This Lesbia poem is less frequently read than some of the more famous ones about kisses or sparrows and there is a problem with the text: the last line is missing from the second of its four Sapphic stanzas. Some think think that it may be the earliest Lesbia poem, but the evidence is not conclusive. Until the last stanza, when Catullus breaks off onto a line of thought of his own, the poem is a free translation of a famous poem by Sappho, who wrote on the island of Lesbos around 600 BCE. Some commentators think that the second half of the poem is lost and that the fourth stanza started life as part of a separate piece, but we agree with those who think that the poem stands up as it is.
This is one of only two poems that we have by Catullus in Sapphics, later used extensively by Horace in the Odes. It’s a shame, because Catullus uses the metre well both here and in the other poem, number 11, which is a bitter repudiation of a lover, presumably Lesbia. Some like to see the two poems as “bookending” the affair.
Horace echoes “dulce ridentem” from Catullus’s second stanza in Ode 1.22, “Integer vitae”.
See the illustrated blog post here.
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