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The Poems of Catullus: A Dual-Language Edition with Parallel Text
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June 30, 2026
This edition of Catullus’ poems is a new bilingual translation by Stephanie McCarter, to be published mid-July. McCarter writes a very interesting note in the introduction about the work of “foreignizing” translation (i.e., retaining foreign grammatical, syntactical, and cultural aspects) versus “domesticating” translation (creating a translation with references more understandable to a modern audience). McCarter translates in the style of the former, which is a style I tend to prefer, and does a pretty truthful and representative job at bringing Catullus, once more, into English.
There were some terminologies I personally didn’t care for, such as translating noun endings “-atio”/“-utio” into “-athon” (for example: fututio is “fuckathon”, basiatio is “kissathon”). Regardless, McCarter’s translation is very accessible, and I have this in mind for my future students.
I received an eARC from NetGalley and Viking Penguin/Penguin Classics in exchange for an honest review.
There were some terminologies I personally didn’t care for, such as translating noun endings “-atio”/“-utio” into “-athon” (for example: fututio is “fuckathon”, basiatio is “kissathon”). Regardless, McCarter’s translation is very accessible, and I have this in mind for my future students.
I received an eARC from NetGalley and Viking Penguin/Penguin Classics in exchange for an honest review.
July 14, 2026
very funny and absurdly vulgar. Antiquity is just ridiculous. This guy got some anger issues but a very romance disposition nonetheless. Insults I've never even considered, lessons in hating.
August 19, 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 chaste 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: A Dual-Language Edition with Parallel Text, translated by Stephanie McCarter. 5 stars!
- The Poems of Catullus, translated by Peter Green. 3 stars!
- Catullus, translated by Roz Kaveney. 2 stars!
- The Poems of Catullus, translated by Frederic Raphael and Kenneth McLeish. 1 star!
- Switch: The Complete Catullus, translated by Isobel Williams. 4 stars!
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:
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 Stephanie McCarter
Stephanie McCarter’s bilingual edition of the poems of Catullus is by far the best of the bunch I’ve read this summer. She sets out to “capture Catullus’s complexity, not trying to conform him or his poetry to any single identity or category.” Capturing Catullus, distinct from capturing Catullus’ poems is where McCarter differs from Peter Green’s worthwhile, similarly scholarly, translation. Green’s insistence on translating the poems into English while retaining the original Latin meters could, when successful, impart a sense of the rhythm and musicality of Catullus; it also made the poems more difficult to read and understand, and sometimes just sounded bad. McCarter avoids this issue by translating the poems into corresponding meters: Catullus’ hendecasyllables become standard English iambic pentameter; the galliambic of poem 63 becomes anapestic pentameter; and the elegiac couplets become iambic hexameters on the first lines and iambic pentameters on the finishing lines. The result is a much more readable, and enjoyable, translation where Catullus the poet and the world he describes shine thru.
A comprehensive but not too long introduction situates Catullus in his time and the poetical traditions he drew form and fought against. At the end of the book are 92 pages of copious and extensive notes on each poem: each poem receives an overview as well as numbered endnotes explaining specific terms or references. All of this is incredibly helpful, informative, and sometimes necessary.
Even without all this apparatus, the poems speak loudly. The bitchy sarcasm of 49 comes thru in this translation crystal clear: “Most eloquent of Romulus’s descendants, / all present ones, all past ones, Marcus Tullius, / and all the ones to come in later years: / Catullus offers you the greatest thanks, / though he’s the poorest poet of the lot - / as much the poorest poet of the lot / as you’re the finest patron of the lot.” Elsewhere, McCarter skillfully avoids derogatory language about homosexuality that some translators reach for to translate Catullus’ frequent use of cinaedus; the insult is about being the enthusiastic passive recipient of penetration (bad, in Roman culture) rather than being a man who wants to fuck other men (totally fine, as God intended). McCarter innovates with the term “buttslut.” (Caitlin suggests McCarter may be drawing on the work of contemporary poet Kim Petras).
The longer poems come across well, too. Ariadne’s lament in the epyllion (mini-epic) of poem 64 is as powerful as if a Greek Tragedian wrote it: “And so, you who amend men’s deeds with retribution, / Eumenides, whose foreheads, ringed with serpent-hair, / parade the anger radiating from your hearts, / advance this way, this way, and hear my lamentations, / which in my sorrow I must utter from my deepest / marrow – beggared, burning, blind with mindless rage.” I had many more notes on lines and readings that I particularly enjoyed, but unfortunately these weren’t saved or got deleted somehow. Really, just open to a random page and read one of the poems to see how well they’re translated!
McCarter writes in her introductory note on the translation that she wants “to enable modern Anglophone readers to step into the strange, yet at times astonishingly familiar, world of Catullus.” She succeeds! This is the edition I’ll recommend to any and all friends who aren’t sick to death of me talking about Catullus and his libelli of invective and amorous poems so full of personality, wit, and feeling that the neoclassical image of ancient Rome crumbles beneath its exuberance.
Unlike Catullus, who if his poems are any indication was constantly feuding or fornicating, I’ve had a pretty chaste 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: A Dual-Language Edition with Parallel Text, translated by Stephanie McCarter. 5 stars!
- The Poems of Catullus, translated by Peter Green. 3 stars!
- Catullus, translated by Roz Kaveney. 2 stars!
- The Poems of Catullus, translated by Frederic Raphael and Kenneth McLeish. 1 star!
- Switch: The Complete Catullus, translated by Isobel Williams. 4 stars!
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.Poor guy.
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!
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 Stephanie McCarter
Stephanie McCarter’s bilingual edition of the poems of Catullus is by far the best of the bunch I’ve read this summer. She sets out to “capture Catullus’s complexity, not trying to conform him or his poetry to any single identity or category.” Capturing Catullus, distinct from capturing Catullus’ poems is where McCarter differs from Peter Green’s worthwhile, similarly scholarly, translation. Green’s insistence on translating the poems into English while retaining the original Latin meters could, when successful, impart a sense of the rhythm and musicality of Catullus; it also made the poems more difficult to read and understand, and sometimes just sounded bad. McCarter avoids this issue by translating the poems into corresponding meters: Catullus’ hendecasyllables become standard English iambic pentameter; the galliambic of poem 63 becomes anapestic pentameter; and the elegiac couplets become iambic hexameters on the first lines and iambic pentameters on the finishing lines. The result is a much more readable, and enjoyable, translation where Catullus the poet and the world he describes shine thru.
A comprehensive but not too long introduction situates Catullus in his time and the poetical traditions he drew form and fought against. At the end of the book are 92 pages of copious and extensive notes on each poem: each poem receives an overview as well as numbered endnotes explaining specific terms or references. All of this is incredibly helpful, informative, and sometimes necessary.
Even without all this apparatus, the poems speak loudly. The bitchy sarcasm of 49 comes thru in this translation crystal clear: “Most eloquent of Romulus’s descendants, / all present ones, all past ones, Marcus Tullius, / and all the ones to come in later years: / Catullus offers you the greatest thanks, / though he’s the poorest poet of the lot - / as much the poorest poet of the lot / as you’re the finest patron of the lot.” Elsewhere, McCarter skillfully avoids derogatory language about homosexuality that some translators reach for to translate Catullus’ frequent use of cinaedus; the insult is about being the enthusiastic passive recipient of penetration (bad, in Roman culture) rather than being a man who wants to fuck other men (totally fine, as God intended). McCarter innovates with the term “buttslut.” (Caitlin suggests McCarter may be drawing on the work of contemporary poet Kim Petras).
The longer poems come across well, too. Ariadne’s lament in the epyllion (mini-epic) of poem 64 is as powerful as if a Greek Tragedian wrote it: “And so, you who amend men’s deeds with retribution, / Eumenides, whose foreheads, ringed with serpent-hair, / parade the anger radiating from your hearts, / advance this way, this way, and hear my lamentations, / which in my sorrow I must utter from my deepest / marrow – beggared, burning, blind with mindless rage.” I had many more notes on lines and readings that I particularly enjoyed, but unfortunately these weren’t saved or got deleted somehow. Really, just open to a random page and read one of the poems to see how well they’re translated!
McCarter writes in her introductory note on the translation that she wants “to enable modern Anglophone readers to step into the strange, yet at times astonishingly familiar, world of Catullus.” She succeeds! This is the edition I’ll recommend to any and all friends who aren’t sick to death of me talking about Catullus and his libelli of invective and amorous poems so full of personality, wit, and feeling that the neoclassical image of ancient Rome crumbles beneath its exuberance.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
First off, my thanks to NetGalley and Penguin Classics for an eARC of this title, to be published July 14, 2026.
Translator Stephanie McCarter is on faculty at the U of the South Sewanee, and she also has translated Ovid's "Metamorphosis", available from Penguin Classics as well. This edition provides the general reader with a great dual-language source of the poetry of 1st C BCE writer Gaius Valerius Catullus. In all of its vulgarity and filth! As she says in her opening material, she looks forward to the day when her children will be able/allowed to read this volume.
Not only do we have the Latin and English versions of the poems, but her Introduction gives us all the salient information we need on Catullus, and the period in which he lived. OK, I did kind of gloss over her short piece on meter. But then we get to her Notes, which explain the setting of the poem, options in word choice, and options in a critical reading of the poem. She cites scholars throughout and explains why she has gone with one word choice over another, and who influenced her to do so.
This is an interesting volume, something you would expect a University Press to publish, rather than Penguin. It is outright scholarly, but without the academia-speak that limits the reading audience of so many other similar books.
5 out of 5 - LOVED it, and the detailed, informative, readable and understandable Notes.
And all the filthy language.
Translator Stephanie McCarter is on faculty at the U of the South Sewanee, and she also has translated Ovid's "Metamorphosis", available from Penguin Classics as well. This edition provides the general reader with a great dual-language source of the poetry of 1st C BCE writer Gaius Valerius Catullus. In all of its vulgarity and filth! As she says in her opening material, she looks forward to the day when her children will be able/allowed to read this volume.
Not only do we have the Latin and English versions of the poems, but her Introduction gives us all the salient information we need on Catullus, and the period in which he lived. OK, I did kind of gloss over her short piece on meter. But then we get to her Notes, which explain the setting of the poem, options in word choice, and options in a critical reading of the poem. She cites scholars throughout and explains why she has gone with one word choice over another, and who influenced her to do so.
This is an interesting volume, something you would expect a University Press to publish, rather than Penguin. It is outright scholarly, but without the academia-speak that limits the reading audience of so many other similar books.
5 out of 5 - LOVED it, and the detailed, informative, readable and understandable Notes.
And all the filthy language.
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
Catullus was filled with so much loathing and abhorrence towards men and, really, the world. His poetry was his way of getting his anger and feelings out into the open and expressing himself. His life was one giant tragedy and the only way he knew how to process it was through his words. I read this and felt many emotions. Through the introduction and the poems themselves, the emotion was not lacking. It was palpable.
I enjoyed this entire book, but it was hard to read. Several times I had to set it down and breathe deeply.
Please look up trigger warnings before delving into Catullus' poems as several upsetting themes occur during his poems.
Thank you to NetGalley for the E-Arc in exchange for an honest review.
I enjoyed this entire book, but it was hard to read. Several times I had to set it down and breathe deeply.
Please look up trigger warnings before delving into Catullus' poems as several upsetting themes occur during his poems.
Thank you to NetGalley for the E-Arc in exchange for an honest review.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
This review is for Stephanie McCarter's translation.
A new English translation of Catullus's poetry, with the original Latin text included.
Catullus did write some beautiful and moving poems, but he's more memorable when he was being catty and sex obsessed. This collection is full of bawdy and vulgar lines and is 100% worth reading.
McCarter's translation is clear and easy to follow, although I'm not sure about a few of her neologisms. Her introduction is informative, and the robust notes at the end provide context and also assure the reader that yes, Catullus was saying exactly what you think he was saying there.
Received via NetGalley.
A new English translation of Catullus's poetry, with the original Latin text included.
Catullus did write some beautiful and moving poems, but he's more memorable when he was being catty and sex obsessed. This collection is full of bawdy and vulgar lines and is 100% worth reading.
McCarter's translation is clear and easy to follow, although I'm not sure about a few of her neologisms. Her introduction is informative, and the robust notes at the end provide context and also assure the reader that yes, Catullus was saying exactly what you think he was saying there.
Received via NetGalley.
July 20, 2026
Catullus and Sappho single-handedly keeping my respect for poetry alive.
I exaggerate, of course, as a few Persian and Bengali poets (e.g., Rokeya Hossain) are among my favourites. But there’s just something so fun about Catullus’ oddly modern and hyper-vulgar verse. Five stars because Stephanie McCarter’s introduction is absolutely superb.
I exaggerate, of course, as a few Persian and Bengali poets (e.g., Rokeya Hossain) are among my favourites. But there’s just something so fun about Catullus’ oddly modern and hyper-vulgar verse. Five stars because Stephanie McCarter’s introduction is absolutely superb.
April 16, 2026
Formatting on the ARC for this is a bit funky, but I really like the baser language that McCarter uses for her translations, and appreciated her take on them quite a bit.
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