Disputatio:Caius Valerius Catullus

Nomen, quod sit "Caius", non exstat. Hoc nomen est "Gaius"; quod breuiter "C." scribitur, quod sic ueteres, qui G litteram nondum nouerant, scribere soliti sunt. Ineptum tamen est ex hac re colligere nomen "Cai" exstitisse, atque sic scribere et ut "Kaius" pronuntiare. Hoc est falsissimum.

Equidem tempore Romano hoc nomen sine dubio "Gaius" audiebat, sed habesne pro certo totum nomen numquam littera c exscriptum esse? --Iustinus 01:28 mar 31, 2005 (UTC)

The spelling I've always seen is Gaius. Allen & Greenough expand the abbreviation C. as Gaius, not Caius.

Bearded illustration

What's a bearded middle-aged man doing as an illustration of a beardless poet who died at the age of thirty? Illustrations that add nothing but misinformation detract, rather than add. IacobusAmor 14:40, 3 Septembris 2006 (UTC)

I just trusted Commons and the other Wikipedias, but then I found this, so maybe we should add an information that there exists no picture of Catullus. If that's true. --Roland (disp.) 14:55, 3 Septembris 2006 (UTC)

I think we do have some authentic busts from antiquity, but a caption for the this kind of illustration might want to take this form: "X, as imagined by the Lithuanian painter Y, circa 1843-48. Several details, including the beard, the haircut, and the headband, were not in fashion during X's lifetime. No authentic image of X is known to have survived, or even to have been created." That would be a agreeably academic way of saying THIS PICTURE IS A LIE. ::winkwink:: IacobusAmor 15:45, 3 Septembris 2006 (UTC)