The metrical technique of Catullus in his elegiac verse has not yet received the detailed examination that has been given to the usage of Tibullus, Propertius and Ovid by Platnauer in his Latin Elegiac Verse (Cambridge, 1951). Robinson Ellis in the Prolegomena to his Commentary on Catullus (Oxford, 1876) introduced this part of his subject in these words: ‘If we examine the metrical peculiarities of these elegies, we shall find their defects to lie mainly in the too exclusive imitation of Greek models.’ He then goes on to speak of the Greek practice of allowing the thought to run on uninterruptedly without necessarily a pause at the end of the couplet, and of the Greek freedom in admitting words of any length in the last place in the pentameter: ‘in these respects the Catullian elegy is completely Greek.’ In the Introduction to the Select Elegies of Propertius (Macmillan, 1884) by J.P. Postgate there is a brief reference to what is described as the ‘carelessness’ of Catullus about the ending of the pentameter, and a further censure is implied in the mention of ‘his extraordinary number of elisions’; in short, Postgate describes the elegiac of Catullus as ‘still semi-barbarous’. Clearly, we have a problem here, since it is hard to reconcile the two descriptions of verse which in some respects is ‘completely Greek’ and in others ‘semi-barbarous’.