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Catullus dedicates his poetry book to Cornelius Nepos (c.99-c.24 BCE), a famous biographer and historian, who came from the same region in Italy as Catullus. Catullus may well have seen a further connection between himself and Cornelius Nepos: Catullus was breaking ground and redefining the genre of poetry just as Cornelius Nepos was doing with the field of history. By comparing his nonsense poems (nūgae) with Nepos’ Chronica, three “learned” (doctae) and “labor-intensive” (labōriōsae) volumes (cartae) charting the history of the ages, Catullus can boost his own gravitas as an author and, at the same time, maintain a light, self-deprecatory tone about his work.

Meter: Hendecasyllabics.

1: Cui: “To whom?” interrogative pronoun, dative singular (AG §333). lepidum novum libellum: “new charming little book”; the adjectives lepidum and novum evoke the qualities embodied by the neoteric poets (Garrison); libellus is the diminutive of liber, used often for a short book of poems (Merrill) or in post-Augustan literature for a satire or lampoon (Lewis and Short).

2: āridā … pūmice: ablative of means (AG §409); the noun pūmex is typically masculine; pumice stones were used to smooth the ends of papyrus rolls (Merrill); the adjective āridus can also mean “intellectually dry” or “unadorned.” expolītum: “polished”; this word too can be used to describe both a physical act as well as the “polishing” or “refining” of a literary work.

3: Cornēlī, tibi: “to you, o Cornelius (Nepos)”, the answer to the initial question of the poem. tū solēbās: “you were accustomed to” + infinitive.

4: putāre: complementary infinitive after solēbās; introduces indirect statement (AG §577). nūgās: “nuggets, trifles, frivolities” or even “nonsense.”

5: Iam tum cum: “even at that time when” (AG §545). ausus es: “you dared”; audeō is a semi-deponent verb (i.e., its perfect system will appear passive in form but be translated actively) (AG §192). ūnus Ītalōrum: Cornelius Nepos distinguished himself from other Roman historians who confined themselves to working in the annalistic tradition and covering only a limited span of time or to those writing very general histories of longer periods (Merrill).

6: omne aevum: Cornelius Nepos' history spanned from the earliest periods to his present day. tribus…cartīs: “in three volumes”; carta can refer both to a page of papyrus or to something larger (i.e, a book or a volume).

7: Iuppiter: “by Jupiter”; an expletive. 

8: Quārē: “therefore” or “wherefore.” quidquid hoc libellī: indefinite pronoun (quidquid) (AG §151a) followed by a partitive genitive (libellī) (AG §346); supply est after hoc.

9: quālecumque: “such as it is.” quod: subject of maneat. ō patrōna virgō: muse of (lyric) poetry; in one short poem, Catullus manages both to dedicate his book to Cornelius Nepos and to invoke the muse for inspiration. The choice of patrona is striking because Catullus was wealthy enough not to need a mortal patron, but still believed in the need for a spiritual one.

10: ūnō…saeclō: “than one age”; saeclum can refer to one generation of time (30 years), or the limits of a human lifetime (100 years), or even eternity. The ambiguity allows Catullus to appear both “self-deprecating” and “self-confident.” Cf. Horace, Odes 1.1 and 3.30. maneat: "let it (quod) remain"; jussive subjunctive (AG §439b).