SOURCE: "The Miniature Epic, No. 64" and "Some Conclusions," in Catullus: A Reader's Guide to the Poems, University Press of America, 1983, pp. 135-52, 153-61.
Below, Small examines Catullus's most ambitious work, "Poem 64," and draws critical conclusions about the poet and his view of the role of poetry as a vehicle of self-expression, self-understanding, artistic immortality, and power "to celebrate whatever may merit praise …, to punish the wicked, to expose the inept, to defend the helpless and to retaliate upon the ungrateful."
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