Wholly reliable biographical information about Catullus and Horace is somewhat difficult to come by. Nevertheless, a fairly clear picture of their lives can be constructed through an examination of references in their own writings, supplemented by evidence from later sources such as Suetonius (lul. 73; Vita Hor.), Apuleius (Apol. 10), and Jerome (Chron. 150, 154). A fuller discussion of Catullus’ life can be found in Marilyn Skinner’s ‘‘Introduction’’ to this volume; only a few salient points need be repeated here. As a Roman citizen and provincial aristocrat from the Transpadane city of Verona, Catullus embarked upon at least the preliminary stages of a political career, coming to Rome and subsequently serving from 57 to 56 bc on the staff of C. Memmius, governor of Bithynia for that year. Nothing much came of this, however, and Catullus seems to have spent the remainder of his life as a man of leisure among the Roman elite, mixing socially with political leaders and high-ranking aristocrats including C. Julius Caesar, M. Tullius Cicero, and P. Clodius Pulcher (not to mention Clodia Metelli), as well as rising stars such as the orators M. Caelius Rufus and C. Asinius Pollio, and his friends and fellow poets of the neoteric circle (see, e. g., Hurley 2004; although for Catullus’ later years cf. Wiseman 1985).
Horace, who lived from 65 to 8 bc, appears to have led a somewhat more colorful life. By his own account the child of a well-to-do auction agent and former slave from Venusia in Apulia (his father having perhaps been made prisoner in 88 bc at the end of the Social War), he was taken as a boy to receive an elite education in Rome, and later went on to further study in Athens. While there he accepted in 43 bc a commission as a military tribune under M. Brutus, who was then raising a pro-Republican army for the coming war with Octavian and Marc Antony. Following the defeat of Brutus at the battle of Philippi the following year, Horace returned to Rome under Octavian’s general amnesty. By 39 bc he had become acquainted with the poets Vergil and Varius, and through them entered the social circle of C. Maecenas, Octavian’s close friend and adviser. The friendship and support of Maecenas and Octavian (especially after the latter became the emperor Augustus) enabled Horace to devote the remainder of his life to writing poetry (see, e. g., Armstrong 1989).
While highly disparate, the lives of Catullus and Horace nevertheless generate some interesting connections in terms of their respective personal trajectories. Depending on when the young Horace arrived in Rome, he may have been in the city at the same time as Catullus, who would have died when Horace was around 11 years old. It is also important to note that Horace and Catullus were friends with many of the same people, notably Asinius Pollio, consul in 40 bc but barely out of his teens when Catullus knew him (see Catull. 12; Hor. Carm. 2.1), Catullus’ fellow Transpadane Quintilius Varus, in his later years a noted legal scholar and literary critic (Catull. 10, 22; Hor. Carm. 1.24 and Ars P. 438-44), and Alfenus Varus, also a well-known jurist and a Transpadane, and suffect consul in 39 bc (Catull. 30; Hor. Sat. 1.3.130 and Carm. 1.18). (For those poems in which only the name ‘‘Varus’’ is given, scholars have variously identified the individual in question as Quintilius or Alfenus; in any event the available evidence supports the establishment of a link between both Varuses and our two poets, who would have known these men some fifteen years apart.) Lastly, Catullus and Horace both demonstrate a lingering awareness of their specifically Italian roots, as manifested for example in the expression of a certain self-conscious and almost defensive pride in their home districts (see, e. g., Catull. 39; Hor. Carm. 3.30). It could perhaps be argued that this regional consciousness was bolstered by the fact that both men hailed from distant corners of Italy but now were moving in the most exclusive circles of elite Roman society. Certainly Catullus and Horace appear at times to betray a certain ambivalence or sense of critical detachment regarding their lives among the powerful elite of the Roman metropolis, although their reasons for this ambivalence will have been very different (Wiseman 1985; Lyne 1995).
World History
