Per consulatum perierat Vatinius,—
was, till the appearance of Schwabe's 'Quaestiones Catullianae,' accepted as a proof that Catullus had actually witnessed the Consulship of Vatinius in 47 B.C. But it has been satisfactorily shown that that line refers to the boasts in which Vatinius used to indulge after the conference at Luca, or after his own election to the Praetorship, and not to their actual fulfilment at a later time. There is thus no evidence that Catullus survived the year 54 B.C.; and some expressions in some of his later poems, as, for instance,—
Malest Cornifici tuo Catullo,—
and—
Quid est Catulle? quid moraris emori?
are thought to indicate the anticipation of approaching death. But if 54 B.C. is to be accepted as the year of his death, one of Jerome's two other statements, viz., that he was born in the year 87 B.C. and that he died at the age of thirty, must be wrong. Most critics and commentators hold that the first date is right, and that the mistake lies in the words 'xxx. aetatis anno.' Mr. Munro, with more probability, believes the error to lie in the 87 B.C., and that Jerome, 'as so often happens with him, has blundered somewhat in transferring to his complicated era, the Consulships by which Suetonius would have dated.' He argues further, that the phrase 'iuvenalia tempora,' in the passage quoted above from Ovid and written by him at the age of twenty-five, is more applicable to one who died at the age of thirty than of thirty-three. A further argument for believing that the 'xxx. aetatis anno' is right, and the date 87 B.C. consequently wrong, is that the age at which a person died was more easily ascertained than the date at which he was born, owing to the common practice of recording the former in sepulchral inscriptions. It is easy to see how a mistake might have occurred in substituting the first of the four successive Consulships of Cinna (87 B.C.) for the last in 84 B.C.; but it is not so obvious how the substitution of xxx. for xxxiii. could have taken place. The only ground for assuming that the date of 87 B.C. is more likely to be right, is that thereby the disparity of age between Catullus and his mistress Clodia, who must have been born in 95 or 94 B.C., is somewhat lessened. But when we remember that she was actually twelve years older than M. Caelius Rufus, who succeeded Catullus as her lover, and that Cicero in his defence of Caelius speaks of her as supporting from her own means the extravagance of her youthful ('adulescentis') lovers[557], there is no more difficulty in supposing that she was ten than that she was seven years older than Catullus. Moreover, the brotherly friendship in which Catullus lived with Calvus, and his earlier intimate relations with Caelius and Gellius, who were all born in or about the year 82 B.C., seem to indicate that he was nearer to them in age than he would have been if born in 87 B.C. Between the age of twenty and thirty a difference of five years is not frequent among very intimate associates, who live together on a footing of perfect freedom. Again, the expression of the feelings both of love and friendship in the earlier poems of Catullus—written about the year 61 or 60 B.C.—seems more like that of a youth of twenty-three or four, than of twenty-six or seven, especially when we remember that, by his own confession, he had entered at a precociously early age on his career both of pleasure and of poetry. The date 84 B.C. accordingly seems to fit the recorded facts of his life and the peculiar character of his poetry better than that of 87 B.C.; and there seems to be more opening for a mistake in assigning the particular date of the poet's birth and death, than in recording the number of years which he lived.
It seems, therefore, most probable that he was born in the year 84 B.C., and that he died at the age of thirty, either late in 54 B.C. or early in 53 B.C. The much less important, but still more disputed question as to his 'praenomen,' appears now to be conclusively settled, in accordance with the evidence of Jerome and Apuleius, in favour of Gaius, and against Quintus. In the large number of places in which he speaks of himself, he invariably calls himself 'Catullus'; and in the best MSS. his book is called 'Catulli Veronensis liber.' His Gentile name Valerius is confirmed by Suetonius in his life of Julius Caesar; and the evidence of inscriptions shows that that name was not uncommon in the district near Verona. How it happened that a branch of this patrician Roman house was settled in Cisalpine Gaul we do not know; but that the family of Catullus was one of high consideration in his native district, and maintained relations with the great families of Rome, is indicated by the intimate footing on which Julius Caesar lived with his father, and also by the fact that the poet was received as a friend into the best houses of Rome,—such as that of Hortensius, Manlius Torquatus, Metellus Celer,—shortly after his arrival there. Although some humorous complaints of money difficulties—the natural consequences of his fashionable pleasures—occur in his poems[558], yet from the fact of his possessing, in his father's lifetime, a country house on Lake Benacus and a farm on the borders of the Sabine and the Tiburtine territories, and of his having bought and manned a yacht in which he made the voyage from Bithynia to the mouth of the Po, it may be inferred that he belonged to a wealthy senatorian or equestrian family. One or two expressions, such as 'se atque suos omnes,' and again, 'te cum tota gente, Catulle, tua'[559] seem to speak of a large connexion of kinsmen: but we only know of one other member of his own family, his brother, whose early death in the Troad is mentioned with very genuine feeling in several of his poems. The statement of Jerome that he was born at Verona is confirmed by Ovid and Martial, and by the poet himself. He speaks of the 'Transpadani' as his own people ('ut meos quoque attingam'); he addresses Brixia (the modern Brescia), as—
Veronae, mater amata meae;
he speaks of one of his fellow-townsmen, as—
Quendam municipem meum.