Abstract
This essay exploration is the presentation of five “verse epistles” of Catullus (poems 1, 65 and 66, and 68a and b). These verse epistles are distinct from the “invitational poem” (well illustrated in Cenabis bene, mi Fabulle, poem 13) in that invitational poems are not sent as cover letters for the poems they transmit. The last poem of the Catullan liber (poem 116, to Gellius) seems to promise a translation Catullus had made of Callimachus (Battiades), like poems 65 and 66. Poems 65 and 66 exhibit an intimate connection between Catullus’ verse epistle (poem 65) and the translation of Callimachus’ The Lock of Berenice that it presents (poem 66). The genre of verse epistle Catullus experimented in was short-lived and has now been lost from sight.
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