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III. The Poet (1)
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2016
Extract
From external sources we have only one indication of Catullus’s birth and death, and that is wrong. Jerome’s Chronicle dates him 87-57 B.C. saying that he died in his thirtieth year. It is highly probably that C. Memmius, with Catullus on his staff, was in Bithynia in 57-56, and certain that Catullus was still writing in 55, as he alludes to Caesar’s expedition to Britain (11.11-12). Jerome is more likely to be in error about the date than the age. This led Lachmann to propose the dates of 77-47, supposing that Vatinius could not swear by his consulship before becoming consul in 47, but this is unjustified as we know from Cicero (Vat. 5.11). Paul Maas in a lively but fragile article during the Second World War noted that no poem requires a date before 56 (unless Lesbia is Clodia Metelli – and she may have remarried: see below), thought that Catullus’s brother died in 54, and that Catullus, made two voyages to Asia and lived till about 52. The case for this was further taken up by the argument (of long standing) that Jerome must have confused the consulate of Q. Caecilius Metellus Nepos in 57 with that of Q. Caecilius Metellus Pius in 52. But Metellus Pius was not one of the original consuls in 52 and could not have given his name to the year.
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Footnotes
1.
See also P. Gilbert and M. Renard in Latomus (1942), 93 ff.; H. Bardon (1970A), pp. 5-6; (1970B), pp. 5-6.
References
Notes
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