This elegant poet was born of respectable parents, in the territory of Verona, but whether at the town so called, or on the peninsula of Sirmio, which projects into the Lake Benacus, has been a subject of much controversy. The former opinion has been maintained by Maffei and Bayle(460), and the latter by Gyraldus(461), Schoell(462), Fuhrmann(463), and most modern writers.
The precise period, as well as place, of the birth of Catullus, is a topic of debate and uncertainty. According to the Eusebian Chronicle, he was born in 666, but, according to other authorities, in 667(464) or 668. In consequence of an invitation from Manlius Torquatus, one of the noblest patricians of the state, he proceeded in early youth to Rome, where he appears to have kept but indifferent company, at least in point of moral character. He impaired his fortune so much by extravagance, that he had no one, as he complains,
“Fractum qui veteris pedem grabati In collo sibi collocare possit.”
This, however, must partly have been written in jest, as his finances were always sufficient to allow him to keep up a delicious villa, on the peninsula of Sirmio, and an expensive residence at Tibur. With a view of improving his pecuniary circumstances, he adopted the usual Roman mode of re-establishing a diminished fortune, and accompanied Caius Memmius, the celebrated patron of Lucretius, to Bithynia, when he was appointed Prætor of that province. His situation, however, was but little meliorated by this expedition, and, in the course of it, he lost a beloved brother, who was along with him, and whose death he has lamented in verses never surpassed in delicacy or pathos. He came back to Rome with a shattered constitution, and a lacerated heart. From the period of his return to Italy till his decease, his time appears to have been chiefly occupied with the prosecution of licentious amours, in the capital or among the solitudes of Sirmio. The Eusebian Chronicle places his death in 696, and some writers fix it in 705. It is evident, however, that he must have survived at least till 708, as Cicero, in his Letters, talks of his verses against Cæsar and Mamurra as newly written, and first seen by Cæsar in that year(465). The distracted and unhappy state of his country, and his disgust at the treatment which he had received from Memmius, were perhaps sufficient excuse for shunning political employments(466); but when we consider his taste and genius, we cannot help regretting that he was merely an idler, and a debauchee. He loved Clodia, (supposed to have been the sister of the infamous Clodius,) a beautiful but shameless woman, whom he has celebrated under the name of Lesbia(467), as comparing her to the Lesbian Sappho, her prototype in total abandonment to guilty love. He also numbered among his mistresses, Hypsithilla and Aufilena, ladies of Verona. Among his friends, he ranked not only most men of pleasure and fashion in Rome, but many of her eminent literary and political characters, as Cornelius Nepos, Cicero, and Asinius Pollio. His enmities seem to have been as numerous as his loves or friendships, and competition in poetry, or rivalship in gallantry, appears always to have been a sufficient cause for his dislike; and where an antipathy was once conceived, he was unable to put any restraint on the expression of his hostile feelings. His poems are chiefly employed in the indulgence and commemoration of these various passions. They are now given to us without any order or attempt at arrangement: They were distributed, indeed, by Petrus Crinitus, into three classes, lyric, elegiac, and epigrammatic,—a division which has been adopted in a few of the earlier editions; but there is no such separation in the best MSS., nor is it probable that they were originally thus classed by the author, as he calls his book _Libellum Singularem_; and they cannot now be conveniently reduced under these heads, since several poems, as the nuptials of Peleus and Thetis, are written in hexameter measure. To others, which may be termed occasional poems expressing to his friends a simple idea, or relating the occurrences of the day, in iambic or phalangian verse, it would be difficult to assign any place in a systematic arrangement. Under what class, for instance, could we bring the poem giving a detail of his visit to the house of the courtezan, and the conversation which passed there concerning Bithynia? The order, therefore, in which the poems have been arbitrarily placed by the latest editors and commentators, however immethodical, is the only one which can be followed, in giving an account of the miscellaneous productions of Catullus.