Gaius Valerius Catullus was born in or near Verona in 84 B.C. to a prosperous family which had connections to Julius Caesar. With the encouragement of his elder brother, Catullus began writing poetry in his youth, and seemed to have been influenced by Callimachus and other Alexandrine and earlier Greek poets. He favored the style of the neoterics, who prized highly polished technical achievement in their sophisticated, urbane, witty, short poems. (Notes adapted from biographical sketch by Ken Hope.)