Catullus
by Catullus
In Catullus’s series of poems to Lesbia we have for the first time in literature the sense of the arc of a relationship. There’s the tingling sense of desire, and then the gloriously happy, loved-up phase. And then there are poems that put a knife through your heart when she’s been unfaithful to him. And angry, brutal poems about his sense of loss, descriptions of how he doesn’t believe he can ever love again, or even go on living at all.
