My favourite Roman ........ Catullus ..... on the wireless today

I have returned to the poems of Catullus.

The 1968 edition

I first came across him in 1975, during a very messy moment at the end of a relationship.

And since then I regularly return to his poems.  

And today I am doing so with Natalie Haynes and her wonderful series Natalie Haynes Stands Up for the Classics * which the sleeve notes tell me Catullus was 

"The brilliant Roman love poet is the poster boy for teen angst. He feels everything intensely, from the stealing of his favourite napkin to the death of his lover Lesbia's pet sparrow. And then he dies young. Of course the Romantics loved him, as do his biographer Dr Daisy Dunn and Professor Llewelyn Morgan.

The 2004 edition

Born to an aristocratic family in Verona, Catullus is fearless in abusing in sophisticated verse his father's friend Julius Caesar, his ex-lover Lesbia and the poets unlucky enough to be his contemporaries. Satirical, scurrilous and obscene, his popularity endures.

'Rockstar mythologist' Natalie Haynes is the best-selling author of 'Divine Might', 'Stone Blind', and 'A Thousand Ships' as well as a reformed comedian who is a little bit obsessive about Ancient Greek and Rome.

Dr Daisy Dunn is an award-winning classicist. Her books, Catullus’ Bedspread: The Life of Rome’s Most Erotic Poet, and The Poems of Catullus: A New Translation, were published in 2016 and earned her a place in the Guardian‘s list of leading female historians.**

Producer...Beth O'Dea Read less"

Pictures; cover of The Poems of Catullus, Translated by Peter Whigham Penguin Classics, cover shows a portrait of Arteidorus from Hawara, Egypt, second century, British Museum 1974, reprint, and Catullus The Poems Translated by Peter Whigham Penguin Classics, 2004, cover shows a detail from a Roman mosiac 3rd-4th century AD in the Piazza Armenia villa of Maximinorous. Sicily, photoo AKGO/Eric Lessing

*Catullus, Natalie Haynes Stands Up for the Classics, Series 11, BBC Radio 4, https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/live/bbc_radio_fourfm

**Catullus’ Bedspread: The Life of Rome’s Most Erotic Poet, Daisy Dunn, 2016