Cato, Publius Valerius

▪ Roman poet

      teacher, scholar, and poet associated, like Catullus (Catullus, Gaius Valerius), with the Neoteric (neōteros), or New Poets, movement.

      Valerius Cato went to Rome from Cisalpine Gaul (present-day northern Italy, especially the Po Valley). He was often mentioned by other members of the Neoteric movement, which flourished in the 50s and 40s BC. His scholarship was highly praised, and he was compared with Zenodotus of Ephesus, the great critic and Alexandrian librarian of the 3rd century BC, as well as with Crates of Mallus, a celebrated Alexandrian philologist. He was said to have been perennially short of money; he was eventually forced to sell his villa near Tusculum (present-day Tuscolo, Italy).

      Valerius Cato was well respected in his time. Fellow poet Helvius Cinna praised his Dictynna (“Diana”), which seems to have been an erudite short epic (what modern scholars call an epyllion) that probably influenced subsequent poets. Lydia, which may have been a collection of amorous poems, was praised by the Neoterian poet Ticida.

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