Catullus 3

Catullus Comforting Lesbia over the Death of Her Pet Sparrow and Writing an Ode, by Antonio Zucchi, c. 1773
Catullus 3

Catullus 3 is a poem by Roman poet Gaius Valerius Catullus (c. 84–c. 54 BCE) that laments the death of a pet sparrow (passer) for which an unnamed girl (puella), possibly Catullus' lover Lesbia, had an affection. Written in hendecasyllabic meter,[1] it is considered to be one of the most famous of Latin poems.[2]

This poem, together with Catullus' other poems, survived from antiquity in a single manuscript discovered c. 1300 in Verona, from which three copies survive. Fourteen centuries of copying from copies left scholars in doubt as to the poem's original wording in a few places, although centuries of scholarship have led to a consensus critical version.[3] Research on Catullus was the first application of the genealogical method of textual criticism.

In the original manuscript, Catullus 3 and Catullus 2 were parts of the same text, but the two poems were separated by scholars in the 16th century.

  1. ^ Ancona 2008, p. 11.
  2. ^ Goold 1969, p. 186.
  3. ^ [1] Archived May 23, 2006, at the Wayback Machine HTML page version of "Notes on the text, interpretation, and translation problems of Catullus", by S.J. Harrison and S.J. Heyworth, from an Oxford University Web site, accessed February 10, 2007