three sections--the pure lyrics, the idyllic pieces, and the poems in
elegiac verse. The central place is occupied by the longest and most
elaborate, if not the most successful, of his poems, the epic idyl on the
marriage of Peleus and Thetis. Before this are the lyrics, chiefly in the
phalaecian eleven-syllabled verse which Catullus made so peculiarly his
own, but in iambic, sapphic, choriambic, and other metres also, winding
up with the fine epithalamium written for the marriage of his friends,
Mallius and Vinia. The transition from this group of lyrics to the
_Marriage of Peleus and Thetis_ is made with great skill through another
wedding-chant, an idyl in form, but approaching to a lyric in tone,
without any personal allusions, and not apparently written for any
particular occasion. Finally comes a third group of poems, extending to
the end of the volume, all written in elegiac verse, but otherwise
extremely varied in date, subject, and manner. The only poem thus left
unaccounted for, the _Atys_, is inserted in the centre of the volume,
between the two hexameter poems, as though to make its wild metre and
rapid movement the more striking by contrast with their smooth and
languid rhythms. Whether the arrangement of the whole book comes from the
poet's own hand is very doubtful. His dedicatory verses, which stand at
the head of the volume, are more probably attached to the first part
only, the book of lyrics. Catullus almost certainly died in 54 B.C.; the
only positive dates assignable to particular poems, in either the lyric
or the elegiac section, alike lie within the three or four years
previous, and, while no strict chronological order is followed, the
pieces at the beginning of the book are almost certainly the earliest,
and those at the end among the latest.

Among the poems of Catullus, those connected with Lesbia hold the
foremost place, and, as expressions of direct personal emotion, are
unsurpassed, not merely in Latin, but in any literature. There are no