SOURCE: "Catullus," in The Latin Love Poets: From Catullus to Horace, Oxford at the University Press, 1980, pp. 19-61.
Wiseman on understanding Catullus's poetry:
… Why] should we expect his design to be immediately apparent to us? Just because he was capable of writing individual poems of such direct simplicity that they still speak to us face to face after two millenia, it does not follow that he was always simple, much less that his tastes and attitudes necessarily coincide with ours.
