In this poem Catullus dedicates his work to Cornelius Nepos (Auson. Praef. ad Pacatum, 1–3), a countryman of his own (Padi accola, Plin. H. N. iii. 127, cf. Plin. Epist. iv. 28, Municipum iuorum, Cornelii Nepotis et T. Catii), and a man of some eminence in literature. Cornelius Nepos had fostered the young poet at the outset of his career, probably had praised his poems in a work of his own (vv. 3–8), seemingly the Chronica mentioned by Ausonius, Epist. xvi. Apologos Tiliani et Nepotis Chronica, quasi alios apologos, nam et ipsa instar sunt fabularum … misi (Teuffel, History of Roman Literature, 185. 3). Perhaps, as Teuffel suggests, 185. 2, Catullus had been recommended to his compatriot on his first arrival in Rome.

It is uncertain whether the poem is intended as a dedication of all that Catullus wrote, or only of his shorter and lighter lyrics. The latter view has been maintained by Bruner (Acta Societatis Fennicae, vii. 601–656). (1) Catullus calls his work libellus, a word hardly applicable to so many poems in such various metres, and actually used of short single pieces, as by Statius of each of his siluae, Praef. to Bk. I. (2) This would be more likely to hold good at a time when papyrus was still the ordinary material for writing-purposes, and parchment, which seems to have come into general use only towards the close of the first century a. d., was rare.