Gaius Valerius Catullus, born about 84 BC and probably dead by about 54 BC, occupies a singular place in Latin literature: he is at once one of antiquity’s most polished craftsmen and one of its most startlingly intimate voices. His surviving poems move from affectionate invitations and erotic delight to devastating grief, learned mythological narrative, social comedy, and abusive satire so ferocious that it can unse…
Compare Poets
Pick two poets who seem to have nothing to do with each other — a Gothic American and a pastoral Englishman, say — and see where the catalogue actually joins them: overlapping years, shared ground, distinctive themes, and the poems that secretly rhyme.
Poet A
Gaius Valerius Catullus
Poet B
Publius Ovidius Naso
Compare two related contemporaries
A random pair who overlapped in time and whose poems already rhyme in the catalogue — a way into poets you may not have met.
Kindred spirits
Their work already rhymes in the catalogue. The rest of this page is the story around that rhyme.
Biography 76%
Poems 81%
Blended 78%
Swap sides
Another related pair
Publius Ovidius Naso, known in English as Ovid, was born on 20 March 43 BC at Sulmo, a prosperous town in the Apennine country east of Rome, now Sulmona in the Abruzzo region of Italy. He died in exile at Tomis on the western shore of the Black Sea, probably in AD 17 or 18. Few ancient poets have left so vivid a record of their public voice, artistic ambitions, pleasures, fears, and humiliations; yet Ovid remains, in…
“We are slow to believe what hurts to believe.”
In time
Gaius Valerius Catullus
Publius Ovidius Naso
84 BC
17
Their lives did not overlap.
11 years separate the earlier death from the later birth.
On the map
About 445 km separate Verona, Veneto, Italy from Sulmona, Abruzzo, Italy. Both have ground in Rome.
Gaius Valerius Catullus
Publius Ovidius Naso
Themes they return to
Distinctive words drawn from each poet’s critiqued poems — what they keep writing about, not just what their biographies mention.
Shared
Gaius Valerius Catullus only
Publius Ovidius Naso only
From the biographies
roman
erotic
Gaius Valerius Catullus: verona, lesbia, gaius licinius calvus, helvius cinna, cornificius, carmina, neoterics, sirmio. Publius Ovidius Naso: sulmo, tomis, ars amatoria, heroides, amores, propertius, virgil, aemilius macer.
Poems that secretly rhyme
The closest poem-to-poem matches in critique space — the sort of kinship a listener hears before the catalogue admits it.
The world around them
Gaius Valerius Catullus
60 BC
Relocation to Rome
57 BC
Travel to Bithynia
56 BC
Return to Verona
54 BC
Final Poems Written
Emotional landscapes
Gaius Valerius Catullus: Longing, Tenderness, Sensuality. Publius Ovidius Naso: Despair, Sorrow, Longing.