SOURCE: "The Poetry of Social Coment," in Catullus. An Interpretation, B. T. Batsford Ltd., 1972, pp. 204-82.

In the following essay, Quinn explores Catullus's poems that focus upon political and social commentary: those poems which, in the main, "establish a norm (if one can speak of a norm in connexion with a segment of society whose habits are often so abnormal), set against which the Lesbia affair stands out in sharp contrast, without any more needing to be said."

There are only something like twenty-five to thirty Lesbia poems in a collection which numbers in all one hundred and thirteen poems. Among the rest are old favourites such as 'Catullus' Yacht' ('Poem 4'), 'Sirmio' ('Poem 31') and 'Arrius and his Aitches' ('Poem 84'.) And then of course there are the 'Attis' ('Poem 63') and the 'Peleus and Thetis' ('Poem 64') and the two marriage hymns (Poems '61' and...