Lust

Catullus 7 is tricky, as it seems to balance wholesome love with a touch of sexual voyeurism —  thus, it' goes under both "love" and "lust." When Lesbia asks how many kisses will be enough, Catullus answers not with a number but with images of vast abundance: the grains of Libyan sand at silphium-rich Cyrene and the countless stars that witness secret lovers at night. By replacing arithmetic with metaphor, Catullus suggests that love cannot be quantified or satisfied through moderation. At the same time, the reference to “furtivos hominum vident amores” frames their intimacy as private and transgressive, reinforcing love as something that exists outside social surveillance. Even the final insistence that no malicious tongue be able to “fascinare” their kisses implies that love must be protected from envy and external judgment. 

Catullus 5 belongs under both "love" and "lust" because it depicts loving someone as an urgent experience that inherently rejects restraint. From “Vivamus, mea Lesbia, atque amemus,” Catullus frames love as something inseparable from life itself. He dismisses outside judgment by insisting that the “rumores senum severiorum” be valued at “unius assis,” showing that love matters more than both public opinion and money. The poem’s focus on time — “soles occidere et redire possunt” versus the “una nox perpetua” awaiting all humans — acts as the urgency. And the repeated counting of kisses (“da mi basia mille, deinde centum”) emphasizes physical intimacy and reciprocity, hallmarks of Catullus’s love and lust poetry rather than humor, abstract reflection, or philosophical musings.

Catullus 79 fits under “lust” because it reduces Catullus' desire to surface-level attraction and social performance rather than emotional attachment, like his love poems. The poem fixates on Lesbius’s physical appeal — his “formosus” appearance — and his success with women, including Catullus’s own lover, but this attractiveness is portrayed as basically interchangeable. By mocking Lesbius for prostituting himself to gain admiration, Catullus frames sexual appeal as a commodity. The insult that Lesbius could rival even a “pulcher” man underscores how lust operates through reputation and display, not intimacy. Unlike Catullus’s love poems, which emphasize exclusivity, reciprocity, or emotional suffering, Poem 79 presents desire as shallow, public, and detached.