Strabo’s account of Cisalpine Gaul (‘the Keltic land within the Alps’) provides neglected evidence for the changing ethnography of the Transpadane area in the early first century BC. In 102 BC the existing Gallic peoples (Insubres and Cenomani) were dispossessed by the invading Cimbri, who held the whole area until they in turn were defeated by Marius the following year; the land was taken by the Romans for veteran settlements that in 89 BC were given the status of ‘Latin colonies’. By Strabo’s time they were important cities, and one of them was Catullus’ native Verona. Although ‘Catullus’ may be a Gallic name, his father’s ownership of the prime site of Sirmio makes it very likely that he was descended from one of the colonists.