L'uno e il molteplice: su Catull. 5

In Catull. 5, the author cleverly works out two ancient topoi (‘let’s love, because the night/death is coming’; ‘kisses are the joy of lovers’), gaining a well balanced structure of the poem. In comparison with contemporary Graeco- Roman poetry (erotic epigrams – such as Philod. AP 9, 570 –, the Epitaph of Bion), both themes are handled with a remarkable taste for originality, especially in their ‘numerical’ aspects, in order to put special emphasis on the basic contrast between nox una and basia mille.