Lesbia was the literary pseudonym of the great love of Roman poet

Poet

A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...

 Gaius Valerius Catullus

Catullus

Gaius Valerius Catullus was a Latin poet of the Republican period. His surviving works are still read widely, and continue to influence poetry and other forms of art.-Biography:...

 (ca. 82-52 BC).
She was a poet in her own right, included with Catullus in a list of famous poets whose lovers "often" helped them write their verses.
The name Lesbia was chosen for several reasons, including its metrical match with her real name. The 2nd century AD orator Apuleius of Madaura gave a list of four such identities in court, to demonstrate his great erudition:


Catullus

Catullus

Gaius Valerius Catullus was a Latin poet of the Republican period. His surviving works are still read widely, and continue to influence poetry and other forms of art.-Biography:...

's Lesbia: Clodia

Ticida's Perilla: Metella

Propertius' Cynthia: Hostia

Tibullus

Tibullus

Albius Tibullus was a Latin poet and writer of elegies.Little is known about his life. His first and second books of poetry are extant; many other texts attributed to Tibullus are of questionable origins. There are only a few references to him in later writers and a short Life of doubtful authority...

' Delia: Plania


Apuleius' information is thought to have come from Suetonius

Suetonius

Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus, commonly known as Suetonius , was a Roman historian belonging to the equestrian order in the early Imperial era....

' de poetis, or Suetonius' most important source, a work on late Republican and Augustan period poets by Gaius Julius Hyginus

Gaius Julius Hyginus

Gaius Julius Hyginus was a Latin author, a pupil of the famous Cornelius Alexander Polyhistor, and a freedman of Caesar Augustus. He was by Augustus elected superintendent of the Palatine library according to Suetonius' De Grammaticis, 20...

.

The name also suggests literary and erotic connotations, evoking the famous circle of young girl lovers on Lesbos Island

Lesbos Island

Lesbos is a Greek island located in the northeastern Aegean Sea. It has an area of with 320 kilometres of coastline, making it the third largest Greek island. It is separated from Turkey by the narrow Mytilini Strait....

, who included the poetess Sappho

Sappho

Sappho was an Ancient Greek poet, born on the island of Lesbos. Later Greeks included her in the list of nine lyric poets. Her birth was sometime between 630 and 612 BC, and it is said that she died around 570 BC, but little is known for certain about her life...

. Catullus's poem 35 celebrating his poet friend Caecilius of Novum Comum also mentions the devotion of Caecilius' girlfriend, who is herself accorded a remarkable tribute as "Sapphic girl, more learned than the Muse" (lines 16-17: Sapphica puella / musa doctior). This could well be Catullus' Lesbia before she became his own lover.

Lesbia is the subject of 25 of Catullus' 116 surviving poems, and these display a wide range of emotions (see Catullus 85

Catullus 85

Catullus 85 is a poem by the Roman poet Catullus for his mistress Lesbia. Its declaration of conflicting feelings "I hate and I love" is renowned for its force and brevity.The meter of the poem is the elegiac couplet.-Text:...

), ranging from tender love (e. g. Catullus 5, Catullus 7), to sadness and disappointment (e.g. Catullus 72), and to bitter sarcasm (e.g. Catullus 8), following the often unsteady course of Catullus' relationship.

Lesbia is traditionally identified with Claudia Metelli Celeris (uxor), the notorious Clodia

Clodia

Clodia, Clodia, Clodia, (born Claudia Pulchra Prima or Maior or also Quadrantaria c. 95 BC or c. 94 BC and often referred to in scholarship as Clodia Metelli ("Clodia the wife of Metellus"), was the third daughter of the patrician Appius Claudius Pulcher and Caecilia Metella Balearica.She is not to...

 of Cicero's extant speech (of March 56 BC) Pro Caelio

Pro Caelio

Marcus Tullius Cicero gave the speech, Pro Caelio, on April 4, 56 BC, in defense of Marcus Caelius Rufus. It is unknown why Cicero agreed to defend Caelius, who had been a political enemy, though various theories have been postulated. Caelius' was charged with vis , one of the most serious crimes...

, and the elder sister and lover of Publius Clodius Pulcher

Publius Clodius Pulcher

Publius Clodius Pulcher was a Roman politician known for his popularist tactics...

.