of Jerome, which rests on the much earlier authority
of Suetonius, but also that of Apuleius. In support of _Quintus_ a
passage was quoted from the _Natural History_ of Pliny (xxxvii. 6, 81).
But the _praenomen_ Q. is omitted in the best MSS., and in other
passages of the same author the poet is spoken of as "Catullus
Veronensis." The mistake may have arisen from confusion with Q. Catulus,
the colleague of Marius in the Cimbric War, himself also the author of
lyrical poems. Allusions in the poems show that the date of his death
given by Jerome (57 B.C.) is wrong, and that Catullus survived the
second consulship of Pompey (55 B.C.) (cf. lv. 6, cxiii. 2), and was
present in August of the following year at the prosecution of Vatinius
by Licinius Calvus (cf. liii.). The allusion in lii. 3--

"Per consulatum peierat Vatinius,"

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