what were the chances that the game i'm rabidly looking forward to would also mention my very niche interest in the poetry of gaius valerius catullus... infodump below
prefacing this by saying that many details about catullus and his time period are unclear, so there's a looot that we don't know. basically..... he was a roman/latin poet, depending if you're talking about the region or the language. timeline-wise, he was born almost a century before jesus, and he only lived for 30 years. but he got FAMOUS famous. at least in his lifetime his poems were as popular as cicero's. which is crazy considering how big cicero is even today, but who here has heard of catullus outside of classicism studies tumblr... ALSO his father was friends with caesar so his family was loaded. anyway, at some point catullus starts writing about this woman he calls "lesbia" (didn't have that meaning back then but in hindsight very funny for a man to call his female muse that). it's likely in reference to sappho who was from lesbos. most scholars agree that "lesbia" was actually clodia, a poet herself and a wife of a wealthy roman consul. again, we only know of their relationship from a few poems but there is A LOT to extrapolate from them. and by the way, keep in mind that this is the roman republic we're talking about, so poetry is HUGE. there's no tiktok to scroll yet so people had to shitpost irl to a live audience because no one can read either. i reallyyy need to emphasise that catullus' lovehate vagueposts were recited out loud in public because it's so fucking funny but also so real... he represents a big shift in roman literature towards lyricism because he writes about real people relationships, and not mythology which was the long standing tradition.
so he writes about his personal life and feelings (like this touching poem about visiting his brother's tomb) but most of the time he's getting up to a) talking maaad shit about his enemies and b) talking about his love of lesbia and c) talking about being in love with a young man called juventius.
for a while there are no traces of his work until in 14th century they find an anthology book they refer to as libellus (little book) in his hometown of verona. there are 116 carminas or carmens (short poems) in this book arranged in no particular order. even though the poems are numbered and it doesn't seem arbitrary, we don't know when they were written or the intended order. this is significant because we can't tell for sure how any of catullus' relationships developed without a consistent chronology, which makes interpretation difficult.
if you follow the lesbia cycle, then the first poems (like the carmina 7 that anca is quoting to coen here) are about how much he looooves kissing clodia. one thing about catullus is he loves kissing and he will tell you all about it. then things go sour in carmina 8 and carmina 8 is why i love this messy bitch, okay... it starts as a self-dignified moving on pep-talk from catullus to himself except midway through the poem he just starts spiraling at clodia, his now ex, and it's so fucking lol
so clodia is having multiple affairs that catullus calls out in his poems. and if you think he goes hard on clodia in carmina 8 wait until you read how her lover's teeth are sparkly white because he rubs urine in his mouth. and the gag of it all is when catullus disses clodia's lovers he straight up names them publically all the while clodia very likely pays him??? as his patron???? but it gets worse actually. catullus can be so fucking mean, like in carmina 58, for example, he straight up slutshames her. a fucking piece of work this catullus guy...
the other prominent love interest in catullus' work is juventius, for whom he wrote similar lovey-dovey lines that mentioned a lot of kissing, of course. apparently he got clowned at for writing about "many-many kisses" (more likely because of his poems to Juventius than Lesbia, because of,, well homophobia). and catullus got so mad he wrote the funniest poem ever that in no way beats the homosexual allegations.
catullus is such a fascinating figure because of how much his work is about his joys and grievances to the point you start feeling like you know him lol. there's a very human quality to it and it's important to me that the people from thousands of years ago were lowkey just like us, grappling with the same shit, different day.
anyway, do you think this is a hint that coen will be bisexual lmaooooo
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