CATULLUS.
Lucretius and Catullus were regarded by their contemporaries as
the greatest poets of the last age of the Republic[1]. They alone
represent the poetry of that time to the modern world. Although
born into the same social rank, and acted upon by the dissolving
influences, the intellectual stimulus, and the political agitation
of the same time, no poets could be named of a more distinct type of
genius and character. The first has left behind him only the record
of his impersonal contemplation. His life was passed more in communion
with Nature than in contact with the world: his experiences of
happiness or sorrow entered into his art solely as affording materials
for his abstract thought. The second has stamped upon his pages the
lasting impression of the deepest joy and pain of his life, as well
as of the lightest cares and fancies that occupied the passing hour.
Intensely social in his temper and tastes, he lived habitually the
life of the great city and the provincial town, observing and sharing
in all their pleasures, distractions, and animosities, and only
escaping, from time to time, for a brief interval to his country
houses on the Lago di Garda and in the neighbourhood of Tivoli. He
seems to have had no other aim in life than that of passionately
enjoying his youth in the pleasures of love, in friendly intercourse
with men of his own rank and age, in the practice of his art, and
the study of the older poets, by whom that art was nourished. All his
poems, with the exception of three or four works of creative fancy
and one or two translations, have for their subject some personal
incident, feeling, or character. Nearly all have some immediate
relation to himself, and give expression to his love or hatred, his
admiration or scorn, his happiness or misery. There is nearly as
little in them of reflexion on human life as of meditative communion
with Nature; but, as individual men and women excited in him intense
affection or passion, so certain beautiful places and beautiful
objects in Nature charmed his fancy and sank into his heart. He shows
himself, spiritually and intellectually, the child of his age in
his ardent vitality, in the license of his life and satire, in the
fierceness of his antipathies; and also in his eager reception of the
spirit of Greek art, his delight in the poets of Greece and the
tales of the Greek mythology, in his striving after form and grace in
composition, and in the enthusiasm with which he anticipates the joy
of travelling among 'the famous cities of Asia.' In all our thoughts
of him he is present to our imagination as the 'young Catullus'--
hedera iuvenalia vinctus
Tempora.
More than any great ancient, and than any great modern poet, with the
exception, perhaps, of Keats, he affords the measure of what youth
can do, and what it fails to do, in poetry. Although the exact age at
which he died is disputed, yet the evidence of his poems shows that
he did not outlive the boyish heart. In character he was even younger
than in actual age. Nearly all his work was done between the years 61
and 54 B.C.; and most of it, apparently, with little effort. Born with
the keenest capacities of pleasure and of pain, he never learned to
regulate them: nor were they, seemingly, united with such enduring
vital power as to carry him past the perilous stage of his career, so
as to enable him with maturer power and more concentrated industry to
employ his genius and accomplishment on works of larger scope, more
capable of withstanding the shocks and chances of time, than the small
volume which, by a fortunate accident, has preserved the flower and
bloom of his life, and the record of all the 'sweet and bitter' which
he experienced at the hands of that Power--
Quae dulcem curis miscet amaritiem.
The ultimate preservation of his poems depended on a single copy,
which, after being lost to the world for four centuries, was
re-discovered in Verona, the poet's birthplace, during the fourteenth
century. As that copy was again lost, the text has to be determined
from the conflicting testimony of later copies, only two of which are
considered by the latest critics to be of independent value. There is
thus much more uncertainty, and much greater latitude for conjecture,
as to the actual words of Catullus, than in the case of almost any
other Roman poet. As lines not found in this volume are attributed to
him by ancient authors, and as he appears to allude to the composition
of love poems in his first youth[2] which must have been written
before the earliest of the Lesbia-poems, it may be inferred that we do
not possess all that he wrote. It has been generally assumed that the
dedicatory lines to Cornelius Nepos, with which the volume opens, were
prefixed by the poet to the collected edition of his poems which we
now possess; but Mr. Ellis, following Bruner, has shown that that
poem may more probably have been prefixed to a smaller and earlier
collection. The lines--
Namque tu solebas
Meas esse aliquid putare nugas, etc.--
imply that earlier poems of Catullus were well known for some time
before the writing of this dedication; and allusions in more than one
of the poems[3] prove that the poems of an earlier date must have
been in circulation before those in which these allusions occur were
written. In the time of Martial, a small volume, probably chiefly
consisting of the Lesbia-poems, was known as the 'Passer Catulli[4].'
It may be inferred that, as he wrote his poems from his earliest youth
till his death, he gave them to the world at various stages of his
career. He may have combined in these libelli some of the elegiac
epigrams with his iambics and phalaecians, just as Martial, who
regarded him as his master, did afterwards. Even some of the longer
poems, such as the Janua or the Epithalamia, may have formed part of
these collections. The attention which he attracted from men eminent
in social rank and literature,--such as Hortensius, Manlius Torquatus,
Memmius, etc.,--shows that his genius was soon recognised: and his
eager craving for sympathy and appreciation would naturally prompt
him to bring his various writings immediately before the eyes of his
contemporaries. It seems likely, therefore, that this final collection
from several shorter collections already in circulation was made some
time after the poet's death[5]; that some poems were omitted which
were not thought worthy of preservation, and, possibly, that some may
have then been added which had not previously been given to the world.
It would be difficult to believe that poems expressive of the most
passionate love and the bitterest scorn of the same person could have
appeared for the first time in the same collection.
This collection consists of about 116 poems[6], written in various
metres, and varying in length from epigrams of only two lines to an
'epyllion' which extends to 408 lines. The poems numbered from i to
lx, are short lyrical or satiric pieces, written in the phalaecian,
glyconic, or iambic metres, and devoted almost entirely to subjects of
personal interest. The middle of the volume is occupied by the longer
poems--numbered lxi to lxviii^b--of a more purely artistic and
mostly an impersonal character, written in the glyconic, galliambic,
hexameter, and elegiac metres. The latter part of the volume is
entirely occupied by epigrammatic or other short pieces in elegiac
metre, varying in length from two to twenty-six lines. Many of the
epigrams refer to the persons who are the subject of the short
lyric and iambic pieces. There is no attempt to arrange the poems in
anything like chronological order. Thus, among the first twelve poems,
ii, iii, v, vii, ix, xii, are probably to be assigned to the years 61
and 60 B.C., while iv, x, xi, certainly belong to the last three years
of the poet's life. It is difficult to imagine on what principle
the juxtaposition of certain poems was determined. Probably, in some
cases, it may have been on the mere mechanical one of filling up the
pages symmetrically by poems of suitable length. Sometimes we find
poems of the same character, or referring to the same person, grouped
together, and yet varied by the insertion of one or two pieces related
to the larger group by contrast rather than similarity of tone.
Thus the passionate exaltation of the earlier Lesbia-poems is first
relieved by a poem (iv) written in another metre, and appealing to a
much calmer class of feelings, and next varied by one (vi) written
in the same metre, and suggested by a friend's amour, which in its
meanness and obscurity serves as a foil to the glory and brightness of
the good fortune enjoyed by the poet. Yet this clue does not carry us
far in determining the principle, if indeed there was any principle,
on which either the short lyrical poems or the elegiac epigrams were
arranged. These various poems were written under the influence of
every mood to which he was liable; and, like other passionate lyrical
poets, he was susceptible of the most opposite moods. The most trivial
incident might give rise to them equally with the greatest joy or the
greatest sorrow of his life. As he felt a strong need to express, and
had a happy facility in expressing his purest and brightest feelings,
so he felt no shame in indulging, and knew no restraint in expressing,
his coarsest propensities and bitterest resentments: and he evidently
regarded his worst moods no less than his best as legitimate
material for his art. Thus pieces more coarse than almost anything in
literature are interspersed among others of the sunniest brightness
and purity. The feelings with which we linger over the exquisite
beauty of the 'Sirmio,' and are stirred by the noble inspiration of
the 'Hymn to Diana,' receive a rude shock from the two intervening
poems, characterised by a want of reticence and reserve not often
paralleled in the literature or the speech of civilised nations. In
a poet of modern times a similar collocation might be supposed
indicative of a cynical bitterness of spirit--of a mind mocking its
own purest impulses. But Catullus is too genuine and sincere a man,
too natural in his enjoyments, and too healthy in all his moods, to be
taken as an example of this distempered type of genius. It seems more
likely, as is conjectured by recent commentators[7], that the present
collection was made (perhaps at Verona) in a comparatively late
age, when the knowledge of the circumstances of Catullus and the
intelligent appreciation of his poems was lost.
These poems, whether good or bad, serious or trivial, are all written
with such transparent sincerity that they bring the poet before us
almost as if he were our contemporary. They make him known to us
in many different moods,--in joy and grief, in the ecstasy and
the despair of love, in the frank outpouring of affection and the
enjoyment of social intercourse, in the bitterness of his scorn and
animosity, in the license of his coarser indulgences. They enable us
to start with him on his travels; to enjoy with him the beauty of his
home on the Italian lakes; to pass with him from the life of letters
and idle pleasure and the brilliant intellectual society of Rome to
the more homely but not more virtuous ways and the more commonplace
people of his native province; to join with him in ridiculing some
affectation of an acquaintance, or to feel the contagion of his
admiration for genius or wit in man, grace in woman, or beauty in
Nature. In the glimpses of him which we get in the familiar round of
his daily life, we seem to catch the very turn of his conversation[8],
to hear his laugh at some absurd incident[9], to see his face brighten
as he welcomes a friend from a distant land[10], to mark the quick
ebullition of anger at some slight or rudeness[11], or to be witnesses
of his passionate tears as something recalls to him the memory of
his lost happiness, or makes him feel his present desolation[12]. His
impressible nature realises with extraordinary vividness of pleasure
and pain experiences which by most people are scarcely noticed. To be
rightly appreciated, his poems must be read with immediate reference
to the circumstances and situations which gave rise to them. We must
take them up with our feelings attuned to the mood in which they were
written. Hence, before attempting to criticise them, we must try, by
the help of internal and any available external evidence, to determine
the successive stages of his personal and literary career, and so
to get some idea of the social relations and the state of feeling of
which they were the expression.
There is some uncertainty as to the exact date of his birth and death.
The statement of Jerome is that he was born at Verona in the year 87
B.C., and that he died at Rome, at the age of thirty, in the year 57
B.C. But this last date is contradicted by allusions in the poems to
events and circumstances, such as the expeditions of Caesar across
the Rhine and into Britain, the second Consulship of Pompey, the
preparations for the Eastern expedition of Crassus, which belong to a
later date. The latest incident which Catullus mentions is the
speech of his friend Calvus, delivered in August 54 B.C. against
Vatinius[13]. A line in the poem, immediately preceding that
containing the allusion to the speech of Calvus,--
Per consulatum perierat Vatinius,--
was, till the appearance of Schwabe's 'Quaestiones Catullianae,'
accepted as a proof that Catullus had actually witnessed the
Consulship of Vatinius in 47 B.C. But it has been satisfactorily shown
that that line refers to the boasts in which Vatinius used to indulge
after the conference at Luca, or after his own election to the
Praetorship, and not to their actual fulfilment at a later time. There
is thus no evidence that Catullus survived the year 54 B.C.; and some
expressions in some of his later poems, as, for instance,--
Malest Cornifici tuo Catullo,--
and--
Quid est Catulle? quid moraris emori?
are thought to indicate the anticipation of approaching death. But if
54 B.C. is to be accepted as the year of his death, one of Jerome's
two other statements, viz. that he was born in the year 87 B.C. and
that he died at the age of thirty, must be wrong. Most critics and
commentators hold that the first date is right, and that the
mistake lies in the words 'xxx. aetatis anno.' Mr. Munro, with more
probability, believes the error to lie in the 87 B.C., and that
Jerome, 'as so often happens with him, has blundered somewhat in
transferring to his complicated era the Consulships by which Suetonius
would have dated.' He argues further, that the phrase 'iuvenalia
tempora,' in the passage quoted above from Ovid and written by him at
the age of twenty-five, is more applicable to one who died at the age
of thirty than of thirty-three. A further argument for believing that
the 'xxx. aetatis anno' is right, and the date 87 B.C. consequently
wrong, is that the age at which a person died was more easily
ascertained than the date at which he was born, owing to the common
practice of recording the former in sepulchral inscriptions. It is
easy to see how a mistake might have occurred in substituting the
first of the four successive Consulships of Cinna (87 B.C.) for the
last in 84 B.C.; but it is not so obvious how the substitution of xxx.
for xxxiii. could have taken place. The only ground for assuming that
the date of 87 B.C. is more likely to be right, is that thereby the
disparity of age between Catullus and his mistress Clodia, who must
have been born in 95 or 94 B.C., is somewhat lessened. But when we
remember that she was actually twelve years older than M. Caelius
Rufus, who succeeded Catullus as her lover, and that Cicero in his
defence of Caelius speaks of her as supporting from her own means the
extravagance of her youthful ('adulescentis') lovers[14], there is no
more difficulty in supposing that she was ten than that she was seven
years older than Catullus. Moreover, the brotherly friendship in which
Catullus lived with Calvus, and his earlier intimate relations with
Caelius and Gellius, who were all born in or about the year 82 B.C.,
seem to indicate that he was nearer to them in age than he would
have been if born in 87 B.C. Between the age of twenty and thirty
a difference of five years is not frequent among very intimate
associates, who live together on a footing of perfect freedom. Again,
the expression of the feelings both of love and friendship in the
earlier poems of Catullus--written about the year 61 or 60 B.C.--seems
more like that of a youth of twenty-three or four, than of twenty-six
or seven, especially when we remember that, by his own confession, he
had entered at a precociously early age on his career both of pleasure
and of poetry. The date 84 B.C. accordingly seems to fit the recorded
facts of his life and the peculiar character of his poetry better than
that of 87 B.C.; and there seems to be more opening for a mistake in
assigning the particular date of the poet's birth and death, than in
recording the number of years which he lived[15].
It seems, therefore, most probable that he was born in the year 84
B.C., and that he died at the age of thirty, either late in 54 B.C.
or early in 53 B.C. The much less important, but still more disputed
question as to his 'praenomen,' appears now to be conclusively
settled, in accordance with the evidence of Jerome and Apuleius, in
favour of Gaius, and against Quintus. In the large number of places
in which he speaks of himself, he invariably calls himself 'Catullus';
and in the best MSS. his book is called 'Catulli Veronensis liber.'
His Gentile name Valerius is confirmed by Suetonius in his life of
Julius Caesar; and the evidence of inscriptions shows that that name
was not uncommon in the district near Verona. How it happened that
this Roman patrician name had spread into Cisalpine Gaul we do not
know; but that the family of Catullus was one of high consideration in
his native district, and maintained relations with the great families
of Rome, is indicated by the intimate footing on which Julius Caesar
lived with his father, and also by the fact that the poet was received
as a friend into the best houses of Rome,--such as that of Hortensius,
Manlius Torquatus, Metellus Celer,--shortly after his arrival there.
It is quite possible that the last of these, who was Proconsul in
Cisalpine Gaul in 62 B.C., and to whom Cicero writes when governor of
that province, may have lived on the same footing as Julius Caesar
did with Catullus' father at Verona, and that, in that way, Catullus
obtained his first introduction to his wife Clodia, the Lesbia of the
poems. Although some humorous complaints of money difficulties--the
natural consequences of his fashionable pleasures--occur in his
poems[16], yet from the fact of his possessing, in his father's
lifetime, a country house on lake Benacus and a farm on the borders of
the Sabine and the Tiburtine territories, and of his having bought and
manned a yacht in which he made the voyage from Bithynia to the mouth
of the Po, it may be inferred that he belonged to a wealthy senatorian
or equestrian family. One or two expressions, such as 'se atque suos
omnes,' and again, 'te cum tota gente, Catulle, tua[17],' seem to
speak of a large connexion of kinsmen: but we only know of one other
member of his own family, his brother, whose early death in the Troad
is mentioned with very genuine feeling in several of his poems. The
statement of Jerome that he was born at Verona is confirmed by Ovid
and Martial, and by the poet himself. He speaks of the 'Transpadani'
as his own people ('ut meos quoque attingam'); he addresses Brixia
(the modern Brescia), as--
Veronae mater amata meae;
he speaks of one of his fellow-townsmen, as--
Quendam municipem meum.
Besides spending his early youth there, we find him, on three
different occasions, retiring thither from Rome, and making a
considerable stay there; first, at the time of his brother's death,
apparently at the very height of his _liaison_ with Clodia; next,
immediately after his return from Bithynia; and again in the winter of
55-54 B.C., when it is probable that his interview and reconciliation
with Julius Caesar took place. We find him inviting his friend, the
poet Caecilius, to come and visit him from the newly established
colony of Como. He had his friends and confidants among the youth of
Verona, and he records his intrigues both with the married women and
courtesans of the place[18]. He took a lively interest in the humorous
scandals of the Province, and he has made them the subjects of several
of his poems,--e.g. xvii and lxvii. Although his life was too full
of social excitement and human interests to make him dwell much on
natural beauty, yet the pure feeling expressed in the Sirmio--
Salve, o venusta Sirmio, atque ero gaude;
Gaudete vosque o vividae[19] lacus undae--
shows that he derived keen enjoyment from the familiar loveliness
of that 'ocellus' of 'all isles and capes': and in the illustrative
imagery of his more artistic poems we seem to find traces of the
impression made unconsciously on his imagination by the mountain
scenery of Northern Italy[20].
His native district afforded scope for the culture, which was the
serious charm of his life, as well as for the pleasures which formed
a large part of it. It was in the youth of Catullus that the power of
Greek studies was first felt by the impressionable race, half-Italian,
half-Celtic, of Cisalpine Gaul, which still remained outside of Italy,
and is called by him 'Provincia.' Among the men of letters belonging
to the last age of the Republic,--Cato, the grammarian and poet, the
great teacher of the poets of the new generation[21], described in
lines quoted by Suetonius as
Latina Siren
Qui solus legit ac facit poetas,--
Cornelius Nepos, the friend who early recognised the genius of
Catullus and to whom one of his 'libelli' was dedicated in the lines
now prefixed to the collection,--Quintilius Varus, probably the Varus
of poems x and xxii, and the friend whose death Horace laments in an
Ode to Virgil, and whose candour as a critic he commends in the Ars
Poetica,--Furius Bibaculus, Cornificius, and Caecilius, most of whom
were among the intimate friends of Catullus, came from, or resided in,
the North of Italy[22]. In the poem already mentioned he speaks of the
mistress of Caecilius as being--
Sapphica puella
Musa doctior,--
an indication that, not only in Rome but even in the northern
province, the finest literary taste and culture was shared by
women. Catullus shows in the earlier stage of his poetic career his
familiarity both with the 'Muse of Sappho,' and with the more laboured
art of Callimachus. His special literary butt, 'Volusius,' whose
poems are ridiculed under the title of 'Annales Volusi,' was also his
'Conterraneus,' being a native of the ancient 'Padua,' a town at
the mouth of the Po[23]. The strength of the impulse first given to
literary study in this age is marked also by the eminent names from
the North of Italy, which belong to the next generation, those of
Virgil, Cornelius Gallus, Aemilius Macer, Livy, etc. There is no
proof that Catullus left his native district in order to complete his
education, though it is not improbable that he may have done so and
come under the instruction of the 'Latina Siren,' with whom he was
later on terms of familiar intimacy (lvi); nor have we any sure sign
of his presence at Rome before the year 61 B.C.[24] He tells us that
he began his career both as an amatory poet and as a man of pleasure
in his earliest youth,--
Tempore quo primum vestis mihi tradita pura'st,
Iucundum cum aetas florida ver ageret,
Multa satis lusi: non est dea nescia nostri,
Quae dulcem curis miscet amaritiem[25].
One or two of the poems which we still possess may have been written
before Catullus settled in Rome, and before his genius was fully
awakened by his passion for Lesbia: but the great majority belong to a
later date; and if he did write many love poems before leaving Verona,
'in the pleasant spring-time of his life,' nearly all, if not all,
of them were omitted from the final collection. Even the 'Aufilena
poems,' which are based on an intrigue carried on at Verona, are
shown, by the lines in c:--
Cui faveam potius? Caeli, tibi, nam tua nobis
Per facta exhibita'st unica amicitia,
Cum vesana meas torreret flamma medullas,
to be subsequent to the _liaison_ with Clodia. This last line can only
refer to the one all-absorbing passion of the poet's life. His own
relations to Aufilena, in whose affections he seems to have tried to
supplant his friend Quintius, were subsequent to the composition of
that poem. It is possible, as Westphal suggests, that the Veronese
bride, 'viridissimo nupta flore puella' of the 17th poem, in whom
Catullus evidently took a lively interest, may have been this
Aufilena, at an earlier stage of her career.
The event which first revealed the full power of his genius, and which
brought the greatest happiness and the greatest misery into his life,
was his passion for 'Lesbia.' After the elaborate discussions of the
question by Schwabe, Munro, Ellis and others, it can no longer be
doubted that the lady addressed under that name was the notorious
Clodia; the [Greek: boopis] who appears so prominently in the second
book of Cicero's Letters to Atticus, and the 'Medea Palatina' whose
crimes, fascination, and profligacy stand out so distinctly in the
defence of Caelius. We learn first from Ovid that 'Lesbia' was a
feigned name; and the application of that name is easily intelligible
from the admiration which Catullus felt, and which his mistress
probably shared, for the 'Lesbian poetess,' whose passionate words he
addressed to his mistress when he was first dazzled by her exceeding
charm and beauty. Apuleius tells us further that the real name of
'Lesbia' was Clodia; and the truth of his statement is confirmed
by his mention in the same place of other Roman ladies, who
were celebrated by their poet-lovers,--Ticidas, Tibullus, and
Propertius,--under disguised names. The statement made there that the
real name of the Cynthia of Propertius was Hostia, is confirmed by the
line in one of his elegies,
Splendidaque a docto fama refulget avo[26].
The fact that this Clodia was the sister of P. Clodius Pulcher is also
indicated in the 79th poem of Catullus,
Lesbius est pulcher: quidni? quem Lesbia malit
Quam te cum tota gente, Catulle, tua.
The play on the word _pulcher_ might be illustrated by many parallel
allusions in Cicero's Letters to Atticus. The gratitude expressed by
Catullus to Allius[27], a man of rank and position, for having made
arrangements to enable him to meet his mistress in secret, clearly
shows that she could not have belonged to the class of _libertinae_,
in whose case no such precautions could have been necessary: and the
language of Catullus in the first period of his _liaison_--
Ille mi par esse deo videtur;
and again,
Quo mea se molli candida diva pedem
Intulit,
is like the rapture of a lover acknowledging the gracious
condescension of a superior, as well as the delight of passion
returned. Of the two kinds of lovers, those who 'allow themselves to
be loved' and are flattered by this tribute to their superiority, and
those who are carried out of themselves by their idealising admiration
of the object of their love, Catullus, in his earlier and happier
time, unquestionably belonged to the latter. Such a feeling, on the
part of a young provincial poet, although primarily inspired by charms
of person and manner, would naturally be enhanced by the thought
that the lady whom he loved belonged to one of the oldest and highest
patrician houses, and was the wife of one of the greatest nobles of
Rome, who was either actual Consul, or Consul designate, at the time
when she first returned the poet's passion. The subsequent course of
their _liaison_ affords further corroboration of her identity with the
famous Clodia. The rival against whom the poet's anger is most fierce
and bitter, is addressed by him as Rufus[28],--the cognomen of M.
Caelius, who became the lover of Clodia in the latter part of the year
59, and was defended by Cicero in a prosecution instigated by her
in the early part of 56 B.C. The speech of Cicero amply confirms the
charges of Catullus as to the multiplicity of her later lovers. As,
therefore, there seems no reason to doubt, and the strongest reason
to accept the statement of Apuleius that the real name of Lesbia was
Clodia; as the Lesbia of Catullus was, like her, evidently a lady of
rank and of great accomplishment[29]; as there was no other Clodia
of the family of Clodius Pulcher at Rome, except the wife of Metellus
Celer, to whom the statements made in the poems of Catullus could
apply; and as these statements closely agree with all that Cicero says
of her,--there is no reasonable ground for doubting their identity. If
it is urged, on the other side, that a lady of the rank and station of
Clodia cannot have sunk so low, as some of the later poems of Catullus
imply, it may be said that all that Catullus in his jealous wrath
imputed to her need not have been true, and also that other Roman
ladies of as high rank and position, both in the last age of the
Republic and in the early Empire, did sink as low[30].
That the intrigue was carried on and had even reached its second
stage--that of the 'amantium irae'--in the life-time of Metellus,
appears from the 83rd poem,
Lesbia mi praesente viro mala plurima dicit, etc.
Metellus was governor of the Province of Gallia Cisalpina in 62
B.C., and he must have returned to Rome early in 61 to stand for the
Consulship. Catullus may have become known to Clodia in his absence,
and the earliest poem addressed to her, the translation from Sappho,
which is expressive of passionate and even distant admiration rather
than of secure possession, may belong to the time of her husband's
absence. But in the 68th poem, which recalls most vividly the early
days of their love, when they met in secret at the house provided
by Allius, the lines, in which the poet excuses her faithlessness to
himself--
Sed furtiva dedit mira munuscula nocte,
Ipsius ex ipso dempta viri gremio[31]--
clearly imply that these meetings occurred after the return of
Metellus to Rome. The earlier love poems to Lesbia--those on her pet
sparrow, the 'Vivamus, mea Lesbia, atque amemus,' and the 'Quaeris
quot mihi basiationes,'--in all of which the feeling expressed is
one at once of passionate admiration and of perfect security,--belong
probably to the year 60, or to the latter part of the year 61 B.C. To
this period may, in all probability, be assigned some of the poet's
brightest and happiest efforts,--the Epithalamium in honour of the
marriage of Manlius and Vinia Aurunculeia[32], and the poems ix, xii,
xiii, commemorative of his friendship with Veranius and Fabullus. The
words in the last of these--
Nam unguentum dabo, quod meae puellae
Donarunt Veneres Cupidinesque--
seem to admit of no other explanation than that they were written
in the heyday of his passion. The lines in the poem, welcoming
Veranius,--
Visam te incolumem audiamque Hiberum
Narrantem loca, facta, nationes--
seem to speak of some adventures encountered in Spain: and from the
fact that three years later the two friends, who are always coupled
together as inseparable by Catullus, went together on the staff of
Calpurnius Piso, the father-in-law of Caesar, to his Province of
Macedonia, it seems a not unwarranted conjecture[33] that they were
similarly engaged at this earlier time, and had gone to Spain in
the train of Julius Caesar, and had returned with him to Rome in the
middle of the year 60 B.C.[34] The twelfth poem, which is interesting
as a testimony to the honour and good taste of Asinius Pollio, then
a boy of sixteen, was written somewhat earlier, while Veranius and
Fabullus were still in Spain.
The first hint of any rift in the loves of Catullus and Clodia
is contained in the 68th poem, written in the form of a letter to
Manlius[35]--
Quare, quod scribis Veronae turpe Catullo, etc.
Catullus had retired to Verona on hearing of the death of his
brother, and he was for a time so overwhelmed with grief as to become
indifferent both to poetry and love. He is as sincere and unreserved
in the expression of his grief as of his former happiness, and as
completely absorbed by it. He writes to Hortensius, enclosing, in
fulfilment of an old promise, a translation of the 'Coma Berenices' of
Callimachus, but at the same time expressing his loss of all interest
in poetry owing to his recent affliction,--
Etsi me adsiduo confectum cura dolore
Sevocat a doctis, Ortale, virginibus, etc.
In his letter to Manlius, in which he excuses himself on the same
ground for not sending any poetry of his own, and for not complying
with his request to send him some volumes of Greek poetry, on the
ground that his collection of books was at Rome, he notices, with a
feeling almost of hopeless indifference, a hint conveyed to him by
Manlius, of his mistress' faithlessness[36]. In the poem written
somewhat later to Allius,--
Non possum reticere deae qua me Allius in re, etc.--
in which his grief is still fresh but more subdued, and in which the
full tide of his old passion, as well as his old delight in his art,
returns to him, he speaks lightly of her occasional infidelities,--
Quae tamen etsi uno non est contenta Catullo
Rara verecundae furta feremus erae.
If he can no longer be her only lover, he still hopes to be the most
favoured. But he soon finds even this privilege denied to him. His
love-poetry henceforth assumes a different sound. For a time, indeed,
his reproaches are uttered in a tone of sadness not unmixed with
tenderness. Afterwards, even though his passion from time to time
revives with its old vehemence, and he again becomes the slave of
Lesbia's caprice, his tone becomes angry, hard, and scornful. Finally,
the evidence of her shameless life and innumerable infidelities with
Caelius, Gellius, Egnatius, and 'three hundred others,' enables him
utterly to renounce her. The earlier of the poems, both of anger and
reconciliation, may probably have been written in the life-time of
Metellus, i.e. in 60 or in the beginning of 59 B.C. But later in that
year Metellus died, suspected of being poisoned by his wife, who, on
the ground of that suspicion, was named by Caelius Rufus, after his
passion had merged in a hatred equal to that of Catullus, by the
terrible _oxymoron_ of 'Clytemnestra quadrantaria.' Her widowhood
gained for her absolute license in the indulgence of her propensities,
and the first use she made of her liberty was to receive Caelius Rufus
into her house on the Palatine. What her ultimate fate was we do not
know, but the language of Cicero, Caelius, and Catullus show that she
could inspire as deadly hatred as passionate admiration, and that
the 'Juno-like' charm of her beauty, the grace and fascination of her
presence, the intellectual accomplishment which made poets and orators
for a time her slaves, did not save her from sinking into the lowest
degradation.
The poems representing the second and third stage--that in which
passion and scorn strive with one another--of the relations to
'Lesbia,' and containing the savage attacks on his rivals, belong to
the years 59 and 58 B.C.: nor do there appear to be any other poems of
importance referable to this latter date. One or two poems, in which
his final renunciation is made with much scornful emphasis, belong to
a later date after his return from Bithynia. He went there early in
the year 57 B.C., on the staff of the Propraetor Memmius, and remained
till the spring of the following year. The immediate motive for this
step may have been his wish to escape from his fatal entanglement, but
the chances of bettering his fortunes, the congenial society of his
friend the poet Helvius Cinna and other members of the staff, and the
attraction of visiting the famous seats of the old Greek civilization,
were also powerful inducements to a man who combined a strong social
and pleasure-loving nature with the enthusiasm of a poet and a
scholar. His severance from his recent associations and from the
animosities they engendered was favourable to his happiness and his
poetry. He did not indeed improve his fortunes, owing, as he says, to
the poverty of the province and the meanness of his chief. He detested
Memmius, and has recorded his detestation in the hearty terms of abuse
of which he was a master; and he expresses his joy in quitting, in the
following spring, the dull monotony of the Phrygian plains and the hot
climate of Nicaea. But he had great enjoyment in his association with
his comrades on the Praetor's staff--
O dulces comitum valete coetus.--
He was attracted to one of them, Helvius Cinna, by warm admiration for
his poetic accomplishment, as well as by friendship[37]; and the time
spent by them together was probably lightened by the practice of their
art, and the study of the Alexandrine poets. Although the fame of
Cinna did not become so great as that of Catullus or Calvus, he seems
to have been regarded by the poets of that school in the light of a
master[38]; and it is probably owing to the example of his Zmyrna, so
highly lauded in the 95th poem of Catullus, that Catullus composed
his Epithalamium of Peleus and Thetis, Calvus composed his Io, and
Cornificius his Glaucus. A still more remarkable poem of Catullus, the
Attis, the subject of which, so remote not only from Roman but even
Greek life, is identified with the Phrygian highlands and the seats
of the worship of Cybele, probably owes its inspiration as well as
its local colouring to the poet's sojourn in this district. It is not
unlikely that it was during the leisure of the time spent in Bithynia
that these poems were commenced, as it was during his retirement to
Verona after his brother's death that his longer Elegiac poems were
written. The mention of the 'Catagraphi Thyni' in a later poem is
suggestive of the interest which he took in the novel aspects of
Eastern life opened up to him in the province. But it is in the poems
which are written in the year 56 B.C., that we chiefly note the happy
effect of the poet's absence from Rome, and of his emancipation from
his passion. Some of these poems,--more especially xlvi, ci, xxxi, and
iv,--are among the happiest and purest products of his genius. They
bring him before us eagerly preparing to start on his journey 'among
the famous cities of Asia,'--making his pious pilgrimage to his
brother's tomb in the Troad,--greeting his beloved Sirmio and the
bright waters of the Lago di Garda on his first return home, and
recalling sometime later to his guests by the shores of the lake the
memories of the places visited, and of the gallant bearing of his
pinnace, 'through so many wild seas,' on his homeward voyage. Some
of the poems written from Verona--those referring to his intrigue
or perhaps his disappointment with Aufilena, and the invitation to
Caecilius (xxxv), were probably composed about this time, before his
return to Rome. The 'Aufilena' poems belong certainly to a time
later than his passion for Lesbia; and during a still later visit to
Verona--probably that during which he met and was reconciled to Julius
Caesar--Catullus is found engaged in love-affairs in which Mamurra
was his rival. As the invitation to Caecilius was written after the
foundation of Como (B.C. 59), it could not have been sent by Catullus
during his earlier sojourns at Verona: and 'the ideas' which he wished
to interchange with the poet who was then engaged in writing a poem
on Cybele--'Dindymi domina,'--to which Catullus pointedly refers, may
well have been those suggested by his Eastern sojourn, and embodied
in the Attis. But soon afterwards we find him back in Rome, and the
lively and most natural comedy, dramatically put before us in x--
Varus me meus ad suos amores
Visum duxerat e foro otiosum--
bears the freshest impress of his recent Bithynian experiences. Poems
xxviii and xlviii, inspired by his hatred of Memmius and his sympathy
with the treatment, like to that which he had himself experienced,
which his friends Veranius and Fabullus had met with at the hands of
their chief Piso, probably belong to a later time, after the return of
Piso from his province in 55 B.C. Some critics have found the motive
of the famous lines addressed to Cicero--
Disertissime Romuli nepotum
Quot sunt quotque fuere, Marce Tulli--
in the speech delivered in the early part of 56 B.C., in defence of
Caelius, of which, from the prominence given in it to the vices of
Clodia, Catullus must have heard soon after his return to Rome. But
the words of the poem hardly justify this inference. Catullus was not
interested in the vindication of Caelius, who had proved false to
him as a friend, and supplanted him as a rival. And he was himself so
perfect a master of vituperation that he did not need to thank Cicero
for his having done that office for him in regard to Clodia. Yet
the reference to Cicero's eloquence, and to his supremacy in the law
courts--,
Tanto pessimus omnium poeta
Quanta tu optimus omnium patronus--
seems to point to some exercise of Cicero's special talent as an
advocate, for which Catullus was grateful. The great orator and the
great poet, who speaks so modestly of himself in the contrast he draws
between them, may have been brought together in many ways. They had
common friends and acquaintances--Hortensius, Manlius Torquatus,
Sestius, Licinius Calvus, Memmius, etc.; and they heartily hated
the same persons, Clodia, Vatinius, Piso, and others. The intimate
associates of Catullus shared the political views and sympathies which
the orator had professed at least up to the year 55 B.C. Cicero, too,
was naturally attracted to young men of promise and genius,--if they
did not belong too prominently to the 'grex Catilinae';--and, like Dr.
Johnson in his relations to Beauclerk and Boswell, he may have valued
their society more for their intellectual vivacity than their moral
virtues[39].
The poems written in the last two years of the poet's life do not
indicate any emancipation from the coarser passions and the fierce
animosities of the period immediately preceding the Bithynian journey.
To this later time may be assigned the famous lampoons on Julius
Caesar and Mamurra, the poems referring to some of his Veronese
amours, those addressed to Juventius, and the reckless,
half-bantering, half-savage assaults on 'Furius and Aurelius,' who
were both the butts of his wit and the sharers of his least reputable
pleasures. They seem to have been needy men, though of some social
standing[40], probably of the class of 'Scurrae,' who preyed on his
purse and made loud professions of devotion to him, while they abused
his confidence and his character behind his back. Some of the poems of
his last years, however, are indicative of a more genial frame of mind
and of happier relations with the world. It was at this time that he
enjoyed the intimate friendship of Licinius Calvus[41], to whom he was
united by similarity of taste and of genius, as well as by sympathy in
their personal and political dislikes. Four poems--one certainly among
the very last written by Catullus--are inspired by this friendship,
and all clearly prove that at least this source of happiness was
unalloyed by any taint of bitterness. Two other poems, the final
repudiation of Lesbia, and the bright picture of the loves of Acme and
Septimius, which, by their allusions to the invasion of Britain and
to the excitement preceding the Parthian expedition of Crassus and the
Egyptian expedition of Gabinius, show unmistakeably that they belong
to the last year of his life, afford conclusive evidence that neither
the exhausting passions, the rancorous feuds, nor the deeper sorrows
of his life had in any way impaired the vigour of his imagination or
his sense of beauty. Perhaps the latest verses addressed by Catullus
to any of his friends are those lines of tender complaint to
Cornificius, in which he begs of him some little word of consolation--
Maestius lacrimis Simonideis.
The lines--
Malest, me hercule, et est laboriose,
Et magis magis in dies et horas--
might well have been drawn from him by the rapid advance of his fatal
illness, and the phrase 'lacrimis Simonideis' is suggestive of
the anticipation of death rather than of the misery of unfortunate
love[42].
The length as well as the diction, rhythm, and structure of the 64th
poem--
Peliaco quondam prognatae, etc.--
shows that it was a work of much greater labour and thought than any
of those which sprang spontaneously out of the passion or sentiment
of the moment. Probably in the composition of this, which he must
have regarded as the most serious and ambitious effort of his Muse,
Catullus may have acted on the principle which he commends so warmly
in his lines on the Zmyrna of Cinna--
Zmyrna mei Cinnae nonam post denique messem
Quam coepta'st nonamque edita post hiemem,--
and have kept it by him for years, elaborating the unfamiliar poetic
diction in which it is expressed, and enlarging its original plan
by the insertion of the long Ariadne episode. It is the only poem
of Catullus which produces the impression of the slow and reflective
processes of art as distinct from the rapidly shaping power of
immediate inspiration. From this circumstance alone we should regard
it as a work on which his maturest faculty was employed. But it has
been shown[43] that throughout the poem, and more especially in the
episode of Ariadne, there are clear indications that Catullus had read
and imitated the poem of Lucretius, which appeared about the end of 55
or the beginning of 54 B.C. We may therefore conclude that in the year
54 B.C.--the last of his life--Catullus was still engaged either in
the original composition of his longest poem, or in giving to it the
finishing touches. The concluding lines of the poem--
Sed postquam tellus scelere est imbuta nefando, etc.--
which are written in a more serious spirit, and with a graver judgment
on human life than anything else he has left, perhaps indicate the
path which his maturer genius might have struck out for itself, if
he had ever risen from the careless freedom of early youth to the
reflective habits and steady labour of riper years.
But although longer life might have brought to Catullus a still
higher rank among the poets of the world, the chief charm of the poems
actually written by him arises from the strength and depth of his
personal feelings, and the force, freshness, and grace with which
he has expressed them. Other Roman poets have produced works of more
elaborate composition, and have shown themselves greater interpreters
of Nature and of human life: none have expressed so directly and
truthfully the great elemental affections, or have uttered with such
vital sincerity the happiness or the pain of the passing hour.
He presents his own simple experience and emotions, uncoloured by
idealising fancy or reflexion, and the world accepts this as among
the truest of all records of human feeling. The 'spirat adhuc amor' is
especially true of all the poems inspired by his love for Lesbia. It
is by the union of the utmost fire of passion with a heart capable of
the utmost constancy of feeling that he transcends all other poets of
love. We pass with him through every stage of his passion, from the
first rapture of admiration and the first happiness of possession to
the biting words or scorn in which he announces to Lesbia his final
renunciation of her. We witness the whole 'pageant of his bleeding
heart,' from the fresh pain of the wound on first fully realising
her unworthiness, through the various stages of superficial
reconcilement,--the 'amoris integratio' following on the 'amantium
irae[44],'--on to the state of torture described by him in the words
'Odi et amo[45],' till at last he obtains his emancipation by the
growth of a savage rancour and loathing in the place of the passionate
love which had tried so long to sustain itself 'like a wild flower
at the edge of the meadow[46].' Among the many poems, written through
nearly the whole of his poetical career, and called forth by this, the
most vital experience of his life, those of most charm and power are
the two on the 'Sparrow of Lesbia' (ii and iii) written in tones of
playful tenderness, not without some touch of the luxury of melancholy
which accompanies and enhances passion;--the two, v and vii,
Vivamus, mea Lesbia, atque amemus,
and
Quaeris, quot mihi basiationes, etc.,--
written in the very height of his short-lived happiness, in the
wildest tumult and most reckless abandonment of passion, when the
immediate joy is felt as the only thing of any moment in life; the 8th
poem--
Miser, Catulle, desinas ineptire--
in which he recalls the bright days of the past--
Fulsere quondam candidi tibi soles,--
and steels his heart against useless regret:--and another poem written
in a different metre, in the same mood, and apparently after the
wounds, which had been partially healed, had broken out afresh,--
Si qua recordanti benefacta priora voluptas, etc.[47];
in which he prays for a deliverance from his passion as from a foul
disease, or a kind of madness;--and lastly, the final renunciation
(xi),--
Furi et Aureli comites Catullo,--
in which scornful irony is combined with an imaginative power and
creative force of expression which he has only equalled or surpassed
in one or two other of his greatest works,--such as the 'Attis' and
the Epithalamium of Manlius. Other tales of love told by poets have
been more beautiful in their course, or more pathetic in their issue;
none have been told with more truthful realism, or more desperate
intensity of feeling.
The fame of Catullus, as alone among ancient poets of love rivalling
the traditional glory of Sappho, does not rest only on those poems
which record the varying vicissitudes of his own experience. His
longer and more artistic poems are all concerned with some phase of
this passion, either in its more beautiful and pathetic aspects, or
in its perversion and corruption. Thus he not only selects from Greek
legends the story of the desertion of Ariadne, of the brief union of
Protesilaus and Laodamia, of the glory and blessedness of Peleus
and Thetis, but he makes the tragic deed of Attis, instigated by the
fanatical hatred of love,--'Veneris nimio odio,'--the subject of his
art. Others of his poems are inspired by sympathy with the happiness
of his friends in the enjoyment of their love, and with their sorrow
when that love is interrupted by death. The most charming of all his
longer poems is the Epithalamium which celebrates the union of Manlius
with his bride. No truer picture of the passionate devotion of lovers
has ever been painted than that presented in the few playful and
tender but burning lines of the 'Acme and Septimius.' His own
experience did not teach him the lessons of cynicism. At the close as
at the beginning of his career, he finds in the union of passion with
truth and constancy the most real source of happiness. The elegiac
lines in which he comforts his friend Calvus for the loss of Quintilia
bear witness to the strength and delicacy of his friendship, and,
along with others of his poems, make us feel that the life of pleasure
in that age was not only brightened by genius and culture, but also
elevated by pure affection and sympathy,--
Si quicquam mutis gratum acceptumque sepulchris
Accidere a nostro Calve dolore potest,
Quo desiderio veteres renovamus amores
Atque olim missas flemus amicitias
Certe non tanto mors immatura dolori est
Quintiliae, quantum gaudet amore tuo[48].
The most attractive feature in the character of Catullus is the warmth
of his affection. No ancient poet has left so pleasant a record of
the genial intercourse of friends, or has given such proof of his own
dependence on human attachment and of his readiness to meet all the
claims which others have on such attachment. In his gayest hours and
his greatest sorrow, amid his pleasures and his studies, he shows his
thoughtful consideration for others, his grateful recollection of past
kindness, and his own extreme need of sympathy. Perhaps he expects too
much from friendship, and, in addressing his comrades, is too ready
to assume that whatever gives momentary pleasure or pain to 'their own
Catullus' must be of equal importance to them. No poet makes such use
of terms of endearment and affectionate diminutives in writing both to
and of his friends, and of himself in his relation to them. But if he
expected much from the sympathy of his associates, he possessed in no
ordinary measure the capacity of feeling with and of heartily loving
and admiring them. He often expresses honest and delicate appreciation
of the works, or of the wit, taste, and genius of his friends. The
dedication of his volume to Cornelius Nepos, the lines addressed to
Cicero, the invitation to Caecilius--
Poetae tenero, meo sodali
Velim Caecilio papyre dicas,--
the poem in which he recalls to Licinius Calvus a day passed together
in witty talk and the interchange of verses over their wine, the
contrast which he draws between the doom of speedy oblivion which he
pronounces on the 'Annals of Volusius,' and the immortality which he
confidently anticipates for the 'Zmyrna' of Cinna,--all show that,
though fastidious in his judgments, he was without a single touch of
literary jealousy, and that he felt a generous pride in the fame and
accomplishments of men of established reputation as well as of his own
younger compeers. Nor was his affection limited by literary sympathy.
Of none of his associates does he write more heartily than of Veranius
and Fabullus, young men, apparently enjoying their youth, and trying
to better their fortunes by serving on the staff of some Praetor or
Proconsul in his province. The language of affection could not be
uttered with more cordiality, simplicity, and grace than in the poem
of ten or eleven lines welcoming Veranius on his return from Spain,--
Venistine domum ad tuos Penates
Fratresque unanimos anumque matrem?
Venisti. O mihi nuntii beati.
There is not a word in the poem wasted; not one that does not come
straight and strong from the heart. The 'Invitation to Fabullus' is in
a lighter strain, and is written with the freedom and humour which he
could use to add a charm to his friendly intercourse[49], and a sting
to his less congenial relations. Yet through the playful banter of
this poem his delicate and kindly nature betrays itself in the words
'venuste noster,' and in those lines of true feeling,--
Sed contra accipies meros amores
Seu quid suavius elegantiusve.
His affection for both comes out incidentally in his remonstrance with
Marrucinus Asinius[50] for having filched after dinner, 'in ioco atque
vino,' one of his napkins, which he valued as memorials of the friends
who had sent them to him, and which he endows with some share of the
love he felt for them,--
Haec amem necessest
Ut Veraniolum meum et Fabullum.
The lampoons on Piso and his favourites, Porcius and Socration, show
that those who wronged his friends could rouse in him as generous
indignation as those who wronged himself.
Other poems express the pain and disappointment of a very sensitive
nature, which expects more active and disinterested sympathy from
others than ordinary men care either to give or to receive. Of this
sort are his complaint to Cornificius[51],--
Malest, Cornifici, tuo Catullo--
and the affectionate reproach which he addresses to Alphenus (xxx):--
Certe tute iubebas animam tradere, inique, me
Inducens in amorem, quasi tuta omnia mi forent.
Inde nunc retrahis te ac tua dicta omnia factaque
Ventos irrita ferre ac nebulas aerias sinis.
These, and other poems, show that Catullus was quick to feel any
coldness or neglect on the part of his friends, and exceedingly
dependent for his happiness on their sympathy. But the tone of these
poems is quite different from the resentment which he feels and
expresses against those from whom he had experienced malice or
treachery. It does great injustice to his noblest qualities, to think
of him as one who wantonly attacked or lightly turned against his
friends. No instance of such levity of feeling can be adduced from his
writings. It has been conclusively shown[52] that in the third line of
the 95th poem there can be no reference to Hortensius, who, under
the name of Hortalus, is addressed by Catullus in his 65th poem
with courteous consideration: and if 'Furius and Aurelius' are to be
regarded, on the strength of the opening lines of the 11th poem, as
having ever ranked among his devoted friends, then the poem, instead
of being a magnificent outburst of scornful irony, becomes a mere
specimen of bathos. Nothing, on the other hand, can be more in keeping
with the feeling of contemptuous tolerance which Catullus expresses
in his other poems relating to them, than the pointed contrast between
their hollow professions of enthusiasm and the degrading office which
he assigns to them,--
Pauca nuntiate meae puellae
Non bona dicta.
Catullus could pass from friendship or love to a state of permanent
enmity and hatred, when he believed that those in whom he had trusted
had acted falsely and heartlessly towards him: and then he did not
spare them. But the duties of loyal friendship and affection are to
him a kind of religion. Perfidy and falsehood are regarded by him not
only as the worst offences against honour in man, but as sins against
the Gods. He lays claim to a good conscience and to the character of
piety, on the ground that he had neither failed in acts of kindness
nor violated his word or his oath in any of his human dealings:--
Si qua recordanti benefacta priora voluptas
Est homini, cum se cogitat esse pium,
Nec sanctam violasse fidem, nec foedere in ullo
Divum ad fallendos numine abusum homines, etc.[53]
That he possessed no ordinary share of 'piety,' in the Roman sense
of the word, appears from the poems which express his grief for his
brother's death. He died in the Troad; and we have seen how, some
years after the event, Catullus turned aside from his pleasant voyage
among the Isles of Greece and coasts of Asia, to visit his tomb and to
offer upon it the customary funeral gifts. His words in reference to
this great sorrow, in all the poems in which he speaks of it, are
full of deep and simple human feeling. He does not venture to comfort
himself with the hope which he suggests to Calvus, in the lines on
the death of Quintilia, of a conscious existence after death; but
he resolves that his love shall still endure even after the eternal
separation from its object. Yet while yielding to the first shock
of this affliction, so as to become for the time indifferent to the
passion which had swayed his life, and to the delight which he had
taken in the works of ancient poets and the exercise of his art, he
does not allow himself to forget what was due to living friends. It is
characteristic of his frank affectionate nature, that, while dead to
his old interests in life and literature, he finds his chief comfort
in unburthening his heart to his friends and in writing to them words
of delicate consideration. He cannot bear that, even in a trifling
matter, Hortalus should find him forgetful of a promise: and he longs
to lighten the sorrow of his friend Manlius, who had written to him
in some sudden affliction,--probably the loss of the bride in whose
honour Catullus had, a short time previously, composed his great
Nuptial Ode. Though all other feelings were dead, and neither love
could distract nor poetry heal his grief, his heart was alive to the
memory of former kindness[54], to the natural craving for sympathy,
and to the duty of thinking of others.
Another, and less admirable, side of the nature of Catullus is
reflected in his short satirical poems. These have nothing in common
with the ethical and reflective satire of Lucilius and Horace: and
although the objects of some of them are the most prominent personages
in the State, yet their motive cannot, in any case, be called purely
political. They are like the lampoons of Archilochus and the early
Greek Iambic writers, purely personal in their object. They are either
the virulent expression of his antipathies, jealousies, and rancours,
or they are inspired by his lively sense of the ridiculous and by his
extreme fastidiousness of taste. The most famous, most incisive, and
least justifiable of these lampoons are the attacks on Julius Caesar,
especially that contained in the 29th poem,--
Quis hoc potest videre, quis potest pati,
Nisi impudicus et vorax et alco, etc.--
and in the less vigorous but much more offensive 57th poem.
Catullus in these poems expresses the animosity which the 'boni'
generally entertained towards the chiefs of the popular party: and his
intimacy at this time with Calvus, who was a member of the Senatorian
party, and who lampooned Caesar and Pompey in the same spirit, may
have given some political edge to his Satire. He was moved also by a
feeling of disgust towards the habits and manners of some of Caesar's
instruments and creatures,--such as Vatinius, Libo, Mamurra, etc. But
the chief motive both of the 29th and the 57th,--the two poems which
Suetonius regarded as attaching an 'everlasting stigma' to the name of
Caesar--is the jealousy of Mamurra,--the object also of many separate
satires,--who, through the favour of the Proconsul and the fortune
which he thereby acquired, was a successful rival of Catullus in his
provincial love affairs. The indignation of Cicero was roused against
the riches of Mamurra on political grounds[55]: that of Catullus on
the ground that they gave their possessor an unfair advantage in the
race of pleasure:--
Et ille nunc superbus et superfluens
Perambulabit omnium cubilia, etc.
Suetonius tells the story, confirmed by the lines in a later poem of
Catullus--
Irascere iterum meis iambis
Inmerentibus, unice imperator,--
that Caesar, while staying at his father's house at Verona, accepted
the poet's apology for his libellous verses, and admitted him the
same day to his dinner-table. Had he attached the meaning to the
imputations contained in them, which Suetonius did two hundred
years afterwards, even his magnanimous clemency could not well have
tolerated them. But, as Cicero tells us in his defence of Caelius,
such charges were in those days regarded as a mere 'facon de parler,'
which if made coarsely were regarded as 'rudeness' ('petulantia'),
if done wittily, as 'polite banter' ('urbanitas'). Caesar must
have looked upon the imputations of the 57th poem as a mere angry
ebullition of boyish petulance: and he showed the same disregard for
imputations made by Calvus, which, though as unfounded, were not so
absolutely incredible and unmeaning. His clemency to Catullus met with
a return similar to that which it met with at a later time from other
recipients of his generosity. Catullus, though the 'truest friend,'
was certainly not the 'noblest foe.' The coarseness of his attack may
be partly palliated by the manners of the age: but the spirit in which
he returns to the attack in the 54th poem leaves a more serious
stain on his character. He was too completely in the wrong to be able
frankly to forgive Caesar for his gracious and magnanimous treatment.
Many of his personal satires are directed against the licentiousness
of the men and women with whom he quarrelled. Notwithstanding the
evidence of his own frequent confessions, he lays a claim to purity
of life in the phrase, 'si vitam puriter egi[56],' and in his strange
apology for the freedom of his verses,--
Nam castum esse decet pium poetam
Ipsum, versiculos nihil necesse est[57].
He is absolutely unrestrained both in regard to the imputations which
he makes, and to the choice of the language in which he conveys them;
and in these imputations he spares neither rank nor sex. It is one of
the strangest paradoxes to find a poet like Catullus, endowed with the
purest sense of beauty, and yet capable of turning all his vigorous
force of expression to the vilest uses. He is coarser in his language
than any of the older poets, and than any of those of the Augustan
age. In the time of the former the traditional severity of the old
Roman life,--'tetrica ac tristis disciplina Sabinorum,'--had not
altogether lost its influence. In the Augustan age, if there was as
much immorality as in the age preceding it, there was more outward
decorum. The licentiousness of that age expresses itself in tones of
refinement; it associates itself with sentimentalism in literature; it
was reduced to system and carried out as the serious business of life.
The coarseness of Catullus is symptomatic rather of more recklessness
than of greater corruption in society. Impurity is less destructive to
human nature when it vents itself in bantering or virulent abuse, than
when it clings to the imagination, associates itself with the sense
of beauty, and expresses itself in the language of passion. Though, in
his nobler poetry, Catullus is ardent and impassioned, he is much more
free from this taint than Ovid or Propertius. The errors of his life
did not deaden his sensibility, harden his heart, or corrupt his
imagination. It is only in his careless moods, when he looks on
life in the spirit of a humorist, or in moods of bitterness when his
antipathies are roused, or in fits of savage indignation against some
violation of natural feeling or some prosperous villainy, that he
disregards the restraints imposed by the better instincts of men on
the use of language.
Many of his Satires, however, are written in a more genial vein, and
are not much disfigured by coarseness or indelicacy of expression. As
he especially valued good taste and courtesy, wit, and liveliness of
mind in his associates, so he is intolerant of all mean and sordid
ways of living, of all stupidity, affectation, and pedantry. The
pieces in which these characteristics are exposed are marked by
keen observation, a lively sense of absurdity, and sometimes by
a boisterous spirit of fun. They are expressed with vigour and
directness; but they want the subtle irony which pervades the Satires,
Epistles, and Odes of Horace. Among the best of his lighter satires is
the poem numbered xvii:--
O Colonia, quae cupis ponte ludere magno,--
which has some touches of graceful poetry as well as of humorous
extravagance. It is directed against the dulness and stolid
indifference of one of his fellow-townsmen, who, being married to a
young and beautiful girl,--
Quoi cum sit viridissimo nupta flore puella
(Et puella tenellulo delicatior haedo,
Asservanda nigerrimis diligentius uvis),--
was utterly careless of her, and insensible to the perils to which she
was exposed. To rouse him from his sloth and stupor, Catullus asks to
have him thrown head over heels--
Munus hoc mihi maximi da, Colonia, risus--
from a rickety old bridge into the deepest and dirtiest part of the
quagmire over which it was built. In another piece Catullus laughs at
the affectation of one of his rivals, Egnatius,--a black-bearded fop
from the Celtiberian wilds,--who had a trick of perpetually smiling
in order to show the whiteness of his teeth;--a trick which did not
desert him at a criminal trial, during the most pathetic part of the
speech for the defence, or when he stood beside a weeping mother at
the funeral pyre of her only son. In another of his elegiac pieces he
gives expression to the relief felt on the departure for the East of
a bore who afflicted the ears of the polite world by a superfluous use
of his aspirates--
Chommoda dicebat, si quando commoda vellet
Dicere, et insidias Arrius hinsidias, etc.[58]
Just as the ears of men had recovered from this infliction--
Subito affertur nuntius horribilis,
Ionios fluctus, postquam illuc Arrius isset,
Iam non Ionios esse, sed Hionios.
Like fastidious and irritable poets of other times (Horace, Pope,
Byron, etc.), Catullus waged internecine war against pedants, literary
pretenders, and poetasters. He remonstrates in a vein of humorous
exaggeration with his friend Licinius Calvus, for palming off on him
as a gift on the Saturnalia (corresponding to our Christmas presents)
a collection of the works of these 'miscreants' ('impiorum'),
originally sent to him by some pedantic grammarian, in acknowledgment
of his services as an advocate--
Dii magni, horribilem ac sacrum libellum.
In the 36th poem he represents Lesbia as offering a holocaust to Venus
of the work of 'the worst of all poets,' 'The Annals of Volusius,'
in quittance of a vow on her reconcilement with Catullus. In another
(xxii), addressed to Varus, probably the fastidious critic whom Horace
quotes in the 'Ars Poetica[59],' he exposes the absurdity of one of
their friends, who, though in other respects a man of sense, wit, and
agreeable manners, entertained the delusion that he was a poet, and
was never so happy as when he had surrounded himself with the
newest and finest literary materials, and was plying his uncongenial
occupation. In another he records the nemesis, in the form of a severe
cough, which overtook him for allowing himself to be seduced by the
hopes of a good dinner to read (or perhaps listen to the reading of) a
speech of Cicero's friend and client Sestius,--
Plenam veneni et pestilentiae.
About one half of the shorter poems, and more than half of the
epigrams, are to be classed among his personal lampoons or light
satiric pieces. Many of these show Catullus to us on that side of his
character, which it is least pleasant or profitable to dwell on. He
could not indeed write anything which did not bear the stamp of
the vital force and sincerity of his nature: but even his vigour of
expression does not compensate for the survival in literature of the
feelings and relations which are most ignoble in actual life. Yet some
of these satiric pieces have an interest which amply justifies their
preservation. The greatest of all his lampoons, the 29th, has an
historical as well as a literary value. Tacitus, as well as Suetonius,
refers to it. It is not only a masterpiece of terse invective, but,
like the 11th, it is a powerful specimen of imaginative irony. The
momentous events of a most momentous era--the Eastern conquests of
Pompey, the first Spanish campaign of Caesar, the subjugation of Gaul,
the invasion of Britain, the revolutionary measures of 'father-in-law
and son-in-law,'--are all made to look as if they had had no other
object or result than that of pampering the appetites of a worthless
favourite. Other lampoons, such as those against Memmius and Piso,
have also an historical interest. They testify to the republican
freedom of speech, the open expression of which was soon to be
silenced for ever. They enable us to understand how strong a social
and political weapon the power of epigram was in ancient Rome,--a
power which continued to be exercised, though no longer with
republican freedom, under the Empire. The pen of the poet was employed
in the warfare of parties as fiercely as the tongue of the orator;
and although Catullus did not spare partisans of the Senate, such
as Memmius, yet all his associations and tastes combined to turn his
hostility chiefly against the popular leaders and their tools. The
more genial satiric pieces, again, are chiefly interesting as throwing
light on the social and literary life of Rome and the provincial towns
of Italy. They give us an idea of the lighter talk, the criticism,
and merriment of the younger men in the world of letters and fashion
during the last age of the Republic. If they are not master-pieces of
humour, they are full of gaiety, animal spirits, shrewd observation,
and not very unkindly comment on men and manners.
Besides the poems which show Catullus in various relations of love,
affection, animosity, and humorous criticism, there are still a few of
the shorter pieces which have a personal interest. He had the purest
capacity of enjoying simple pleasures; and some of his most delightful
poems are vivid records of happy experiences procured to him by
this youthful freshness of feeling. Three of these are especially
beautiful,--the dedication of his yacht to Castor and Pollux,--the
lines written immediately before quitting Bithynia,--
Iam ver egelidos refert tepores,--
and the famous lines on Sirmio. They all belong to the same period of
his life, and all show how happy and serene his spirit became, when it
was untroubled by the passions and rancours of city life. The lines on
his yacht--
Phaselus ille quem videtis, hospites,--
express with much vivacity the feelings of affectionate pride which a
strong and kindly nature lavishes not only on living friends, but on
inanimate objects, associated with the memory of past happiness and
adventure. His fancy endows it with a kind of life from the earliest
time when, under the form of a clump of trees, it 'rustled its leaves'
on Cytorus, till it obtained its rest in a peaceful age on the fair
waters of Benacus. The 46th poem is inspired by the new sense of life
which comes to early youth with the first approach of spring, and by
the eager flutter of anticipation--
Iam mens praetrepidans avet vagari,
Iam laeti studio pedes vigescunt--
with which a cultivated mind forecasts the pleasure of travelling
among famous and beautiful scenes. But perhaps the most perfect of his
smaller pieces is that in which the love of home and of Nature, the
sense of rest and security after toil and danger, the glee of a boy
and the strong happiness of a man unite to form the charm of the lines
on Sirmio, of which it is as impossible to analyse the secret as it is
to reproduce in another tongue the language in which it is expressed.
Catullus is one of the great poets of the world, not so much through
gifts of imagination--though with these he was well endowed--as
through his singleness of nature, his vivid impressibility, and his
keen perception. He received the gifts of the passing hour so happily,
that, to produce pure and lasting poetry, it was enough for him to
utter in natural words something of the fulness of his heart. His
interests, though limited in range, were all genuine and human. His
poems inspired by personal feeling seem to come from him without any
effort. He says, on every occasion, exactly what he wanted to say,
in clear, forcible, direct language. There are, indeed, even in his
simplest poems, a few strokes of imaginative expression, as, for
instance,--
Aut quam sidera multa, cum tacet nox,
Furtivos hominum vident amores[60],--
and this, written with the feeling and with the application which
Burns makes of the same image,--