Carmina

Catullus Gaius Valerius

Catullus is a companion of lovers and of those whom love has disappointed. He is also a satirical and epigrammatic writer who savagely consoles with laughter. "Carmina" captures in English both the mordant, scathing wit and also the concise tenderness, the famous love for reluctant Lesbia who is made present in these new versions. A range of English metres and rhymes evoke the epigrammatic power of the many modes and moods of this most engaging, erotic and influential of the Latin poets. He left a mark on Horace, Virgil, Ovid and on the lyric and epigrammatic traditions of all the languages of Europe. Of Len Krisak's Horace translations, Frederic Raphael said, "[He] enables us both to enjoy a fresh voice and to hear (and see), very distinctly, what lies behind and within his unintimidated rescripts". Again in Carmina he works his precise magic.

About the Author

Gaius Valerius Catullus was born in Verona, northern Italy in 84 BCE and died in Rome in 54 BCE. Little detail about his life survives. What is known is inferred from the poems or from indirect secondary sources. He was a contemporary of Cicero and Caesar, the latter a friend of his father, and an immediate antecedent of the Augustan poets Horace, Propertius and Ovid. His surviving poems are among the finest lyric verse of ancient Rome.

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