Horace and Catullus

Catullus and Horace both discuss love and its loss in their poetry, although perhaps Horace does not do it quite as frequently. In Catullus 75, he says:

"My mind has been brought so low by your conduct, Lesbia,
and so undone itself through its own goodwill
that now if you were perfect I couldn't like you,
nor cease to love you now, whatever you did."

Similar to his previous poem where he explains "such injury forces/ a lover to love more, but to cherish less," (72), Catullus is speaking in part to the unfairness of love. He cannot choose who he feels passion for, because as a person he does not even like her. Love, it seems in his description, has a habit of being mischievous in forcing two people who dislike each other to be brought together, two people who do not fit to be forced to fit through their love for each other. Like many tragic stories of disastrous love, this one features the theme that love is not a choice, and is not always the best thing for either.

Horace describes a similar theme in Ode 33, where he comforts his friend Albius for having been abandoned by the girl he loves for another man. Horace, however, unlike Catullus, is addressing this about a third party, whereas for Catullus's (like all his poetry) is mostly personal. Because of this, Catullus is more harsh, angry, and helpless, while Horace uses his point to boost Albius's ego, claiming that he is worth much more than his girl.

"Such is the decree of Venus, who decides in cruel jest
to join unequal minds and bodies
under her yoke of bronze."

Whereas for Horace, "unequal" means that one (Albius) is definitively better than the other, Catullus describes ill-fitting unions as a matter of disgust and yet love from both sides. Almost all the differences in this poem lie, again, in the place from which it's coming - up-close and personal for Catullus, but from a distance for Horace. Catullus feels all the emotions of love, hate, and loss (eros), while Horace feels mainly loyalty to his friend, despite his lapse into personal memory in the last stanza.