Biography of Gaius Valerius Catullus
Cantar heart pain
Year of birth: 84 BcYear of death: 54 Bc
Gaius Valerius Catullus was born in Verona in Cisalpine Gaul in 84 Bc in a family very wealthy. It seems that in the beautiful family villa in Sirmione, Lake Garda has been a guest more than once even Julius Caesar. Catullus serious and rigorous education and receives, as is the custom for young men of good family, he moved to Rome around 60 B.c. to complete her studies. Arrives in Rome at a very special moment, when the old Republic is now at sunset and the city is dominated by political strife and increasing individualism in both cultural and political. He joined a literary circle, said of the neoteroi or neoteric, inspired by the Greek poetry of Callimachus, and encasing of friendships with men such as the famous orator Quintus Hortensius and Cornelius Nepos. While following the political events of the period, there takes an active part, preferring, instead, indulge in the many pleasures the city has to offer.
In Rome know the woman who will be the love of his life, but also his torment: Clodia, sister of the Tribune Clodius Pulcher and wife of proconsul for territory cisalpino, Metellus Celer. Catullus sings his love for Colodia in its poetic name Lesbia poems giving, for the implicit comparison with the poet Sappho. The relationship between the two is very difficult because Clodia, ten years older than him, is an elegant woman, refined and intelligent, but also very free. She in fact while loving the poet doesn't save a series of painful betrayal until the final separation. The Chronicles also report a relationship between Catullus and Juventius a lad named; This occupation is the result perhaps of dissolute life he leads to Rome. At the news of the death of his brother, Catullus back in his native Verona remained there for about seven months. But the news of yet another report of Clodia, bound in the meantime to Caelius Rufus, induces him to return to Rome. The unbearable weight of jealousy makes him restless to leave again Rome, in the year 57, the praetor Gaius Memmius in Bithynia. Catullus makes the trip in order to improve his finances, made rather small by his propensity for lavishness. In Asia comes into contact with many intellectuals of the East, and after returning from this trip which creates his best poems.
Throughout his life, Catullus makes up about one hundred sixteen songs for a total of two thousand three hundred verses, published in a single work "Liber", dedicated to Cornelius Nepos. The poems are divided into three different sections according to a non-chronological order: for their subdivision was chosen a policy based on the compositional style chosen by the poet. The songs are divided in three main groups: the nugae, by carme 1 to 60, small poems in various metres with prevalence of hendecasyllables; carmina docta, 61 to 68 from carme, consisting of compositions of greater commitment, such as poems, and Elegies; and finally the elegiac couplets, carme epigrams in 69 to 116, very similar to nugae. Except in the case of carmina docta, all other pieces have as main topic on his love for Lesbia/Clodia; love for which waiver also demanding social and political issues. But what began as a betrayal and as an essentially free, love seeing that Lesbia already has a husband, becomes a kind of double bond in his poetry.
Only after the betrayal love loses its intensity, as well as jealousy, although it remains a base of attraction for women. The theme also intertwine different themed songs love, such as those directed against the vices and virtues in public, and in particular against the mediocre, scammers, the hypocrites, the moralists, songs dedicated to the theme of friendship and kinship ties. Are the links with family, in fact, substitute affection with which Catullus tries to forget Lesbia. Among them is particularly significant the carme 101 devoted to unfortunate brother dead. Returned from his trip to the East, where the peace of his search Sirmione Catullo takes refuge in 56. The last two years of his life were marred by a dark evil according to some subtle pain that consumes him in mind and in body until his death. You do not know the exact date of his death which should have occurred around 54, in Rome, when Catullus has just 30 years.
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