Sine fine

Catullus’ poetry reveals an acute awareness of the constant and almost unfathomable widening of his world in the late Roman Republic. In his work people and goods circulate with ease through geographical space, impervious to boundaries. But the cultural notion that only the ends of the world impose limits on Roman territory takes its toll, especially at the level of the subject. The porous nature of geographical boundaries seems to rub off onto the signifiers by which Catullus constructs himself, Lesbia, his brother, his friends, enemies and acquaintances, as well as the places they move through, as coherent, unified, fixed entities.