The Poems of CatullusCatullus, who lived during some of the most interesting and tumultuous years of the late Roman Republic, spent his short but intense life (? 84 54 B. C. E.) in high Roman society, rubbing shoulders with various cultural and political luminaries, including Caesar, Cicero, and Pompey. Catullus's poetry is by turns ribald, lyric, romantic, satirical; sometimes obscene and always intelligent, it offers us vivid pictures of the poet's friends, enemies, and