The title of this work literally means The Book of Catullus of Verona and is a careful perusal by Robinson Ellis of the oeuvre of the Roman poet, who is generally thought to have lived between 84 and 54 BCE. In this second edition of 1878, Ellis (1834–1913), whose monumental Commentary on Catullus is also reissued in this series, demonstrates the ancestry of the text of the poems established by Renaissance scholars from the surviving manuscript variants, supplying a text with suggested readings and emendations and a nearly complete listing of citations or references that have been made to Catullus throughout the centuries, and engaging with the work of fellow scholars Ribbeck and Westphal. Ellis offers a detailed reading of the construction of the poet's engaging verse and supports the identification of the 'Lesbia' of whom Catullus writes so glowingly and passionately with Clodia Metelli.
This 1876 work is the magisterial commentary by the Oxford scholar Robinson Ellis (1834–1913) on the life and oeuvre of the Roman poet Catullus, whose work illuminates the closing years of the Roman Republic. Our knowledge of Catullus' life derives almost entirely from his own writings. Three manuscripts survive which contain a collection of poems that are ascribed to him, and all three date from the fourteenth century. Ellis considers the research that has already been undertaken on the poet and his environment but mostly draws on his own work in assessing the value of the Renaissance Italian commentators who established the generally accepted poetic canon. He traces the Greek influences that Catullus was exposed to and discusses his use of different metres, while also speculating on the identity of his beloved Lesbia, a controversial question still unresolved in the twenty-first century.