Catullus is both an enigma and the most infamous of ancient Latin poets. At its most basic, the reason that he is still studied in the 21st century is because his work was discovered hundreds of years after his death — and is quite funny, dirty, and full of love.

Besides the subject of love, Catullus wrote numerous political lampoons and, at times, hysterical portraits of depraved, incest-obsessed individuals, or men with romantic impulses who smelled like goats. Catullus was an instigator and very wealthy (his family were a top equestrian family). For most of his twenties he was ensconced in Rome’s social decadence, and obsessed with a married woman of power named Clodia Metelli, who he disguised in his poems as Lesbia, a nod to Sappho and the Isle of Lesbos from where she hailed. Metelli, a poet herself, would have seen this gesture as both highly intelligent and clever.

His death at thirty remains a mystery to this day, though it was not uncommon for people to die so young back then. His most notable poems (outside of those devoted to his beloved Lesbia) are the poems known as poem 101 (about his deceased brother, and the poem Anne Carson would use as a catalyst for her 2009 book Nox , a poetry collection which dealt with her own late brother), and the gender mash-up epic known as poem 63, about the myth of Cybele and Attis.

Daisy Dunn, who completed a PhD in Classics and Art History at University College London, is author of Catullus’ Bedspread: The Life of Rome’s Most Erotic Poet, recently released from HarperCollins. Dunn’s new biography is a stunning portal into Catullus’s Rome, taking readers alongside his emotional journey with tons of heightened insight into his life. Dunn uses infinite details to paint and re-imagine a world, a man, and a love long gone.

When did you first discover Catullus, and why did his work make such a lasting impression with you?

I first read a handful of Catullus’s love poems when I was 17. I remember the feelings of surprise and enchantment — the poetry was unlike anything I’d ever read before. In fact, I didn’t know poetry could be like that. It struck me as so direct, so unmannered — and some of it, so rude! As I read more I realized that a lot lies beneath the seemingly effortless façade. My initial bewilderment gave way to hunger to decipher what it was that lay behind the poetry and made it so powerful. That hunger never went away.

What are some of your favorite translations of Catullus, and what are some of your least?

I read a lot of different translations of Catullus’s poems before I began to translate them myself. Something that really surprised me was how few of them cover the entire surviving corpus of Catullus’s work. There are 116 poems in total. And Catullus’s longer poems are the ones which tend to be neglected, which is a great shame. I enjoyed Lord Byron’s translations of some of the love poems, though, which, of course, bring out their romantic strain.

Translation is a highly subjective art. There are some popular modern Catulluses out there which make me cringe. I really dislike anything that tries too hard to parallel Catullus’s urbanity with slang which soon feels dated. Having said that, I don’t want to be reading of “copulations” and the like in a modern translation either. English archaisms are too often used to veil the fruitiness of Catullus’s Latin. Why shy away from that today?

Have you been to Verona and Rome or to the Grotto of Catullus? What were your impressions?

I visited all three to research my book. In Rome I spent a lot of time in the forum reading Cicero and looking at the evidence to construct a picture of the city in the first century BC. I looked at some slightly bizarre things, like ancient pollen/seed analysis, so I could describe what was growing there in Catullus’s time. I wanted to know what he would have smelled as he walked up the Palatine Hill, where the woman believed to have been his lover lived.

Studying the archaeology of Verona, too, helped me to form an impression of a place that was rapidly changing and developing in Catullus’s time and immediately after.

Sirmio, home of the “Grotto of Catullus” on Lake Garda, was perhaps most spellbinding of all. The so-called Grotto as it stands is actually a huge Roman villa which postdates Catullus by some years, but the views of the lake are exactly as Catullus described them. I could hear the waves “laughing” on this “eyelet of almost islands,” and it was wonderful (Catullus Poem 31).

In Catullus’ Bedspread you reimagine life as Catullus knew it, how he may have experienced it. It’s quite a well-manicured visit with our dearly departed poet. What were the most difficult terrains to cover and what areas of his life were the most pleasant to reimagine?

A lack of sources should never be an excuse not to write on something. Just think how much history would be lost if we chose to ignore the ill-documented periods. Since hardly any information about Catullus the man survives, I decided to write a life in his own words, or through his poems, using primary historical sources, such as the letters of Cicero, to contextualize them. There were aspects of Catullus which were very difficult to write about from an emotional perspective. How does someone in the twenty-first century talk about Catullus’s jokes about rape, for instance? Picturing Catullus settling into his life as a poet in Rome was more uplifting. I enjoyed thinking about him composing poetry with his friends over cups of wine in the evenings.

How do you think Catullus died?

We can’t know for sure. We’re told he died “in his thirtieth year,” but not how. It’s interesting though that the nature of the deaths of several of his contemporaries are recorded — apparently because they were dramatic. Perhaps Catullus died in less dramatic circumstances. Death from some common flu would not have been out of the question.

Why do you think Catullus used so many different techniques and meters, and drew from so many different influences instead of following a traditional aesthetic more in tune with his predecessors?

Catullus really admired the work of earlier poets who wrote in Greek — men like Callimachus and Apollonius of Rhodes — and writers of Greek epigram. I think he was very conscious of the fact that few in Rome were doing much to match the versatility and liveliness of these Greek poets. He wanted to break away from the tradition of his Latin elders; drawing on many different influences but adapting them to his own particular Latin tongue (he loved to make up new words) was one way of doing that.

What sort of reputation do you think Catullus had in his lifetime with fellow poets and politicians?

Catullus seems to have enjoyed a good deal of camaraderie with many poets in his circle — his poems about them are often full of affection. If only the same could be said of those he wrote on Julius Caesar! He was frightfully rude about him, mocking him for both his politics and his supposed sexual habits. I dare say some politicians would have considered Catullus a nuisance, but we happen to know that his father was a friend of Caesar, which perhaps makes us think twice about how Catullus wanted his polemics to be received.