Catullus is one of the liveliest and most appealing Roman poets. His emotion, charm, and apparent spontaneity resonate with readers as strongly today as in antiquity.

This sophisticated literary and historical introduction brings Catullus to life for the modern reader and presents his poetry in all its variety of emotions, subjects, and styles. Julia Gaisser situates Catullus in his historical context, explaining the social and sexual conventions underlying his work. She treats Catullus's language, meters, and poetic architecture as essential elements of his poetry and shows how he has used them to achieve his poetic effects. She discusses the physical constraints and artistic possibilities of the papyrus roll, the character or persona that Catullus presents in his poetry, the ways in which his poems resonate both with each other and with earlier poetry, and the interpretations of his readers from antiquity to the present.