Note 13 — Chapter XV

There is some uncertainty as to the exact date of his birth and death. The statement of Jerome is that he was born at Verona in the year 87 b.c., and that he died at Rome, at the age of thirty, in the year 57 b.c. But this last date is contradicted by allusions in the poems to events and circumstances, such as the expeditions of Caesar across the Rhine and into Britain, the second Consulship of Pompey, the preparations for the Eastern expedition of Crassus, which belong to a later date. The latest incident which Catullus mentions is the speech of his friend Calvus, delivered in August 54 b.c. against Vatinius13. A line in the poem, immediately preceding that containing the allusion to the speech of Calvus,—