previous next

An address to Lesbia written after the poet had become convinced of her unworthiness, and showing more, perhaps, than any other one poem the pure sentiment of his passion for her (in vv. 3 and 4) With the theme cf. Catul. 75.1ff. and Catul. 85.1ff.

[1-2] 1-2. A reminiscence of Catul. 70.1ff.

[1-2] nosse: sensu venerio.

[2] tenere: sc. complexu; cf. Catul. 64.28.

[3] dilexi: doubtless chosen here to indicate pure sentiment as distinguished from physical passion, though diligere sometimes has the same meaning as amare, as in Catul. 6.5; Catul. 81.2.

[4] generos: i. e. generum et nurum, as gnatos is equivalent to filium filiamque, and Catul. 63.59 “genitoribus” to patre et matre.

[5] impensius uror: in spite of his better knowledge of her character, his passion continues to grow, and overmasters his judgment. But the fact that he recognizes this shows at least a possibility of recovery. Cf. Catul. 85.1ff.; Ter. Eun. 70ff. “nunc ego et illam scelestam esse et me miserum sentio et taedet; et amore ardeo” .

[7] potis est: sc. fieri, as in Catul. 42.16; Catul. 76.16, Catul. 76.24, potis stands here before a vowel for pote, as in Catul. 76.24.

[8] bene velle: to respect; cf. Catul. 75.3


Catullus. Catullus. E. T. Merrill. Cambridge. Harvard University Press. 1893.

The National Endowment for the Humanities provided support for entering this text.

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

hide Places (automatically extracted)

View a map of the most frequently mentioned places in this document.

Download Pleiades ancient places geospacial dataset for this text.

hide References (10 total)
  • Commentary references from this page (10):
    • Catullus, Poems, 42
    • Catullus, Poems, 6
    • Catullus, Poems, 63
    • Catullus, Poems, 64
    • Catullus, Poems, 70
    • Catullus, Poems, 75
    • Catullus, Poems, 76
    • Catullus, Poems, 81
    • Catullus, Poems, 85
    • Terence, The Eunuch, 1.1
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: