Readings cited by Ancona and Hallett (this volume) that are not aimed at AP will also be of interest to undergraduate students and their instructors, particularly the complete annotated editions of Forsyth (1986), Garrison (2004), and Quinn (1973a). These are written primarily for adults reading Catullus for the first or second time. Commentaries for more advanced students will also be useful. Though flawed by its omission of 32 poems thought to be indecent, C. J. Fordyce’s commentary (1961) still carries authority. A more recent edition with commentary is D. F. S. Thomson’s (1997). Three important books about the arrangement of Catullus’ poems and the relations between them are Marilyn Skinner’s Catullus’ Passer (1981) and Catullus in Verona (2003) and Helena Dettmer’s Love by the Numbers (1997). A standard Latin grammar is essential to settle arguments about how Latin works. Though anything but new, J. H. Allen and Greenough’s New Latin Grammar (1888, with numerous subsequent revisions, editors, and publishers, most recently Dover Publications, 2006) is the classic reference for readers of Latin at any level.
Catullus is the earliest of many writers stimulated by the tumultuous, gruesome, and depraved goings-on of the Roman Republic in its final years. Several modern authors have also written about the age of Catullus, Cicero, and Caesar. Written with the imaginative grasp and pace of a novelist, Tom Holland’s nonfiction Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic (2004) describes the political events surrounding the life of Catullus. At least three recent novelists have built entire series around this period that undergraduate readers will find interesting: Benita Kane Jaro (1988, 2002a, 2002b); Coleen McCullough - Masters of Rome series (1990, 1991, 1993, 1996, 1997, 2002); Steven Saylor - Roma sub Rosa series on the investigations of Gordianus the Finder (1991, 1992, 1993, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1999, 2000, 2002, 2005). The classic in this genre is Thornton Wilder (1961).
World History
