Introduction

Summary

If Catullus had been born fifty years earlier, in the midst of the Gracchan revolution, or fifty years later, on the eve of the battle of Actium, he would have had a very different life from the one which he did have – and he would have been a very different poet. But this presupposes that we know when Catullus was in fact born; do we? According to St Jerome (Chron. 1930), he was born in Verona in 87 bc (‘Gaius Valerius Catullus scriptor lyricus Veronae nascitur’). The reference to Verona tallies with what can be inferred from the poems. In one poem he begs a fellow poet to visit him in Verona (35.3), in another he appears to write from Verona but explains that his primary residence is in Rome (68a.27–8, 34–5).