following year at the prosecution of Vatinius by Licinius Calvus (cf. liii.). The allusion in lii. 3—
does not prove that Catullus must have lived to see the consulship bestowed on Vatinius in the end of 47 B.C. but only that Vatinius, after being praetor in 55 B.C., was in the habit of boasting of the certainty of his attaining the consulship, as Cleopatra was in the habit of confirming her most solemn declarations by appealing to her hope of one day administering justice in the Capitol (cf. Haupt, “Quaestiones Catullianae,” Opuscula, vol. i. 1875). There is then nothing to prove that Catullus lived beyond the month of August 54 B.C. Some of the poems (as xxxvii. and lii.) may have been written during his last illness. If he died in 54 B.C. or early in 53 B.C., Catullus must either have been born later than 87 B.C., or have lived to a greater age than thirty. Catullus is described by Ovid as “hedera iuvenalia cinctus Tempora” (Amor. iii. 9. 61),—a description somewhat more suitable to a man who dies in his thirtieth year than to one who dies three or four years later. Further, the age at which a man dies is more likely to be accurately remembered than the particular date either of his death or of his birth, and the common practice of recording the age of the deceased in sepulchral inscriptions must have rendered a mistake about this less likely to occur. It seems, therefore, on the whole, most likely that Jerome’s words “xxx. aetatis anno” are correct, and that Catullus was born in 84 B.C.
The statement that he was born at Verona is confirmed by passages in Ovid and Martial. Pliny the elder, who was born at Como, speaks of Catullus in the preface to his Natural History, as his “countryman” (conterraneus), and the poet speaks of Verona as his home, or at least his temporary residence, in more than one place. His occasional residence in his native place is further attested by the statement of Suetonius (Julius Caesar, 73), that “Julius Caesar accepted the poet’s apology for his scurrilous verses upon him, invited him to dine with him on the same day, and continued his intimacy with his father as before.” As this incident could only have happened during the time that Julius Caesar was pro-consul, the scene of it must have been in the Cisalpine province, and at the house of the poet’s father, in or near Verona. The verses apologized for were those contained in poems xxix. and lvii., the former of which must have been written after Caesar’s invasion of Britain, so that this interview probably took place in the winter of 55–54 B.C. The fact that his father was the host of the great pro-consul, and lived on terms of intimacy with him, justifies the inference, that he was, in wealth and rank, one of the principal men of the province. The only other important statement concerning the poet’s life which rests on external authority is that of Apuleius, that the real name of the Lesbia of the poems was Clodia. Another, which concerns the reputation which he enjoyed after his death, is given in the Life of Atticus by Cornelius Nepos (12. 4). It is to the effect that he regarded Lucretius and Catullus as the two greatest poets of his own time.
The poems of Catullus consist of 116 pieces, varying in length from 2 to 408 lines, the great mass of them being, however, short pieces, written in lyric, iambic or elegiac metre. The arrangement cannot be the poet’s; it is neither chronological nor in accordance with the character of the topics. The shorter poems, lyric or iambic, are placed first, next the longer epithalamia, (most being written in hexameters) amongst which the Attis is inserted and then those written in the elegiac metre. But, though no chronological order is observed, yet internal evidence enables us to determine the occasions on which many of the poems were written, and the order in which they followed one another. They give a very vivid image of various phases of the poet’s life, and of the strong feelings with which persons and things affected him. They throw much light also on the social life of Rome and of the provincial towns of Italy in the years preceding the outbreak of the second civil war. In this respect they may be compared with the letters of Cicero.
The poems extend over a period of seven or eight years, from 61 or 62 till 54 B.C. Among the earliest are those which record the various stages of the author’s passion for Lesbia. It is in connexion with this passion that he is generally mentioned, or alluded to, by the later Roman poets, such as Propertius, Ovid, Juvenal and Martial. Her real name, as we learn from Apuleius, was Clodia. The admiration of Catullus for Sappho, the Lesbian poetess, which is clearly indicated by the imitation of her language in his fifty-first and sixty-second poems, affords an obvious explanation of the Greek name which he gave to his Roman mistress. Clodia was the notorious sister of Publius Clodius Pulcher, and in the year 56 she charged M. Caelius Rufus, after tiring of him, as she had of Catullus, with an attempt to poison her. It was in defence of Rufus that Cicero described the spell she exercised over young men, in language which might have been applied to her previous relations with the youthful poet, as well as those with the youthful orator and politician.
Poems concerning Lesbia occur among both the earliest and the latest of those contained in the series. They record the various stages of passion through which Catullus passed, from absolute devotion and a secure sense of returned affection, through the various conditions of distrust and jealousy, attempts at renunciation, and short-lived “amoris integrationes,” through the “odi et amo” state, and the later state of savage indignation against both Lesbia and his rivals, and especially against Caelius Rufus, till he finally attains, not without much suffering and loss, the last state of scornful indifference. Among the earliest of the poems connected with Lesbia, and among those written in the happiest vein, are ii. and iii., and v. and vii. The 8th, “Miser Catulle, desinas ineptire,” perhaps the most beautiful of them all, expresses the first awakening of the poet to a sense of her unworthiness, before the gentler have given place to the fiercer feelings of his nature. His final renunciation is sent in a poem written after his return from the East, with a union of imaginative and scornful power, to his two butts, Furius and Aurelius (xi., “Furi et Aureli, comites Catulli”), who, to judge by the way Catullus writes of them, appear to have been hangers-on upon him, who repaid the pecuniary and other favours they received by giving him grounds for jealousy, and making imputations on his character (cf. xv., xvi., xviii., xxiii.).
The intrigue of Caelius Rufus with Lesbia began in 59 or 58 B.C. It was probably in the earlier stages of this liaison that the 68th poem was written, from which it appears that Catullus, at the time living at Verona, and grieving for the recent death of his brother in the Troad, had heard of Lesbia’s infidelity, and, in consideration of her previous faithlessness in his favour, was not inclined to resent it very warmly. Two other poems in the series express the grief which Catullus felt for the death of his brother,—one, the 65th, addressed to the orator Hortensius, who is there, as in some of Cicero’s letters, called Hortalus or Ortalus, and sent to him along with the Coma Berenices (lxvi.), a translation of a famous elegy of Callimachus. The other poem referring to this event (ci.) must have been composed some years later, probably in 56 B.C., when Catullus visited his brother’s tomb in the Troad, on his return from Bithynia. Between 59 and 57 B.C. most of the lampoons on Lesbia and her numerous lovers must have been written (e.g. xxxvii., xxxix., &c.). Some, too, of the poems expressive of his more tender feelings to her, such as viii. and lxxvi. belong also to these years; and among the poems written either during this period or perhaps in the early and happier years of his liaison, some of the most charming of his shorter pieces, expressing the affection for his young friends Verannius and Fabullus (ix., xii., xiii.), may be included.
In the year 57 the routine of his life was for a short time broken by his accompanying the propraetor C. Memmius, the friend to whom Lucretius dedicates his great poem, as one of his staff, to the province of Bithynia. His object was probably to better his fortunes by this absence from Rome, as humorous complaints of poverty and debt (xiii., xxvi.) show that his ordinary means were insufficient for his mode of life. He frankly acknowledges the disappointment of these hopes, and still more frankly his disgust with his chief (x., xxviii.). Some of the most charming and perfect among the shorter poems express the delight with which the poet changed the dulness and sultry climate of the
