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Ancient Rome #1
The Key
The first volume of a dazzling trilogy, THE KEY shows a world on the verge of collapse through the eyes of its greatest and most passionate poet. Gaius Valerius Catullus, the boy from the provinces who became the lover of the most powerful and beautiful married woman in Rome, is dead at twenty-nine. His friend Marcus Caelius Rufus must search for the meaning of his life in the slums and bloody secret cults, the palaces and law courts of the tottering Roman Republic. Vivid, exciting, carefully researched and beautifully written, THE KEY has been a cult favorite in hardbound for years. Jaro inserts English translations of and comments on Catullus' poems into the text of her novel, The Key. The following table shows the page in The Key where the poem is located as well as the number of the poem in the Catullan corpus. Special Features -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Written with the most scrupulous attention to historical accuracy Contains some 40 poems of Catullus', in acclaimed translations by the author. Some have appeared in the recent anthology CATULLUS IN ENGLISH, and the author's original interpretation of the most important of them, poem 58, has influenced contemporary approaches to that work May be read independently as a single novel, or as the first volume of the trilogy THE KEY, THE LOCK, THE DOOR IN THE WALL Features maps of Rome and the Empire, specially drawn for the novel Includes reader-friendly list of Principal Characters and a Chronology of Events in the novel Also The Lock - ISBN 0865165351
The Door in the Wall - ISBN 0865165335 For over 30 years Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers has produced the highest quality Latin and ancient Greek books. From Dr. Seuss books in Latin to Plato's Apology , Bolchazy-Carducci's titles help readers learn about ancient Rome and Greece; the Latin and ancient Greek languages are alive and well with titles like Cicero's De Amicitia and Kaegi's Greek Grammar . We also feature a line of contemporary eastern European and WWII books. Some of the areas we publish in Selections From The Aeneid
Latin Grammar & Pronunciation
Greek Grammar & Pronunciation
Texts Supporting Wheelock's Latin
Classical author Vergil, Ovid, Horace, Catullus, Cicero
Vocabulary Cards For AP Vergil, Ovid, Catullus, Horace
Greek Mythology
Greek Lexicon
Slovak Culture And History
The Door in the Wall - ISBN 0865165335 For over 30 years Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers has produced the highest quality Latin and ancient Greek books. From Dr. Seuss books in Latin to Plato's Apology , Bolchazy-Carducci's titles help readers learn about ancient Rome and Greece; the Latin and ancient Greek languages are alive and well with titles like Cicero's De Amicitia and Kaegi's Greek Grammar . We also feature a line of contemporary eastern European and WWII books. Some of the areas we publish in Selections From The Aeneid
Latin Grammar & Pronunciation
Greek Grammar & Pronunciation
Texts Supporting Wheelock's Latin
Classical author Vergil, Ovid, Horace, Catullus, Cicero
Vocabulary Cards For AP Vergil, Ovid, Catullus, Horace
Greek Mythology
Greek Lexicon
Slovak Culture And History
207 pages, Paperback
Published November 1, 2002
2 people are currently reading
83 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
September 15, 2019
I picked up this book seeking an account of the life of Catullus. What we get isn’t quite that. Rather, it’s about the love affair between Catullus and Clodia. And while I would expect that to be the centerpiece of any book on Catullus, the focus is so unending that it leaves room for little else in terms of plot. How often do you need to see Catullus sneaking off to be with her or her repeated snubbing of him to get the idea? I don’t know. Perhaps I’m simply not the target audience for this book.
Other than that the book is very good. The writing style is rather too melodramatic for my tastes (you can practically hear the thunder crashing off a gloomy man in a dinner jacket swilling whiskey around his glass) but it does the trick. It is a bit overwritten. Metaphors and similes are constant and nature seems to personify the events taking place. But again, it works for the story it’s trying to tell. The book is written as if in flashback by Caelius Rufus, who’s sitting in a hut in Verona feeling uneasy about his relationship to the dead poet and whether he could have helped him. As such, an ominous sense of dread is entirely appropriate.
Accuracy-wise, the book is amazing. It gets the feel of Rome exactly and manages to capture most of the details. The political events are accurate as well, even if the book barely focuses on them. The only critiques I’ll make is that I didn’t buy the depiction of Caesar (which doesn’t bode well for Kay’s novel on the man) and I didn’t quite buy Catullus either. He worked as a character, but I’ve never really considered him a romantic figure. He was in love with Clodia (not a very nice person by any account) then he despised her. Either way he seemed excessive in his emotions. How much of that was his personality and how much affectation I don’t know. But I never thought it particularly sweet. Maybe I just don’t care for poetry.
This is the sort of book I suspect others may like more than I do. I can appreciate it, but it left me fairly unfulfilled. It’s good enough to be worth a read if any of this sounds at all your sort of thing.
Plot: 4 (Plot?)
Characters: 6 (well-defined and complicated enough)
Accuracy: 10 (I didn’t notice any major errors)
Other than that the book is very good. The writing style is rather too melodramatic for my tastes (you can practically hear the thunder crashing off a gloomy man in a dinner jacket swilling whiskey around his glass) but it does the trick. It is a bit overwritten. Metaphors and similes are constant and nature seems to personify the events taking place. But again, it works for the story it’s trying to tell. The book is written as if in flashback by Caelius Rufus, who’s sitting in a hut in Verona feeling uneasy about his relationship to the dead poet and whether he could have helped him. As such, an ominous sense of dread is entirely appropriate.
Accuracy-wise, the book is amazing. It gets the feel of Rome exactly and manages to capture most of the details. The political events are accurate as well, even if the book barely focuses on them. The only critiques I’ll make is that I didn’t buy the depiction of Caesar (which doesn’t bode well for Kay’s novel on the man) and I didn’t quite buy Catullus either. He worked as a character, but I’ve never really considered him a romantic figure. He was in love with Clodia (not a very nice person by any account) then he despised her. Either way he seemed excessive in his emotions. How much of that was his personality and how much affectation I don’t know. But I never thought it particularly sweet. Maybe I just don’t care for poetry.
This is the sort of book I suspect others may like more than I do. I can appreciate it, but it left me fairly unfulfilled. It’s good enough to be worth a read if any of this sounds at all your sort of thing.
Plot: 4 (Plot?)
Characters: 6 (well-defined and complicated enough)
Accuracy: 10 (I didn’t notice any major errors)
March 17, 2022
Intense, intense, intense! I was enthralled by this novel of the life of Catullus, the Roman lyric poet during the ten years he lived in Rome. Immediately upon closing the book in 2014 I reread it.
My December 2015 rereading really brought home the artificiality and purpleness of the prose, which really had impressed me the first time, but got annoying this time. This is one of the few times I have downgraded a book.
After the poet's sad life of barely thirty years, his good friend Marcus Caelius Rufus conveys the corpse to its burial. Catullus's father [the Old Man] journeys out from Verona, visits Caelius, and asks, "Explain my son to me" after giving Caelius a box of mementos and writings--poems, notes, letters. The novel jumps back and forth in time [54 BC--in the novel the present] to Caelius's memories through those years, the driver of the action being Catullus's passionate love affair with Clodia Metelli. As she is a high-born lady and Catullus doesn't want to compromise her reputation, he calls her 'Lesbia'.
Some of his poetry is inserted into the text, each poem having to do with some incident in the story. We see how Catullus has poured his heart's blood into these poems; 'Lesbia' has played viciously with his emotions; Catullus has swung from euphoria to despair because of this unrequited love.
In his 'crossroads and alleyways' poem, #58, in his extreme rage, he finally admits to himself what a slut she is. Even so...
The author tells us in her Notes its ambiguity is the key --i.e., catalyst, to her conception of the story.
Through the descriptions of Rome -- the mansions on the Hills to the seedy taverns and the Subura to the mystery rites of the goddess Cybele -- I felt myself to be an onlooker of the events. The characters were not saints, by any means; I loathed Clodia, the femme fatale. As one character, an actor named Xanthius, described Clodia: "Now I know how to play Circe." Catullus was completely obsessed with the woman; we might even call him a "stalker" in our day. Yes, there was sex in this novel owing to the subject, but as it was written a generation ago, I felt it was not as blatant or vulgar as much of today's writings. Also, for that time, although graphic, it was not tasteless.
In my December 2015 rereading I still felt it wasn't tasteless, but it got repetitious and boring. The author should have used such descriptions more sparsely.
The last few pages were poignant--the final meeting between the dying father and Caelius. I will never again listen to Orff's Catulli Carmina without thinking of this novel. On rereading, I've marked each poem in the novel with the number in Catullus's own poems and am fascinated with how well the author worked them into the story, especially as she used them out of order.
My December 2015 rereading really brought home the artificiality and purpleness of the prose, which really had impressed me the first time, but got annoying this time. This is one of the few times I have downgraded a book.
After the poet's sad life of barely thirty years, his good friend Marcus Caelius Rufus conveys the corpse to its burial. Catullus's father [the Old Man] journeys out from Verona, visits Caelius, and asks, "Explain my son to me" after giving Caelius a box of mementos and writings--poems, notes, letters. The novel jumps back and forth in time [54 BC--in the novel the present] to Caelius's memories through those years, the driver of the action being Catullus's passionate love affair with Clodia Metelli. As she is a high-born lady and Catullus doesn't want to compromise her reputation, he calls her 'Lesbia'.
Some of his poetry is inserted into the text, each poem having to do with some incident in the story. We see how Catullus has poured his heart's blood into these poems; 'Lesbia' has played viciously with his emotions; Catullus has swung from euphoria to despair because of this unrequited love.
"Odi et amo. quare id faciam, fortasse requiris?Poem #85
nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior."
[I hate and I love. Perhaps you ask why I do this?
I do not know, but I feel it happen and I am torn apart.]
In his 'crossroads and alleyways' poem, #58, in his extreme rage, he finally admits to himself what a slut she is. Even so...
The author tells us in her Notes its ambiguity is the key --i.e., catalyst, to her conception of the story.
Through the descriptions of Rome -- the mansions on the Hills to the seedy taverns and the Subura to the mystery rites of the goddess Cybele -- I felt myself to be an onlooker of the events. The characters were not saints, by any means; I loathed Clodia, the femme fatale. As one character, an actor named Xanthius, described Clodia: "Now I know how to play Circe." Catullus was completely obsessed with the woman; we might even call him a "stalker" in our day. Yes, there was sex in this novel owing to the subject, but as it was written a generation ago, I felt it was not as blatant or vulgar as much of today's writings. Also, for that time, although graphic, it was not tasteless.
In my December 2015 rereading I still felt it wasn't tasteless, but it got repetitious and boring. The author should have used such descriptions more sparsely.
The last few pages were poignant--the final meeting between the dying father and Caelius. I will never again listen to Orff's Catulli Carmina without thinking of this novel. On rereading, I've marked each poem in the novel with the number in Catullus's own poems and am fascinated with how well the author worked them into the story, especially as she used them out of order.
January 31, 2015
I think I'd give this 4.5 stars rather than 5, because Steven Saylor's The Venus Throw is still for me the best and most realistic depiction of the Catullus/Clodia relationship and everything that came between them (most especially in how it unpacks the gender and power elements of Catullan love elegy, and the way in which it makes Clodia the lover of her brother and Caelius without ever judging her), and also I find Clodia's presence at the mysteries of Cybele highly unlikely, but I loved this.
In particular, where this does really well is in rooting our characters firmly in Rome -- not only in the landscape of the city itself (which is gorgeously described), but in the life of the city; its politics, its bars, its festivals, its atmosphere. This couldn't be anything other than the Late Republic, and I love how evocative it is.
I also adore the unreliable narration -- because he spends much of the book imagining events through Catullus's eyes, there is so much that Caelius doesn't tell you (not least about his own role in what happened) and which only slowly comes to light. It's a really clever way of retelling a story which is well known to anyone who's read Catullus's poems and studied this period.
But there's also a lot that Caelius doesn't explicitly tell you because he himself doesn't understand -- and the reader does.
I'm looking forward to reading the other books in this series - not least to see if Caelius has any more to say about Catullus, and if he's as unreliable a narrator in telling the rest of his life.
In particular, where this does really well is in rooting our characters firmly in Rome -- not only in the landscape of the city itself (which is gorgeously described), but in the life of the city; its politics, its bars, its festivals, its atmosphere. This couldn't be anything other than the Late Republic, and I love how evocative it is.
I also adore the unreliable narration -- because he spends much of the book imagining events through Catullus's eyes, there is so much that Caelius doesn't tell you (not least about his own role in what happened) and which only slowly comes to light. It's a really clever way of retelling a story which is well known to anyone who's read Catullus's poems and studied this period.
But there's also a lot that Caelius doesn't explicitly tell you because he himself doesn't understand -- and the reader does.
I'm looking forward to reading the other books in this series - not least to see if Caelius has any more to say about Catullus, and if he's as unreliable a narrator in telling the rest of his life.
June 30, 2020
I would describe this as a weird ride, particularly towards the end.
The writing was lovely (if maybe a little overwrought) and I really enjoyed the "present day" sections with Caelius reflecting on his grief and dealing with Catullus' father, and the slow build to the reveal that although it isn't much of a reveal if you've read Catullus' poems, was very well-handled.
I did kind of want to smack Catullus the whole way through - like Caelius, I struggle to understand how he could willingly destroy his whole life for a woman, but I think that might be the point. Much more disturbing was the final part of his life,
On the whole, it's not my favourite fictional take on Catullus and Clodia (that title still belongs to Steven Saylor's The Venus Throw), and in retrospect it's really quite amusing that the entire Pro Caelio is reduced to a couple of pages and the big reveal, but it was an interesting, different, and well-researched read.
The writing was lovely (if maybe a little overwrought) and I really enjoyed the "present day" sections with Caelius reflecting on his grief and dealing with Catullus' father, and the slow build to the reveal that although it isn't much of a reveal if you've read Catullus' poems, was very well-handled.
I did kind of want to smack Catullus the whole way through - like Caelius, I struggle to understand how he could willingly destroy his whole life for a woman, but I think that might be the point. Much more disturbing was the final part of his life,
On the whole, it's not my favourite fictional take on Catullus and Clodia (that title still belongs to Steven Saylor's The Venus Throw), and in retrospect it's really quite amusing that the entire Pro Caelio is reduced to a couple of pages and the big reveal, but it was an interesting, different, and well-researched read.
November 18, 2014
The Key by Benito Kane Jaro is a novel I really wanted to love. A friend whose acumen I respect had effused over it. There are things in it I admire, but can only give it two stars.
Ms Jaro writes well and I have marked a dozen paragraphs that are so perfect in their harmonies and counterpoint that they arise to the level of genius. I will type those paragraphs out that I might study carefully how she crafted them.
However, the book is unconvincing as a narrative and rather tedious. Its strongest aspect is Caelius’s devotion/guilt to the dead Catullus. Its weakest aspect is the crux of the matter, the love of Catullus for Clodia. Ms. Jaro gives the reader not as single scene showing the two of them in blandishments, laughing together or sharing memories. Instead, we have many pages of sensual love making, and too many pages of reiterating how much Catullus loves her, but not a paragraph to show on what such as love could be based. It rings false. A Kim Kardashian would not have captivated Catullus. I don’t believe it. In the novel Clodia is just a shadow character, not a real person.
Ms. Jaro toys with the reader in the fourth and last chapter. Instead of rushing ahead to the climax of the matter, she spins the wheels interminably in the snow and ice. And Oh! the suspenseful melodrama:
I (Caelius) see now what my honesty has brought me. I will have to tell him. I have gone too far, and he has a right to know. And for myself, I think perhaps it is worth the risk, for no matter what I say he may still find it in him to forgive. If not, well, my sword still waits outside…
I can’t give it more than two stars. There were times when I wanted to throw it into the woodstove, but didn’t because there are several paragraphs I want to study closely.
Ms Jaro writes well and I have marked a dozen paragraphs that are so perfect in their harmonies and counterpoint that they arise to the level of genius. I will type those paragraphs out that I might study carefully how she crafted them.
However, the book is unconvincing as a narrative and rather tedious. Its strongest aspect is Caelius’s devotion/guilt to the dead Catullus. Its weakest aspect is the crux of the matter, the love of Catullus for Clodia. Ms. Jaro gives the reader not as single scene showing the two of them in blandishments, laughing together or sharing memories. Instead, we have many pages of sensual love making, and too many pages of reiterating how much Catullus loves her, but not a paragraph to show on what such as love could be based. It rings false. A Kim Kardashian would not have captivated Catullus. I don’t believe it. In the novel Clodia is just a shadow character, not a real person.
Ms. Jaro toys with the reader in the fourth and last chapter. Instead of rushing ahead to the climax of the matter, she spins the wheels interminably in the snow and ice. And Oh! the suspenseful melodrama:
I (Caelius) see now what my honesty has brought me. I will have to tell him. I have gone too far, and he has a right to know. And for myself, I think perhaps it is worth the risk, for no matter what I say he may still find it in him to forgive. If not, well, my sword still waits outside…
I can’t give it more than two stars. There were times when I wanted to throw it into the woodstove, but didn’t because there are several paragraphs I want to study closely.
June 6, 2016
I read the summary for this book and was intrigued. I had been looking for a book about Catullus for a while, so I decided to give her a chance as an author, as she had several books that I was interested in. Unfortunately, this turned out to be a bust. It suffers from the most unfortunate problems a book can have: it was, plain and simple, boring. I couldn't manage to get through the entirety of this sometimes slow-paced, sometimes overdramatic book, and it was so uninteresting that the only scene I can remember was an overly-described threesome between Catullus, the narrator Caelius, and a random girl, which was more uncomfortably erotic than entertaining. If you're into that, I guess this is a good book for you. But if not, I'd suggest looking elsewhere.
February 17, 2014
I got about half way through this book and I just couldn't finish it. It is not at all how I picture the character of Catullus after reading his poetry. Also, I found the writing very disorganized and disjointed.
May 23, 2012
A novel that traces the life and love of a favorite poet of mine, Gaius Valerius Catullus.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews