Gaius Valerius Catullus (87–54 BC) was one of the most famous poets of ancient Rome and the main representative of Roman poetry during the deep crisis of the Roman Republic. He lived a short and very bright life, leaving to his descendants several dozen magnificent poems, sometimes caustic and abusive, sometimes tenderly lyrical, sometimes full of pathos. He was friends with the famous Cicero and the orator Hortensius and, together with Calvus, burned with hatred of Julius Caesar, throwing epigrams at him, to which the future emperor could not remain indifferent. But the main thing in the life of Catullus was his love for the most dissolute woman in Rome, the wife of the consul Quintus Metellus, whom the poet sang in poetry as a Lesbian.