Catullus - Cultural References

Cultural References

• Alexander Hamilton took the pseudonym Catullus in his newspaper debates with Republican opponents during the early 1790's while acting as Treasury Secretary.
• The epistolary novel Ides of March by Thornton Wilder centers on Julius Caesar, but prominently features Catullus, his poetry, his relationship (and correspondence) with Clodia, correspondence from his family and a description of his death. Catullus's poems and the closing section by Suetonius are the only documents in the novel which are not imagined.
• The new musical TULLY (In No Particular Order), which appeared in the 2007 New York Musical Theatre Festival, loosely adapts the poems of Catullus while retaining the non-linear structure of the published edition, exploring his relationships with both Clodia and Juventius, renamed Julie, and the timeless nature of memory and love.
• The 20th-century Irish poet Louis MacNeice references Catullus in his poem "Epitaph for Liberal Poets," where he mentions Catullus as amongst the first liberal poets - "Catullus/ went down young," mentioning him in the context of the death of the individual and recognising his and the universal plight.
• Archibald MacLeish wrote a poem entitled "You Also, Gaius Valerius Catullus," where he addresses the poet.
• Catullus is discussed in John Fowles's novel The French Lieutenant's Woman (1969) as being one of the foremost poets of love, sexuality and desire.
• The 16th-century Spanish poet Cristóbal de Castillejo plagiarized Catullus in his well-known work "Dame amor, besos sin cuento".
• W. B. Yeats references Catullus in his poem The Scholars.
• Ned Rorem has a song entitled, "Catullus: On the burial of his brother."
• The poem "Be Angry at the Sun" by Robinson Jeffers includes the line "You are not Catullus, you know, To lampoon these crude sketches of Caesar."
• The 2011 radio play A Thousand Kisses was based on his life.
• Catullus features in Steven Saylor's historical mystery The Venus Throw (1995).
• The webcomic Achewood refers to Catullus as "the first poet who ever got his Bone on."