It will not be denied that the present work is called for. In 1859 I designed a commentary on Catullus, and only interrupted it to reconstitute the text as a preliminary. But the earlier design, for which from the first I had accumulated a considerable store of materials, had never been abandoned, and after the publication of the text in 1867 became the principal object to which my studies were directed.

As compared with Virgil and Horace, or even with Tibullus and Propertius, Catullus may almost be said to have been during the last century a neglected book. While each of those poets has been edited by scholars of first-rate ability, nothing has been done for Catullus since the publication of Doering's edition in 1788. How imperfect that edition is is known to every one. Doering's chief merit was his brevity. He carefully avoided all discussion where discussion was more than usually interesting, and when the student was asking for information on the numerous points where the poems touch on the personal or public history of the time, was contented to illustrate his author by quotations from Lotichius.

This neglect was certainly not justified by the history of the poems in the preceding centuries. From Parthenius and Palladius at the end of the fifteenth century, to Vulpius and Conradinus de Allio in the former half of the eighteenth, Catullus was edited and reedited by a series of scholars including some of the greatest names in philology.