Catullus' Bedspread: The Life of Rome's Most Erotic Poet
Jul 2016 · HarperCollins
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“A superb portrait of this most human of poets who leaps to life, hating and loving as ferociously as ever, before our twenty-first-century eyes.” —The Sunday Times (London)
A vivid narrative that recreates the life of Gaius Valerius Catullus, Rome’s first modern poet, and follows a young man’s journey through a world filled with all the indulgences and sexual excesses of the time, from doomed love affairs to shrewd political maneuvering and backstabbing—an accessible, appealing look at one of history’s greatest poets.
Born to one of Verona’s leading families, Catullus spent most of his young adulthood in Rome, mingling with the likes of Caesar and Cicero and chronicling his life through his poetry. Famed for his lyrical and subversive voice, his poems about his friends were jocular, often obscenely funny, while those who crossed him found themselves skewered in raunchy verse, sudden objects of hilarity and ridicule. These bawdy poems were disseminated widely throughout Rome. Many of his poems recall his secret longstanding affair with the seductive older Clodia.
While Catullus and Clodia made love in the shadows, the whole of Italy was quaking as Caesar, Pompey and Crassus forged a doomed alliance for power. During these tumultuous years, Catullus increasingly turned to darker subject matter, and he finally composed his greatest work of all—a poem about the decoration on a bedspread—which forms the heart of this biography, a work of beauty that will achieve immortality and make Catullus a legend.
Catullus’ Bedspread includes an 8-page color insert.
“Aficionados of lively, finely crafted biography are well-served . . . Weav[es] well-researched social history with a compelling account of political machinations in Rome.” —The Guardian
A vivid narrative that recreates the life of Gaius Valerius Catullus, Rome’s first modern poet, and follows a young man’s journey through a world filled with all the indulgences and sexual excesses of the time, from doomed love affairs to shrewd political maneuvering and backstabbing—an accessible, appealing look at one of history’s greatest poets.
Born to one of Verona’s leading families, Catullus spent most of his young adulthood in Rome, mingling with the likes of Caesar and Cicero and chronicling his life through his poetry. Famed for his lyrical and subversive voice, his poems about his friends were jocular, often obscenely funny, while those who crossed him found themselves skewered in raunchy verse, sudden objects of hilarity and ridicule. These bawdy poems were disseminated widely throughout Rome. Many of his poems recall his secret longstanding affair with the seductive older Clodia.
While Catullus and Clodia made love in the shadows, the whole of Italy was quaking as Caesar, Pompey and Crassus forged a doomed alliance for power. During these tumultuous years, Catullus increasingly turned to darker subject matter, and he finally composed his greatest work of all—a poem about the decoration on a bedspread—which forms the heart of this biography, a work of beauty that will achieve immortality and make Catullus a legend.
Catullus’ Bedspread includes an 8-page color insert.
“Aficionados of lively, finely crafted biography are well-served . . . Weav[es] well-researched social history with a compelling account of political machinations in Rome.” —The Guardian
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About the author
Daisy Dunn studied classics at the University of Oxford, earned a master’s degree in art history at the Courtauld Institute of Art, and completed a doctorate in classics and art history at University College London. She writes for the Daily Telegraph, Newsweek, The Spectator, the Times Literary Supplement, and History Today. She lives in London, England.
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