The Student's Catullus

by Daniel H. Garrison, Catullus

Although his audacious, erotic, and satirical verses survived the Middle Ages in only a single copy, Catullus has in our time become a standard author in the college Latin curriculum, ranking with Virgil, Horace, and Ovid.

In this third edition, thoroughly revised, Daniel H. Garrison makes these famous poems more accessible than ever to students of Latin. A standard college textbook as well as a comprehensive reference, the book includes a brief introduction about the poet’s life and the character of his poems, a fresh recension of all 113 poems, and a commentary in English on each poem, explaining difficult points of Latin, features of Catullus’ artistry, and background information. The notes to each poem also illuminate the meaning of Catullus’ language, with explanations of word choice, word order, sound effects, and meter. Additional aids to the reader are a Who’s Who of the most important people in Catullus’ poems, an introduction to Catullan meters, a glossary of literary terms used in the commentary, a complete Latin-English Catullan vocabulary, and six maps.

Rather than promoting specific literary judgments or theories, The Student’s Catullus provides readers of this important Latin poet with the information necessary to read the poet’s own language intelligently and to make fresh appraisals of their own.

Genres: Poetry, Classics, Classical Studies, Reference, Language, College, Textbooks

256 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1989

Reviews

[Elle (ellexamines on TT & Substack) · Rating 5 out of 5]

There's honestly something deeply fascinating to me about reading the words of someone who lived 2000 years ago, who wrote these exact words 2000 years ago, and though I completely understand why reading translation is done — I think reading translated lit is amazing — it is undoubtedly more interesting to read this word-by-word, to see connotations and derivatives and line breaks and literary devices.

See my Ovid’s Metamorphoses review. But really, Catullus is so wonderfully passionate in his language, so funny and yet often so sad. These poems are personal odes through which we have pieced together a narrative of Catullus’ life. I honestly absolutely loved reading these, especially the brief ones. Here are my highlights:

If only I could play with it as she does
and relieve the torments other sad soul!

→ Poem #2: ← Literally a masterpiece of sexual innuendo. Like you read this poem and you’re like “cute” and then you find out sparrow could also mean vagina and you’re like holy fuck this is so dirty. Iconic.

Let us live, my Lesbia, and let us love,
and let us value all the rumors of
more severe old men at only a penny!

→ Poem #5: ← This one is just really tender and I’m such a fan. The idea of persisting in loving someone despite the whispers of others, in crafting love and tenderness away from prying eyes, is something I still find deeply romantic, and I submit this as an example of tenderness media. (The fact that this is about Lesbia is very tragic.)

Miserable Catullus, stop being a fool,
and may you consider what you see has perished, perished.
Bright suns once shone for you
when you would always come where the girl led,
a girl beloved by us as no girl will be loved.

→ Poem #8: ← This is the first of the lost-love poems, and it’s wonderful. Poem 8 is a warning to self about being a fool over a girl who has treated you badly rather than loved you. She's wonderful and we stan her.

I will butt-fuck and face-fuck you,
bottom Aurelius and sex-slave Furius,

→ Poem #16: ← Ladies imagine this: you show up to your Latin class, half-dead from second semester senior year exhaustion. Your teacher shows you a poem containing four words in the first two sentences you do not know, something that is surprising, given you are on your seventh year of Latin. She then tells you to look these words up and you discover that they are, in order: a threat of anal rape, a threat of oral rape, a word literally meaning “someone who takes it up the ass,” and a word that means prostitute or sex slave. You now have to read this out to your one other fellow Latin scholar and your teacher, who is in her 60s but laughing her ass off. Fun times.

...for as soon as I look
at you, Lesbia, nothing of a voice remains
in my mouth.

→ Poem #51: ← This poem is also really wonderfully tender, using sapphic meter, but carries with it a tinge of sadness and desperation. The ending is haunting. It is lonely and lovely and I absolutely would die for it.

For what lioness which gave birth to you under a lone crag,
What sea spit you having been conceived from foaming waves,
what Syrtis, what predator Scylla, what vast Carybdis bore you,
you who return such reward for sweet life?

→ Poem #64: ← This is a very long poem but I’m going to be honest: I’m here for the Ariadne section. Greek and Latin mythos tends to give Ariadne a passive role in which things happen to her, but this poem is essentially Ariadne roasting Theseus within one inch of his life and it’s incredible.

I hate and I love. Why I do this, perhaps you are asking.
I do not know, but I feel that it is happening and I am tormented.

→ Poem #85: ← This is a two line poem and it’s honest to god. My favorite poem of this entire collection. Odi et amo; so simple, and so real.

Essentially, the point is that I love one (1) man and he lived in 50 BC. This collection is my favorite Latin lit and deserves to be read.

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[Andy Manoske · Rating 5 out of 5]

First, let's get some things out of the way. Catullus has some issues. He clearly has serious emotional problems, and deals with them poorly (see: Cat. 16, "Pedicabo..."). Many of his poems read like an emo teenager's Tumblr account, grossly detailing their attraction (and later rejection) from their prom date after she/he promised to go with them after kissing under the bleachers that one time.

That being said, Catullus' writing is glorious. He is a masterful poet, and uses Latin to its fullest potential to spin some of the most beautiful text ever put to pen in this deep and textured language.

"Odi et amo" gets quoted too frequently as an example of his beautiful, succinctly emotional style. Instead I would say a great example of what Catullus can do is in Cat. 3, the first few lines I feel are some of the most beautiful poetry ever written:

Lugete veneres cupidinesque
et quantum hominorum vestiorum
passer mortuus est meae puellae,
Passer, deliciae meae puellae
quem plus illa oculis suis amabat.

Weep, oh Venuses and Cupids,
and however many men of beauty [there may be]
the sparrow of my girl is dead
Sparrow, delight of my delight,
for whom she loved more than her own eyes.

It's extremely difficult to convey just how beautiful this, read in meter, is in English. Whether it's Catullus simple "deliciae meae puellae" that shows a possessive, desperately protective quality - or whether it's his absolutely beautiful "quem plus illa oculis suis amabat" that is nothing short of an oil painting of emotion in one line of text - Catullus' writing here is glorious. And it's simply one of many other beautiful works of art in this text.

Catullus is fucking crazy. But he's an absolutely wonderful poet, who makes the Latin language show emotion so beautifully that one struggles to replicate it in English.

[max theodore]

catullus you little freak i love you. we are technically done studying this in class but i'm gonna read the rest of these sometime

[Markus · Rating 5 out of 5]

Catullus: A Poet in the Rome of Julius Caeser
by Catullus,
Aubrey Burl

48327873
Markus's review
Oct 12, 2016, · edit

really liked it
bookshelves: ancient-Rome, poetry

Of daily life, love and poetry in ancient Rome.
Catullus is known for his explicit details of sex in his poetry on all sorts of affairs, as was fashionable in contemporary Rome,
Young Catullus's falls in love with Clodia, for discretion calls her Lesbia, his fantastic poems of love for her, he is remarkably discreet in his own love life with Lesbia, as long as he is in love, and that almost to the end.
A more or less conjectured biography of the poet, with related poetry from Sappho, Callimachus, Martial and others.
This turned out to be a lesson in history and classic poetry, much to my pleasure.

[Virginia · Rating 4 out of 5]

This edition has really great glossary and notes, but I cannot figure out why in God's name the editor felt the need to give the poems titles. The titles are out-of-place, and oftentimes goofy, like 'Piso's Punks.' This is not to say that Catullus himself was refined, but I think it would be better without the new additions since Catullus, to the best of our knowledge, never titled his works.

As for the writing itself, Catullus' work can be fun to puzzle out, often with beautiful results. Readers certainly see the spectrum of genres and subject material-- if you don't believe me, try flipping through the glossary. I didn't even know some of those words existed in English. (And how much better, then, that Catullus survived to us today through a manuscript kept by monks!)

[Joanne H. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Literally so good but also easier than a lot of the other poets I had to read in Latin, so partially biased

[Nitya Budamagunta · Rating 4 out of 5]

Catullus is a self-deprecating sad boi!

[Alper Yılmaz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read the introduction and most of the appendices. Though all that is in here is immensely helpful, it ends up not being as useful as it could have been without some directives on how to read Catullus, namely symbols for denoting long and short syllables and caesuras. Sure, these take a lot of time and labour to set down, and one could argue the "student" has little need for this, but it would be much more helpful to do this on e per-poem basis instead of redirecting the reader to the dictionary at the end for each and every instance of uncertain syllable length; not to mention this is an insufficient solution, since in Latin, the length of a syllable at the end of a word is variable based on the first letter of the following word, meaning one can't be sure of a syllable's length with just an out-of-context display. Still, for what was included, this work deserves a lot of praise.

[grace liu · Rating 4 out of 5]

lowkey i want to give it a 4.5 just because (nerd alert!!!) i actually loved my latin class so much this semester. i feel like i learned so much and i genuinely enjoyed going to class and doing the homework assignments. not giving this a 5 tho that's hyping up catullus tooo much. but i did really enjoy reading so much of his poetry, especially in latin - i feel like my knowledge of ancient literature has been greatly expanded. special shoutout to his poems on grief/mourning (96, 101), the story of attis (63), and all his silly metaphors (flower at the edge of the meadow, and ofc the passer). odi et amo fr

[molly · Rating 4 out of 5]

oh catullus. how you entertain me so. one of the easier latin authors to translate so that automatically makes me like him more, but his poems are so interesting from a societal standpoint. what crazy things the romans got upset about! catullus has truly taught me a lot about not suffering fools (aka men who steal my napkins).

[Meyvn O'Neil · Rating 5 out of 5]

Catullus my beloathed. i am systematically translating every catullus poem, desperately trying to get ahead of my latin teacher. most of these poems are funny in hindsight, but catullus is a freaky little man with freaky little things to do.
also the ebook version is easy to copy-paste from in a dark classroom without flashbanging yourself.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book has everything you could need to read Catullus in entirety - the text by itself, commentary and a dictionary in the back, historical introduction, and appendices on characters, poetical devices, and meter.

[Todd · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not Just for students!

A complete text, including a few fragments--such is the Catullus corpus. Complete notes without being overly biased or arguing a particular interpretation.

An essential stepping stone for any Classicist or Latinist.

[Angel · Rating 3 out of 5]

While Catullus is of course a classic, he isn't my favorite. I don't like the vulgarity.

[Georgie · Rating 1 out of 5]

if catullus has no haters i am dead. one star for the passer and the word pipiabat

[Liza · Rating 5 out of 5]

Catullus would've ate on twitter ngl.

5/5☆

[Christopher · Rating 4 out of 5]

Daniel H. Garrison's THE STUDENT'S CATULLUS, published by University of Oklahoma press, contains all 113 poems of the standard collection which are belived to be authentic, including the fragmentary poems. Garrison provides an introduction and notes for the individual poems, as well as four appendices on various matters ("People", "Meters", "[Poetic] Terms", and "Poetic Usage") and a complete vocabulary. In his notes, Garrison often directs the student towards the meaning without giving it away as such, preserving the comedic impact of much of the shorter poems. While no scholar could deny the obscenity of much of Catullus' poetry, Garrison sometimes shows a shyness in his notes which I found odd. I used THE STUDENT'S CATULLUS for a semester-long course at Loyola University Chicago, and thought that it served my needs well.

If there is one big downside to the book, it is the typesetting. The Latin text is fine, but the notes and commentary are all done in hideous double-columns and a typeface smaller than the Latin. This is one of the least professional-looking academic books I've come across in a while. Still, that doesn't stop the content from being useful, so THE STUDENT'S CATULLUS is worth seeking out.

[Ben · Rating 5 out of 5]

Catullus writes about literature and sex in gorgeous, but conversational tones. His work is a stirring reminder of how we deal with love and infidelity, and the constancy of human emotion across the millennia. Writing during the first century B.C.E., Catullus explicated his affair with and betrayal by a woman, pseudonym Lesbia, in volumes of Neoteric poetry. His poems were lost entirely for a time until a single manuscript edition turned up, thankfully preserving the work of this exceptional poet. Never, I think, in all the annals of literature has love in its complexities and failures been discussed in a more candid, concise, and wryly sentimental way than in Catullus' poetry. Should be read in the original Latin, if possible.

[J. · Rating 5 out of 5]

A ridiculously handy volume for any college Latinist. Its commentary is extensive enough to point out a good chunk of the interesting, obscure tidbits that anyone who hadn't done a ton of research would likely miss, but circumspect enough not to turn the thing into a brick.

The built-in Catullan dictionary is an absolute convenience, though it necessarily pushes the translations in the directions that Garrison would have them go. Still, it is an indispensable tool.

Very well written, clear, concise. Not a book for intense academic work, but an excellent starting place.

[Kat · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of those mind opening experiences for college Latin students. I just don't think you can get the same experience reading this on your own as you can as a Freshman or Sophomore in college reading this in Intermediate Latin. I think this was the first really risque thing I ever read for a class, and I was always totally terrified I was going to have to translate something embarrassing in front of the class.

[Jennie · Rating 5 out of 5]

First of all, who doesn't love Catullus? Or at least, Catullus when he is his raunchy, angry, violent self? (I could do without some of the wedding poems, personally.) Secondly, an editors who uses the terms "chippies" and "bimbettes" in his notes? This was my first exposure to those words, and they are delightfully awful and horrifying sexist all at once. It's

[Agustín · Rating 5 out of 5]

Catullus deserves to have been popular for this long. I also commend the editor for his work making sure that everything one would need to read Catullus was located inside the book. I understand the author may have felt that including too much commentary would have betrayed the edition's purpose of being for students, but I think it would have gone a long way.

[Charlie · Rating 4 out of 5]

4th edition. Good for intermediate students. The introduction is good as far as it goes, but rather brief. The glossary is well-suited to Catullus. Four appendices on people, meter, terms, and poetic usage were helpful. The notes were generally good but didn't answer all my questions.

[Maggie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love Catullus... this was so much fun!

[Jonathan]

Should be made into a hardcover

[Jessica · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rating is for the commentary, not the poetry.

[Elizabeth Rogers · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hilarious and filled with some of the best insults imaginable. This edition makes translating pretty easy.

[rachel selene · Rating 4 out of 5]

read continuously from january-april 2017 for class, then sporadically in may and june on my own time. there are still 9 poems to go and i am determined to get around to them eventually!!

[Shelli King · Rating 5 out of 5]

Catullus was fun to read - he's a bit naughty. Alright, he's very naughty.