Gaius Valerius Catullus was a Latin poet, best known for his short, passionate love lyrics. He was born in Verona in northern Italy.
Background
It is likely that his family was rich and prominent; for Julius Caesar was a frequent guest at his father's table, and Catullus, though he once complained wittily of spider webs in his purse, was able to maintain a villa at Sirmio, near Verona, and another on the edge of the Sabine hills. While still in his youth, Catullus was sent to Rome, and there, except for occasional absences, he passed the remaining years of his short life.
Career
A well-recommended young provincial might have made a career in the forum and law courts, but Catullus had little taste for the business of life and occupied himself with poetry and love. He became part of a group of younger poets--the "New Poets"--who derived something of their technique and inspiration from the learned poetry of the Alexandrian period. Two of the most distinguished poets in this group he counted among his intimate friends, Helvius Cinna, who accompanied him to Bithynia, and Licinius Calvus, an aristocrat and a politician of some importance. Catullus seems to have moved easily in the literary and fashionable society of the capital and was soon introduced to the salon of Clodia, the Lesbia of his poems. Clodia was the wife of Metellus Celer, consul in 60, and the sister of Publius Clodius, the personal and political enemy of Cicero. Bearer of a centuries-old name, she was beautiful and profligate: for her, Catullus, a brilliant young poet, was one in a succession of lovers; for Catullus she was the passion and torment of his life. At some time before 57, when already depressed by Clodia's unfaithfulness, Catullus received news that his brother, the only member of the family he seems to have cared for, had died in Asia Minor near Troy. In the spring of 57 Catullus set out for Bithynia, where he spent a tedious year on the staff of the provincial governor, Memmius, an amateur poet and an indifferent Epicurean, to whom Lucretius dedicated his De rerum natura. Catullus had certainly hoped for some financial gain from his trip; but in this he was disappointed, and in two poems (10, 28) written after his return he bitterly abused Memmius for his stinginess and want of decency. During his stay in Bithynia Catullus visited his brother's grave; and in a moving poem (101) described the performance of the immemorial ritual and the solemn leave-taking of the tomb, "atque in perpetuum, frater, ave atique vale" ("and so forever, brother, hail and farewell"). In the spring of 56 Catullus happily left Bithynia on a small yacht he had purchased; and after visiting Rhodes, and probably some of the famous cities in the Aegean, he returned home to Sirmio (46, 31, 4). The date of his death is uncertain. St. Jerome states that he was born in 87 and died in his thirtieth year at Rome; but since a number of poems were written after 57, Jerome is mistaken either about the year of Catullus' birth or his age at the time of his death. The latest datable references in his poems are to events which occurred in 55-54.