A Companion to Catullus

In his introduction to Catullus' poems first published in 1913 the distinguished classical scholar F. W. Cornish ranked Gaius Valerius Catullus “not lower than third on the roll of Roman poets”. Since Cornish refrains from mentioning names we are left to assume that he placed Catullus on a level with Virgil and Horace above the likes of Ovid and Juvenal. We must, therefore, consider ourselves extremely fortunate that the poems of Catullus have survived the ravages of time since all our extant manuscripts with the exception of Codex Thuaneus, which contains Carm LXII only, are derived from a single codex...