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This paper will reevaluate Catullus's venom in poems 41 and 43 (the so-called 'Ameana Cycle') to show that his attacks on Ameana are in fact veiled criticisms of Mamurra's loathsome poetry. Catullus's descriptions of Ameana substantiate this reading: her physical features are disproportionate and ill suited to Roman conceptions of beauty, she is entirely without wit, and despite her patent imperfections, she has no idea how hideous she really is. The use of a poetic mistress in this manner has parallels within the Catullan corpus, and is also referenced in the work of Martial. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Catullus 63 is one of the most unusual of Latin poems, and also one of the most difficult for literary interpreters. In this paper I would like to discuss it from three angles, connected by the common factor of change or alteration: ethnicity, the poem's alteration of Attis' previous ethnic identity to make him Greek and to stress the contrast with the poem's Asiatic setting; gender, its transsexual use of previous female literary characters as models for Attis' two speeches;2) and genre, the literary form of the poem and its alteration and mixture of various types of generic antecedent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]