Gaius Valeri Catullus (Gaius Valerius Catullus)

(ca. 84 - OK. 54 BC)
As almost all the Latin poets, Catullus - the provinces, he was born in Verona in northern Italy. Probably, . his family are rich and nobility, . as Julius Caesar did not just staying with the father of Catullus, . Catullus himself, . though he crumbles into comical complaints about the Web in your wallet, . could contain one villa at Sirmione (peninsula on Lake Benaco, . sovr,
. Garda) near Verona and the second - on the spurs of the Sabine Mountains. In his early youth Catullus went to Rome and there, except for a few absences, spent all the years of his short life.
A young provincial with good connections can make a career on the forum and in court, but in Catullo was not practical vein, and he fully devoted himself to poetry and love. Catullus came to a group of young poets 'neoterikov' (ie. 'new poets'), learn some of the techniques of academic Alexandrian poetry. The two most prominent poets of this group of Catullus considered his closest friends: Guy Gelviya Tsinnu, who accompanied him to Bithynia, and Guy Licinius Calva, an aristocrat and a fairly well-known politician. Apparently, Catullus perfectly mastered in the metropolitan literary and secular circles, where he soon met up with future heroine of his poems - Lesbian. Apparently, in the life of her name was Clodius, she was the wife of Quintus Caecilius Metellus Tselera, consul 60 BC, Publius and his sister Claudia Pulchra, personal and political enemy of Cicero. Claudia, who came from an old family, very nicely and windy, and portraying the brilliant young poet Catullus as another lover, but she became a passion of Catullus and flour for life. Shortly before 57 BC, had already plunged into despair infidelity Claudia, Catullus was one more sad news: his brother, the only relative, whom he loved, died in Asia Minor, near Troy. In the spring of 57 BC. Catullus went to Bithynia, where he languished in the retinue of the year proconsul Gaius Memmi, poet, amateur and not very sincere Epicurean, whom Lucretius dedicated his poem On the Nature of Things. Catullus, apparently hoping to draw from this trip kind of material benefit, but he was disappointed, and in two poems, written on his return (10, 28), it dramatically exposes the meanness and baseness Memmi. Being in Bithynia, . Catullus visited the grave of his brother and a touching poem (101) described them perfect funeral rites and solemn farewell to the grave: 'atque in perpetuum, . frater, . ave atque vale '(' hello now and forever, . my brother, . and goodbye '),
. In the spring of 56 BC. Catullus left Bithynia to his acquiring the small boat and after a visit to Rhodes, as well as probably some of the famous cities of the Aegean Sea returned to their homeland, in Sirmione (46, 31, 4). Date of his death has not been established. Sv. Jerome wrote that Catullus was born in 87 BC. and died in Rome at the age of 30 years, however, since a number of poems written after 57 BC, Jerome is mistaken about the date of birth, or Catullus, or on his or her age at death. The most recent of the references listed in his lyrics relate to the events of 55-54 BC