parallel between de Bosis and Catullus.

Osvald Chlubna

He wrote many operas, often using his own librettos, such as The Revenge of Catullus based on the work of Vrchlický (1917), Alladina and Palomid (based on the work of Maeterlinck, 1925), Ňura (1932), How the Death came in the World (1936), Jiří from Kunštát and Poděbrady (based on the work of Alois Jirásek, 1941), Cradle (composed on the work of Jirásek, 1951), Eupyros (1960).

Peter Whigham

Peter George Whigham (1925 – 6 August 1987) was an English poet and translator, widely known for his translation of the poems of Catullus published by Penguin Books in 1966.

Prostitution in ancient Rome

The poems of Catullus, Horace, Ovid, Martial, and Juvenal, as well the Satyricon of Petronius, offer fictional or satiric glimpses of prostitutes.

Robinson Ellis

However, Ellis did not recognise the importance of that codex, and failed to consult it for his Commentary on Catullus (1876), thereby attracting criticism (Emil Baehrens first recognised the importance of the Oxoniensis and published his conclusions two years earlier, in 1874).

Roger Dickinson-Brown

They are often written in the plain style and were evidently influenced by the epigrammatic tradition of Catullus, Martial (whom he translates) and J. V. Cunningham, including their social satire and sometimes risqué humor.

Salvatore Quasimodo

In that period he devoted himself to the translation of the Gospel of John, of some of Catullus's cantos, and several episodes of the Odyssey.


see also