Catullus 101

Catullus 101 is an elegy poem written by the Roman poet Gaius Valerius Catullus. It is addressed to Catullus' dead brother or, strictly speaking, to the "mute ashes" that are all that remain of his brother's body.

The tone is grief-stricken and tender, with Catullus trying to give to his brother, taken from him untimely, the best gift that Catullus had to bestow: a poem. The last words, "Hail and Farewell" (in Latin, "ave atque vale"), are among Catullus' most famous; an alternative modern translation might be "hello...and goodbye".

The meter is elegiac couplet. This was a meter usually adopted for love poetry, such as Catullus's addresses to Lesbia. However, the elegy was originally used by ancient Greek poets to express grief and lamentation, which is why Catullus uses it here.

Latin text

Another elegy

This is one of two poems in which Catullus tries to cope with the loss of his brother. The other poem is Catullus 68B. The cause of Catullus' brother's death is unknown, but he seems to have died before 57 BC in Bithynia, a north-west region of modern-day Turkey, near the ancient city of Troy.

Bibliography

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External links

* [http://www.vroma.org/~hwalker/VRomaCatullus/101.html]