I
In the effort to dull the edge of his mental anguish by physical
exhaustion Catullus had walked far out from the town, through
vineyards and fruit-orchards displaying their autumnal stores and
clamorous with eager companies of pickers and vintagers. On coming
back to the eastern gate he found himself reluctant to pass from the
heedless activities of the fields to the bustle of the town streets
and the formal observances of his father's house. Seeking a quiet
interlude, he turned northward and climbed the hill which rose high
above the tumultuous Adige. The shadows of the September afternoon
had begun to lengthen when he reached the top and threw himself upon
the ground near a green ash tree.
The bodily exercise had at least done him this service, that the
formless misery of the past weeks, the monstrous, wordless sense of
desolation, now resolved itself into a grief for which inner words,
however comfortless, sprang into being. Below him Verona, proud
sentinel between the North and Rome, offered herself to the embrace
of the wild, tawny river, as if seeking to retard its ominous journey
from Rhaetia's barbarous mountains to Italy's sea by Venice. Far to
the northeast ghostly Alpine peaks awaited their coronal of sunset
rose. Southward stretched the plain of Lombardy. Within easy reach
of his eye shimmered the lagoon that lay about Mantua. The hour veiled
hills and plain in a luminous blue from which the sun's radiance was
excluded. Through the thick leaves of the ash tree soughed the
evening wind, giving a voice to the dying day. In its moan Catullus
seemed to find his own words: "He is dead, he is dead." His brother
was dead. This fact became at last clear in his consciousness and
he began to take it up and handle it.
The news had come two weeks ago, just as he was on the point of flying
from Rome and the autumn fevers to the gaieties of Naples and Baiae.
That was an easy escape for a youth whose only taskmasters were the
Muses and who worked or played at the behest of his own mood. But
his brother, Valerius, had obeyed the will of Rome, serving her,
according to her need, at all seasons and in all places. Stationed
this year in Asia Minor he had fallen a victim to one of the disastrous
eastern fevers. And now Troy held his ashes, and never again would
he offer thanks to Jupiter Capitolinus for a safe return to Rome.
As soon as the letter from Valerius's comrade reached him, Catullus
had started for Verona. For nearly ten years he had spoken of himself
as living in Rome, his house and his work, his friendships and his
love knitting him closely, he had supposed, into the city's life.
But in this naked moment she had shown him her alien and indifferent
face and he knew that he must go _home_ or die. It was not until he
saw his father's stricken eyes that he realised that, for once,
impulse had led him into the path of filial duty. In the days that
followed, however, except by mere presence, neither mourner could
help the other. His father's inner life had always been inaccessible
to Catullus and now in a common need it seemed more than ever
impossible to penetrate beyond the outposts of his noble stoicism.
With Catullus, on the other hand, a moved or troubled mind could
usually find an outlet in swift, hot words, and, in the unnatural
restraint put upon him by his father's speechlessness, his despair,
like a splinter of steel, had only encysted itself more deeply.
To-day he welcomed the relief of being articulate.
The tie between his brother and himself was formed on the day of his
own birth, when the two year old Valerius--how often their old nurse
had told the story!--had been led in to see him, his little feet
stumbling over each other in happy and unjealous haste. Through the
years of tutelage they had maintained an offensive and defensive
alliance against father, nurses and teachers; and their playmates,
even including Caelius, who was admitted into a happy triumvirate,
knew that no intimacy could exact concessions from their fraternal
loyalty. Their days were spent in the same tasks and the same play,
and the nights, isolating them from the rest of their little world,
nurtured confidence and candour. Memories began to gather and to
torture him: smiling memories of childish nights in connecting
bedrooms, when, left by their nurse to sleep, each boy would slip
down into the middle of his bed, just catching sight of the other
through the open door in the dim glow of the nightlamp, and defy
Morpheus with lively tongue; poignant memories of youthful nights,
when elaborate apartments and separate servants had not checked the
emergence into wholesome speech of vague ambitions, lusty hopes and
shy emotions. It was in one of these nights that Valerius had first
hit upon his favourite nickname for his brother. Pretty Aufilena had
broken a promise and Catullus had vehemently maintained that she was
less honest than a loose woman who kept her part of a bargain. It
was surprising that a conversation so trifling should recur in this
hour, but he could see again before him his brother's smiling face
and hear him saying: "My Diogenes, never let your lantern go out.
It will light your own feet even if you never find a truthful woman."
All this exquisite identity of daily life had ended eight years ago.
Catullus felt the weight of his twenty-six years when he realised
that ever since he and Valerius had ceased to be boys they had lived
apart, save for the occasional weeks of a soldier's furloughs. Their
outward paths had certainly diverged very widely. He had chosen
literature and Valerius the army. In politics they had fallen equally
far apart, Catullus following Cicero in allegiance to the
constitution and the senate, Valerius continuing his father's
friendship for Caesar and faith in the new democratic ideal.
Different friendships followed upon different pursuits, and
divergent mental characteristics became intensified. Catullus grew
more untamed in the pursuit of an untrammelled individual life,
subversive of accepted standards, rich in emotional incident and
sensuous perception. His adherence to the old political order was
at bottom due to an aesthetic conviction that democracy was vulgar.
To Valerius, on the contrary, the Republic was the chief concern and
Caesar its saviour from fraud and greed. As the years passed he became
more and more absorbed in his country's service at the cost of his
own inclinations. Gravity and reserve grew upon him and the sacrifice
of inherited moral standards to the claims of intellectual freedom
would to him have been abhorrent.
And yet there had not been even one day in these eight years when
Catullus had felt that he and his brother were not as close to each
other as in the old Verona days. He had lived constantly with his
friends and rarely with his brother, but below even such friendships
as those with Caelius and Calvus, Nepos and Cornificius lay the bond
of brotherhood. In view of their lives this bond had seemed to
Catullus as incomprehensible as it was unbreakable. And he had often
wondered--he wondered now as he lay under the ash tree and listened
to the wind--whether it had had its origin in some urgent
determination of his mother who had brooded over them both.
She had died before he was six years old, but he had one vivid memory
of her, belonging to his fifth birthday, the beginning, indeed, of
all conscious memory. The day fell in June and could be celebrated
at Sirmio, their summer home on Lake Benacus. In the morning, holding
his silent father's hand, he had received the congratulations of the
servants, and at luncheon he had been handed about among the large
company of June guests to be kissed and toasted. But the high festival
began when all these noisy people had gone off for the siesta. Then,
according to a deep-laid plan, his mother and Valerius and he had
slipped unnoticed out of the great marble doorway and run hand in
hand down the olive-silvery hill to the shore of the lake. She had
promised to spend the whole afternoon with them. Never had he felt
so happy. The deep blue water, ruffled by a summer breeze, sparkled
with a million points of crystal light. Valerius became absorbed in
trying to launch a tiny red-sailed boat, but Catullus rushed back
to his mother, exclaiming, "Mother, mother, the waves are laughing
too!" And she had caught him in her arms and smiled into his eyes
and said: "Child, a great poet said that long ago. Are you going to
be a poet some day? Is that all my bad dreams mean?"
Then she had called Valerius and asked if they wanted a story of the
sea, and they had curled up in the hollows of her arms and she had
told them about the Argo, the first ship that ever set forth upon
the waters; of how, when her prow broke through the waves, the sailors
could see white-faced Nereids dance and beckon, and of how she bore
within her hold many heroes dedicated to a great quest. It was the
first time Catullus had heard the magic tale of the Golden Fleece
and in his mother's harp-like voice it had brought him his first
desire for strange lands and the wide, grey spaces of distant seas.
Then he had felt his mother's arm tighten around him and something
in her voice made his throat ache, as she went on to tell them of
the sorceress Medea; how she brought the leader of the quest into
wicked ways, so that the glory of his heroism counted for nothing
and misery pursued him, and how she still lived on in one disguise
after another, working ruin, when unresisted, by poisoned sheen or
honeyed draught. Catullus began to feel very much frightened, and
then all at once his mother jumped up and called out excitedly, "Oh,
see, a Nereid, a Nereid!" And they had all three rushed wildly down
the beach to the foamy edge of the lake, and there she danced with
them, her blue eyes laughing like the waves and her loosened hair
shining like the red-gold clouds around the setting sun. They had
danced until the sun slipped below the clouds and out of sight, and
a servant had come with cloaks and a reminder of the dinner hour.
Now from the hill above Verona Catullus could see the red gold of
another sunset and he was alone. Valerius, who had known him with
that Nereid-mother, had gone forever. Because they had lain upon the
same mother's breast and danced with her upon the Sirmian shore,
Catullus had always known that his older brother's sober life was
the fruit of a wine-red passion for Rome's glory. And Valerius's
knowledge of him--ah, how penetrating that had been!
Across the plain below him stretched the road to Mantua. Was it only
last April that upon this road he and Valerius had had that revealing
hour? The most devastating of all his memories swept in upon him.
Valerius had had his first furlough in two years and they had spent
a week of it together in Verona. The day before Valerius was to leave
to meet his transport at Brindisi they had repeated a favorite
excursion of their childhood to an excellent farm a little beyond
Mantua, to leave the house steward's orders for the season's honey.
What a day it had been, with the spring air which set mind and feet
astir, the ride along the rush-fringed banks of the winding Mincio
and the unworldly hours in the old farmstead! The cattle-sheds were
fragrant with the burning of cedar and of Syrian gum to keep off
snakes, and Catullus had felt more strongly than ever that in the
general redolence of homely virtues, natural activities and
scrupulous standards all the noisome life of town and city was kept
at bay. The same wooden image of Bacchus hung from a pine tree in
the vineyard, and the same weather-worn Ceres stood among the first
grain, awaiting the promise of her sheaves. Valerius had been asked
by his father's overseer to make inquiries about a yoke of oxen, and
Catullus went off to look at the bee-hives in their sheltered corner
near a wild olive tree. When he came back he found his brother seated
on a stone bench, carving an odd little satyr out of a bit of wood
and talking to a fragile looking boy about twelve years old.
Valerius's sympathetic gravity always charmed children and Catullus
was not surprised to see this boy's brown eyes lifted in eager
confidence to the older face.
"So," Valerius was saying, "you don't think we work only to live?
I believe you are right. You find the crops so beautiful that you
don't mind weeding, and I find Rome so beautiful that I don't mind
fighting." "Rome!" The boy's face quivered and his singularly sweet
voice sank to a whisper. "Do you fight for Rome? Father doesn't know
it, but I pray every day to the Good Goddess in the grainfield that
she will let me go to Rome some day. Do you think she will?" Valerius
rose and looked down into the child's starry eyes. "Perhaps she will
for Rome's own sake," he said. "Every lover counts. What is your name,
Companion-in-arms? I should like to know you when you come."
"Virgil," the boy answered shyly, colouring and drawing back as he
saw Catullus. A farm servant brought up the visitors' horses.
"Goodbye, little Virgil," Valerius called out, as he mounted. "A fair
harvest to your crops and your dreams."
The brothers rode on for some time without speaking, Valerius rather
sombrely, it seemed, absorbed in his own thoughts. When he broke the
silence it was to say abruptly: "I wonder if, when he goes to Rome,
he will keep the light in those eyes and the music in that young
throat." Then he brought his horse close up to his brother's and spoke
rapidly as if he must rid himself of the weight of words. "My Lantern
Bearer, you are not going to lose your light and your music, are you?
The last time I saw Cicero he talked to me about your poetry and your
gifts, which you know I cannot judge as he can. He told me that for
all your 'Greek learning' and your 'Alexandrian technique' no one
could doubt the good red Italian blood in your verses, or even the
homely strain of our own little town. I confess I was thankful to
hear a literary man and a friend praise you for not being cosmopolitan.
I am not afraid now of your going over to the Greeks. But are you
in danger of losing Verona in Rome?"
The gathering dusk, the day's pure happiness, the sense of impending
separation opened Catullus's heart. "Do you mean Clodia?" he asked
straightforwardly. "Did Cicero talk of her too?" "Not only Cicero,"
Valerius had answered gently, "and not only your other friends. Will
you tell me of her yourself?" "What have you heard?" Catullus asked.
Valerius paused and then gave a direct and harsh reply: "That she
was a Medea to her husband, has been a Juno to her brother's Jupiter
and is an easy mistress to many lovers."
After that, Catullus was thankful now to remember, he himself had
talked passionately as the road slipped away under their horses' feet.
He had told Valerius how cruel the world had been to Clodia. Metellus
had been sick all winter and had died as other men die. He had
belittled her by every indignity that a man of rank can put upon his
wife, but she had borne with him patiently enough. Because she was
no Alcestis need she be called a Medea or a Clytemnestra? And because
the unspeakable Clodius had played Jupiter to his youngest sister's
Juno need Clodia be considered less than a Diana to his Apollo? As
for her lovers--his voice broke upon the word--she loved him,
Catullus, strange as that seemed, and him only. Of course, like all
women of charm, she could play the harmless coquette with other men.
He hated the domestic woman--Lucretius's dun-coloured wife, for
instance--on whom no man except her mate would cast an eye.
He wanted men to fall at his Love's feet, he thanked Aphrodite that
she had the manner and the subtle fire and the grace to bring them
there. Her mind was wonderful, too, aflame, like Sappho's, with the
love of beauty. That was why he called her Lesbia. He had used
Sappho's great love poem (Valerius probably did not know it, but it
was like a purple wing from Eros's shoulder) as his first messenger
to her, when his heart had grown hot as AEtna's fire or the springs
of Thermopylae. She had finally consented to meet him at Allius's
house. Afterwards she had told him that the day was marked for her
also by a white stone.
If Valerius could only know how he felt! She was the greatest lady
in Rome, accoutred with wealth and prestige and incomparable beauty.
And she loved him, and was as good and pure and tender-hearted as
any unmarried girl in Verona. He was her lover, but often he felt
toward her as a father might feel toward a child. Catullus had
trembled as he brought out from his inner sanctuary this shyest
treasure. And never should he forget the healing sense of peace that
came to him when Valerius rode closer and put his arm around his
shoulder. "Diogenes," he said, "your flame is still bright. I could
wish you had not fallen in love with another man's wife, and if he
were still living I should try to convince you of the folly of it.
But I know this hot heart of yours is as pure as the snow we see on
the Alps in midsummer. That is all I need to know." And they had ridden
on in the darkness toward the lights of home.
The wind rose in a fresh wail: "He is dead, he is dead." The touch
of his arm was lost in the unawakening night. His perfect speech was
stilled in the everlasting silence. A smile, both bitter and wistful,
came upon Catullus's lips as he remembered a letter he had had
yesterday from Lucretius, bidding him listen to the voice of Nature
who would bring him peace. "What is so bitter," his friend had urged,
"if it comes in the end to sleep? The wretched cannot want more of
life, and the happy men, men like Valerius, go unreluctantly, like
well-fed guests from a banquet, to enter upon untroubled rest. Nor
is his death outside of law. From all eternity life and death have
been at war with each other. No day and no night passes when the first
cry of a child tossed up on the shores of light is not mingled with
the wailings of mourners. Let me tell you how you may transmute your
sorrow. A battle rages in the plain. The earth is shaken with the
violent charges of the cavalry and with the tramping feet of men.
Cruel weapons gleam in the sun. But to one afar off upon a hill the
army is but a bright spot in the valley, adding beauty, it may well
be, to a sombre scene. And so, ascending into the serene citadel of
Knowledge and looking down upon our noisy griefs, we may find them
to be but high lights, ennobling life's monotonous plain. My friend,
come to Nature and learn of her. Surely Valerius would have wished
you peace."
"Peace, peace!" Catullus groaned aloud. Lucretius seemed as remote
as the indifferent gods. Valerius, who knew his feet were shaped for
human ways, would have understood that he could not scale the cold
steeps of thought. If he suffered in this hour, what comfort was there
in the thought of other suffering and other years? If Troy now held
Valerius, what peace was there in knowing that its accursed earth
once covered Hector and Patroclus also, and would be forever the
common grave of Asia and of Europe? What healing had nature or law
to give when flesh was torn from flesh and heart estranged from heart
beyond recall?
Rising, Catullus looked down upon the unresting river. As he walked
homeward, clear-eyed, at last, but unassuaged, he knew that for him
also there could never again be peaceful currents. Like the Adige,
his tumultuous grief, having its source in the pure springs of
childish love, must surge through the years of his manhood, until
at last it might lose itself in the vast sea of his own annihilation.