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Catullus (Great Lives from History: The Ancient World, Prehistory-476)

Early Life

Like most figures of Greek and Roman antiquity, Catullus (ka-TUH-luhs) provides little information about his early life, and the ancient sources add few facts. His family was prominent in Verona, which was then a part of the province of Cisalpine Gaul. They also owned a villa on the peninsula of Sirmio (modern Sermione) in the Lago di Garda, about twenty miles east of Verona. Catullus’s later references to this country home reveal his deep attachment to the family seat. Suetonius’s biography of

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