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The Poems of Catullus. Translated by Frederic Raphael and Kenneth McLeish
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August 14, 2026
It’s hot Roman summer, baby! When you’re living in the imperial core of a dying, corrupt republic, nothing helps get your mind of things by reading multiple translations of a randy and rambunctious writer living in… a different dying, corrupt republic.
Unlike Catullus, who if his poems are any indication was constantly feuding or fornicating, I’ve had a pretty chase and amicable past two months, which gave me time to dig in to a bunch of different translations of his work. They are varied! I’ll add links to my reviews of the other translations as I finish them.
The Poems of Catullus, translated by Peter Green
Catullus, translated by Roz Kaveney
The Roman poet and noted fuckboy Gaius Valerius Catullus celebrated in verse the publication his friend Cinna's miniature epic, the Zmyrna, and contrasted it with the long and turgid verse of their traditionalist literary foes. Catullus declared: "Zmyrnam cana diu saecula pervolvent." Zmyrna thru the long ages will be read. Catullus, and the other so-called Neoterics of the Late Republic like his friend Cinna, eschewed the ponderous, epic, and mythologically-focused verse in favor of elegantly composed short poems focused on personal themes and events, and subjective viewpoints.
Catullus, sadly, was wrong: only a collection of his own poems survive, via a manuscript tradition that involves a miraculous amount of luck rather than the institutional support that kept works from his contemporaries Caesar and Cicero around. We also have a book-length amount of fragments from contemporary poets, preserved thru quotations and scraps of papyrus, but Fragments of Roman Poetry C. 60 BC-AD 20 costs over $140 so it's as good as gone for anyone without access to a decent university library. Cinna’s Zmyrna is no longer with us and, he is mostly remembered for his memorable death scene in Shakespeare’s Julius Caeasar where an angry mob confuses him with the other Cinna who helped poke holes in Caesar’s ambitions to rule Rome:
Poor guy.
Catullus’ poems are personal; many of them are addressed to named (explicitly or under pseudonyms) individuals, while others have an implied specific recipient. They document his amorous affairs and interests, his friendships, his fights with foes, and also one where he calls Caesar and Pompey cunts who like to take it in the ass when they’re not competing with each other to see who can fuck little girls. Like the best of ancient literature, he is both shockingly modern, and shockingly alien.
If you have any questions about my qualifications to review an ancient Roman poet, or criticism of my reviews, please hesitate to leave a comment, and remember the immortal words Catullus shared to his (presumably former) friends who thoughts his poems were a little too effeminate:
The Poems of Catullus, translated by Frederic Raphael and Kenneth McLeish
Writers and translators Frederic Raphael and Kenneth McLeish start their edition of Catullus with a deeply unserious introduction that throws around the acceptable literary comparisons circa 1979 (Rimbaud, Flaubert, Proust) and, God help us, attempts an Oedipal analysis of Catullus. I don't really know when pop psychoanalysis hit literary studies but by 1979 that seems like it should have been too embarrassing to publish. If you explained Freud to Catullus, and also literary studies, I think he would have had a good laugh.
The translations, thankfully, are better than the introduction, but still not good. To take a few in a row:
Catullus 5 (vivamus, mea Lesbia) cleverly displays erotic, breathless repetition in the hundreds and thousands of kisses counted. The second line, inexplicably, is translated as a question to Lesbia, rather than an unprompted encouragement to ignore the scandalous gossip surrounding their affair; Catullus would have heard the rumors about him and Lesbia thru others, and Lesbia herself would likely not care (Catullus would soon find out that the rumors also talked about Lesbia and others men in addition to himself). 6, while far from an exact translation, captures the spirit of a bro pestering another bro for details of his sexual escapades... So he has material for his poetry, of course.
7 is just bad. Turning Lesbia's questions into a list with staccato answers is unpoetic, un-Catullan, and boring. Raphael and McLeish, the little shits, include the word "lasarpiciferous" in the poem, with a footnote explaining what the world means. Such clever and knowledgeable poets who know rare and obscure words! I'm so impressed! Fuck off.
Catullus' vitriol and swaggering invective is nowhere in this volume. 16, frequently suppressed until the past century, is supposed to be a machismo counterattack against accusations that Catullus' love poems make him unmanly. The translation here is embarrassing: "Bugger you and likewise sucks, / Aurelius who stoops and Furious who stabs." If that isn't cringe enough, the repetition of "pedicabo ego vos et irrumabo" at the end is translated as "Well, bugger you, as I hinted above, / And when that's over, sucks." I don't know if either translator was ever bullied, but if so, this translation retroactively justified it. Better to expurgate those lines than castrate them like this.
The collection continues along these lines until the end. Rhetorical questions abound as if these Oxbridge translators are miming an English toff guy, up talking with an "eh?" at the end of every dozen or so lines. The invective is prissy. Sometimes a line with some energy comes along: "To Caecilius, papyrus, pray post / And bid him to come to Verona." This is perfectly adequate poetry!
The amatory verse is lackluster, and the translators tendency to get linguistically creative with the homosexual content just indicates a discomfort with the idea of bending a guy over and penetrating an asshole. "I'll get right in there amongst you, / One quickprick allabuggering together." English schoolboy sexuality is miles away from how the Roman Republic talked about and lived their own. To translate Latin poetry, you have to know Latin, but to translate Catullus, you have to fuck, and Raphael and McLeish simply do not.
There are some highlights. The pun on "make a clean breast of it" with the prostitutes flashing Catullus is funny in 55. 58a, the invective against Lesbia where Catullus slanders her as whoring herself at the crossroads, anachronistically uses the phrase "all roads lead to her," which is cute.
Their style works for the epyllion (mini-epic), Poem 64. Without the ability to rely on extensive endnotes, they make modifications to 66, a translation of a long poem by Callimachus, based on a famous Ptolemian court story that today isn't familiar to anyone but the most Hellenistic of classicists, which make the narrative of the poem much more readable than other translations. That doesn't stop them from putting a long footnote explaining the whole thing - guys, you did it in the poem!
Besides their obvious virginity, this translation hobbles Catullus flow. Take 71, a six line elegiac invective against a romantic rival, that trips over a profusion of colons, semi-colons, and em dashes: “Two personal problems: under-arm goat / And athlete’s feet – your gifts to a rival / Who tried to saddle up your mount. / It serves him right, the greedy sod: / Now, when he fucks, you pay them both - / She gets the goat; he ends up limp.” Most of their translations rely on elliptical construction of sentences and pivot harshly around punctuation, all of which is miles away from the smooth and carefully crafted language of Catullus whose poems can pack a punch but are never lead-footed.
85, Catullus 2-line poem on the violent crosscurrents of love and hate, is made almost casual. "I hate and I love. Why do that? Good question. / No answer, save 'I do.' Nailed, through either hand." There's as much heat here as last week's leftovers in a malfunctioning microwave. Of course over-educated translators emphasize the crucifixion imagery of "excrucior" rather than the imagery of the rack pulling a person apart; the former is a fancy literary allusion, the latter actually fits the poem's theme of being tortured by powerfully opposite emotions. And the sexual meaning of "nailed" is entirely out of place - Catullus wouldn't be feeling hate if he was getting nailed by Lesbia!
Unlike Catullus, who if his poems are any indication was constantly feuding or fornicating, I’ve had a pretty chase and amicable past two months, which gave me time to dig in to a bunch of different translations of his work. They are varied! I’ll add links to my reviews of the other translations as I finish them.
The Poems of Catullus, translated by Peter Green
Catullus, translated by Roz Kaveney
The Roman poet and noted fuckboy Gaius Valerius Catullus celebrated in verse the publication his friend Cinna's miniature epic, the Zmyrna, and contrasted it with the long and turgid verse of their traditionalist literary foes. Catullus declared: "Zmyrnam cana diu saecula pervolvent." Zmyrna thru the long ages will be read. Catullus, and the other so-called Neoterics of the Late Republic like his friend Cinna, eschewed the ponderous, epic, and mythologically-focused verse in favor of elegantly composed short poems focused on personal themes and events, and subjective viewpoints.
Catullus, sadly, was wrong: only a collection of his own poems survive, via a manuscript tradition that involves a miraculous amount of luck rather than the institutional support that kept works from his contemporaries Caesar and Cicero around. We also have a book-length amount of fragments from contemporary poets, preserved thru quotations and scraps of papyrus, but Fragments of Roman Poetry C. 60 BC-AD 20 costs over $140 so it's as good as gone for anyone without access to a decent university library. Cinna’s Zmyrna is no longer with us and, he is mostly remembered for his memorable death scene in Shakespeare’s Julius Caeasar where an angry mob confuses him with the other Cinna who helped poke holes in Caesar’s ambitions to rule Rome:
FIRST PLEBEIAN: Tear him to pieces! He’s a conspirator.
CINNA: I am Cinna the poet, I am Cinna the poet!
FOURTH PLEBEIAN: Tear him for his bad verses, tear him for his bad verses!
Poor guy.
Catullus’ poems are personal; many of them are addressed to named (explicitly or under pseudonyms) individuals, while others have an implied specific recipient. They document his amorous affairs and interests, his friendships, his fights with foes, and also one where he calls Caesar and Pompey cunts who like to take it in the ass when they’re not competing with each other to see who can fuck little girls. Like the best of ancient literature, he is both shockingly modern, and shockingly alien.
If you have any questions about my qualifications to review an ancient Roman poet, or criticism of my reviews, please hesitate to leave a comment, and remember the immortal words Catullus shared to his (presumably former) friends who thoughts his poems were a little too effeminate:
Pedicabo ego vos et irrumabo
The Poems of Catullus, translated by Frederic Raphael and Kenneth McLeish
Writers and translators Frederic Raphael and Kenneth McLeish start their edition of Catullus with a deeply unserious introduction that throws around the acceptable literary comparisons circa 1979 (Rimbaud, Flaubert, Proust) and, God help us, attempts an Oedipal analysis of Catullus. I don't really know when pop psychoanalysis hit literary studies but by 1979 that seems like it should have been too embarrassing to publish. If you explained Freud to Catullus, and also literary studies, I think he would have had a good laugh.
The translations, thankfully, are better than the introduction, but still not good. To take a few in a row:
Catullus 5 (vivamus, mea Lesbia) cleverly displays erotic, breathless repetition in the hundreds and thousands of kisses counted. The second line, inexplicably, is translated as a question to Lesbia, rather than an unprompted encouragement to ignore the scandalous gossip surrounding their affair; Catullus would have heard the rumors about him and Lesbia thru others, and Lesbia herself would likely not care (Catullus would soon find out that the rumors also talked about Lesbia and others men in addition to himself). 6, while far from an exact translation, captures the spirit of a bro pestering another bro for details of his sexual escapades... So he has material for his poetry, of course.
7 is just bad. Turning Lesbia's questions into a list with staccato answers is unpoetic, un-Catullan, and boring. Raphael and McLeish, the little shits, include the word "lasarpiciferous" in the poem, with a footnote explaining what the world means. Such clever and knowledgeable poets who know rare and obscure words! I'm so impressed! Fuck off.
Catullus' vitriol and swaggering invective is nowhere in this volume. 16, frequently suppressed until the past century, is supposed to be a machismo counterattack against accusations that Catullus' love poems make him unmanly. The translation here is embarrassing: "Bugger you and likewise sucks, / Aurelius who stoops and Furious who stabs." If that isn't cringe enough, the repetition of "pedicabo ego vos et irrumabo" at the end is translated as "Well, bugger you, as I hinted above, / And when that's over, sucks." I don't know if either translator was ever bullied, but if so, this translation retroactively justified it. Better to expurgate those lines than castrate them like this.
The collection continues along these lines until the end. Rhetorical questions abound as if these Oxbridge translators are miming an English toff guy, up talking with an "eh?" at the end of every dozen or so lines. The invective is prissy. Sometimes a line with some energy comes along: "To Caecilius, papyrus, pray post / And bid him to come to Verona." This is perfectly adequate poetry!
The amatory verse is lackluster, and the translators tendency to get linguistically creative with the homosexual content just indicates a discomfort with the idea of bending a guy over and penetrating an asshole. "I'll get right in there amongst you, / One quickprick allabuggering together." English schoolboy sexuality is miles away from how the Roman Republic talked about and lived their own. To translate Latin poetry, you have to know Latin, but to translate Catullus, you have to fuck, and Raphael and McLeish simply do not.
There are some highlights. The pun on "make a clean breast of it" with the prostitutes flashing Catullus is funny in 55. 58a, the invective against Lesbia where Catullus slanders her as whoring herself at the crossroads, anachronistically uses the phrase "all roads lead to her," which is cute.
Their style works for the epyllion (mini-epic), Poem 64. Without the ability to rely on extensive endnotes, they make modifications to 66, a translation of a long poem by Callimachus, based on a famous Ptolemian court story that today isn't familiar to anyone but the most Hellenistic of classicists, which make the narrative of the poem much more readable than other translations. That doesn't stop them from putting a long footnote explaining the whole thing - guys, you did it in the poem!
Besides their obvious virginity, this translation hobbles Catullus flow. Take 71, a six line elegiac invective against a romantic rival, that trips over a profusion of colons, semi-colons, and em dashes: “Two personal problems: under-arm goat / And athlete’s feet – your gifts to a rival / Who tried to saddle up your mount. / It serves him right, the greedy sod: / Now, when he fucks, you pay them both - / She gets the goat; he ends up limp.” Most of their translations rely on elliptical construction of sentences and pivot harshly around punctuation, all of which is miles away from the smooth and carefully crafted language of Catullus whose poems can pack a punch but are never lead-footed.
85, Catullus 2-line poem on the violent crosscurrents of love and hate, is made almost casual. "I hate and I love. Why do that? Good question. / No answer, save 'I do.' Nailed, through either hand." There's as much heat here as last week's leftovers in a malfunctioning microwave. Of course over-educated translators emphasize the crucifixion imagery of "excrucior" rather than the imagery of the rack pulling a person apart; the former is a fancy literary allusion, the latter actually fits the poem's theme of being tortured by powerfully opposite emotions. And the sexual meaning of "nailed" is entirely out of place - Catullus wouldn't be feeling hate if he was getting nailed by Lesbia!
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