Why do some scholars identify Lesbia with Clodia?

Scholars identify the poet Catullus’s mistress, Lesbia, with Clodia based on both ancient testimony and internal evidence from his poetry.1

The identification is supported by the 2nd-century writer Apuleius, who explicitly stated that Lesbia was a pseudonym for Clodia. This theory gained further traction through 16th-century scholarship, which linked the poet's mistress to one of the three sisters of the Roman politician Publius Clodius Pulcher. Specifically, she is often identified as the wife of the aristocrat Metellus Celer.12

This identification is bolstered by parallels between the character of Lesbia in Catullus's poems and the historical portrait of Clodia provided by Cicero in his speech Pro Caelio. In that defense of Marcus Caelius Rufus, Cicero depicted Clodia as a cultivated, witty, and licentious woman. These traits align with the descriptions of the mistress in Catullus's work, who is portrayed as a woman of high social standing and complex, often turbulent, romantic life.12