Ultimi flos, praetereunte postquam
Tactus aratro est[61];--
and these two touches of tenderness and beauty, which appear in a poem
otherwise characterised by a tone of careless drollery,--
Nec sapit pueri instar
Bimuli, tremula patris dormientis in ulna,--
and--
Et puella tenellulo delicatior haedo,
Adservanda nigerrimis diligentius uvis[62].
But the great charm of the style in these shorter poems is its simple
directness, and its popular idiomatic ring. It largely employs,
especially in the poems which express his coarser feelings, common,
often archaic and provincial words, forms, and idioms. There is
nothing, apparently, studied about it, no ornament or involution, no
otiose epithets, no subtle allusiveness. Yet in the poems expressive
of his finer feelings it shows the happiest selection, not only of
the most appropriate, but of the most exquisite words. To no style, in
prose or verse, in any language, could the words 'simplex munditiis'
be with more propriety applied. It has all the ease of refined and
vigorous conversation, combined with the grace of consummate art.
Though this perfection of expression could not have been attained
without study and labour, yet it bears no trace of them.
In these smaller poems he shows himself as great a master of metre as
of language. The more sustained power which he has over the flow
of his verse, is best exemplified by the skylark ring of his great
Nuptial Ode, by the hurrying agitation of the Attis, and the stately
calm of the Peleus and Thetis, giving place to a more impassioned
movement in the 'Ariadne' episode. But in his shorter poems, also, he
shows the true gift of the [Greek: aoidos]--the power of using musical
language as a symbol of the changing impulses of feeling. Thus the
delicate playfulness and tenderness of his phalaecians,--the lingering
long-drawn-out sweetness, and the calm subdued sadness of the scazon,
as exemplified in the 'Sirmio,' and the
Miser Catulle desinas ineptire,--
the 'bright speed' of the pure iambic, so happily answering to the
subject of the 'phaselus,' and its bold impetus as it is employed in
the attack on Julius Caesar--the irregular but sonorous grandeur of
his Sapphic[63],--the majesty which in the Hymn to Diana blends with
the buoyant movement of the glyconic,--all attest that the words and
melody of the poems were born together with the feeling and meaning
animating them. Although his elegiac poems are not written with the
smoothness and fluency which was attained by the Augustan poets,
yet those among them which record his graver and sadder moods have
a plaintive force and natural pathos, which their roughness seems to
enhance. If his epigrammatic pieces, written in that metre, want the
polish and point to which his brilliant disciple attained under the
Empire, we may believe that Catullus experienced the difficulty which
Lucilius found, and which Horace at last successfully overcame, of
adapting a metre originally framed for the expression of serious
feeling to the commoner interests and experiences of life.
The language of Catullus in these shorter poems is his own, or, where
not his own, is drawn from such wells of Latin undefiled as Plautus
and Terence. His metres are happy applications of those invented or
largely used by the earlier lyric poets of Greece,--Sappho, Anacreon,
Archilochus,--and the later Phalaecus. For the form of some of his
longer poems he has taken, and not with the happiest result, the
Alexandrine poets for his models. But in these shorter poems, so
far as he has had any models, he has tried to emulate the perfection
attained in the older and purer era of Greek inspiration. But it is
not through imitation that he has attained a perfection of form like
to theirs. It is owing to the singleness and strength of his feeling
and impression, that these poems are so exquisite in their unity
and simplicity. Catullus does not care to present the gem of his own
thought in an alien setting, as Horace, in his earlier Odes at least,
has often done. It is one of the surest notes of his lyrical genius
that, while more modest in his general self-estimate than any of the
great Roman poets, he trusts more implicitly than any of them to his
own judgment and inspiration to find the most fitting and telling
medium for the communication of his thought. Thus he presents only
what is essential, unencumbered with any associations from older
poetry. The form is indeed so perfect that we scarcely think of it. We
feel only that nothing mars or interrupts the revelation of the poet's
heart and soul. We apprehend, as perhaps we never apprehended before,
some one single feeling of great potency and great human influence in
a poem of some ten or twenty lines, every word of which adds something
to the whole impression. Thus for instance, in the poems--
Vivamus, mea Lesbia, atque amemus,--
Acmen Septimius suos amores,--
Verani, omnibus e meis amicis,--
Iam ver egelidos refert tepores,--
Paene insularum Sirmio insularumque,--
Miser Catulle, desinas ineptire,--
we apprehend through a perfectly pure medium, and by a single
intuition, the highest pitch of the passionate love of man and woman,
the perfect beauty and joy of self-forgetful friendship, the eager
enthusiasm for travel and adventure, the deep delight of returning to
a beautiful and well-loved home, the 'sorrow's crown of sorrows' in
'remembering happier things.' We may see, too, in a totally different
sphere of experience, how Catullus instinctively seizes the moment
of supreme intensity of emotion, and utters what is vitally
characteristic of it. He is not, in any sense, one of the Anacreontic
singers of the pleasures of wine, of whom Horace is the typical
example in ancient times. Neither was he one, who, like Burns,
habitually forgot, in the excitement of good fellowship, the perils
of Bacchanalian merriment. Yet even the drinking songs of the Scottish
poet scarcely realise with more vivacity the moment of mad elevation
when a revel is at its height, than Catullus has done in the song of
seven short lines--
Minister vetuli puer Falerni
Inger mi calices amariores, etc.
The 'Hymn to Diana' occupies an intermediate place between the poems
founded on personal feelings and the longer and more purely artistic
pieces. Like the first it seems unconsciously, or at least without
leaving any trace of conscious purpose, to have conformed to the
conditions of the purest art. It is, like them, a perfect whole, one
of those, to quote Mr. Munro, '"cunningest patterns" of excellence,
such as Latium never saw before or after, Alcaeus, Sappho, and the
rest then and only then having met their match[64]'. It resembles some
of the longer poems in being a creation of sympathetic imagination,
not an immediate expression of personal feeling. It must have been
written for some public occasion; and the selection of Catullus to
compose it would imply that he was recognised as the greatest lyrical
poet in his lifetime, and that it was written after his reputation was
established. It is a poem not only of pure artistic excellence, but of
imaginative conception, like that exemplified in the 'Attis' and the
'Epithalamium of Peleus and Thetis.' The 'Diana' of Catullus is not a
vague abstraction or conventional figure, as the Gods and Goddesses in
the Odes of Horace are apt to be. The mythology of Greece received
a new life from his imagination. In this poem he shows too, what he
hardly indicates elsewhere[65], that he could identify himself in
sympathy with the national feeling and religion of Rome. The Goddess
addressed is a living Power, blending in her countenance the human and
picturesque aspects of the Greek Artemis with the more spiritual
and beneficent attributes of the Roman Diana. Yet no confusion or
incongruity arises from the union into one concrete representation of
these originally diverse elements. She lives to the imagination as a
Power who, in the fresh morning of the world, had roamed in freedom
over the mountains, the woods, the secret dells, and the river-banks
of earth[66],--and now from a far away sphere watched over women in
travail, increased the store of the husbandman, and was the especial
guardian of the descendants of Romulus.
This poem affords a natural transition to the longer and more purely
artistic pieces in the centre of the volume. Yet with some even of
these a personal element is interfused. The hymn in honour of the
nuptials of Manlius, is, like the short poem on the loves of Acme and
Septimius, inspired by the poet's sympathy with the happiness of a
friend. The 68th poem attempts to weave into one texture his own love
of Lesbia, and the romance of Laodamia and Protesilaus. But in general
these poems bring before us a new side of the art of Catullus. In
one way indeed they add to our knowledge of his personal tastes. The
larger place given in them to ornament and illustration lets us know
what objects in Nature afforded him most delight. His life was
too full of human interest to allow him to devote his art to the
celebration of Nature: yet he could not have been the poet he was if
he had not been susceptible to her influence. And this susceptibility,
indicated in occasional touches in the shorter poems, finds greater
scope in the poems of impersonal art which still remain to be
considered.
Among the more purely artistic pieces none is more beautiful than the
Nuptial Ode in celebration of the marriage of his friend Manlius,
a member of the great house of the Torquati, and one of the most
accomplished men of his time, with Vinia Aurunculeia. In this poem
Catullus pours forth the fulness of his heart
'In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.'
It is marked by the excellence of his shorter pieces and by poetical
beauty of another order. Resembling his shorter poems in being called
forth by an event within his own experience, it breathes the same
spirit of affection and of sympathy with beauty and passion. It is
written with the same gaiety of heart, blending indeed with a graver
sense of happiness. The feeling of the hour does not merely
express itself in graceful language: it awakens the active power of
imagination, clothes itself in radiant imagery, and rises into the
completeness and sustained melody of the highest lyrical art. The
tone of the whole poem is one of joy, changing from the rapture of
expectation in the opening lines to the more tranquil happiness of the
close. The passion is ardent, but, on the whole, free from grossness
or effeminate sentiment. Even where, in accordance with the Roman
marriage customs, he abandons himself for a few stanzas to the spirit
of raillery and banter--
Ne diu taceat procax
Fescennina locutio[67]--
he remembers the respect due to the innocence of the bride. Thoughts
of her are associated with the purest objects in Nature,--with ivy
clinging round a tree, or branches of myrtle,--
Quos Hamadryades deae
Ludicrum sibi roscido
Nutriunt humore,--
or with a hyacinth growing in some rich man's garden. Like the eager
lover of beauty among our own poets, he sees in other flowers--
Alba parthenice velut
Luteumve papaver--
the symbol of maidens--
'Whom youth makes so fair and passion so pale.'
The grace of trees and the bloom of flowers were prized by him among
the fairest things in Nature. The charm in woman which most moves
his imagination is virgin innocence unfolding into love, or passion
ennobled by truth and constancy of affection. So too, in the
Epithalamium of Peleus and Thetis, he compares Ariadne in her
maidenhood to the myrtle trees growing on the banks of Eurotas, and to
the bloom of vernal flowers:--
Quales Eurotae progignunt flumina myrtos
Aurave distinctos educit verna colores[68].
In this Ode he expresses not merely, as in the Acme and Septimius, his
sympathy with the joy of the hour. He recognises in marriage a greater
good than in the love for a mistress. He associates it with thoughts
of the power and security of the household, of the pure happiness of
parental love, of the continuance of a time-honoured name, and of the
birth of new defenders of the State.
The charm of the poem does not arise from its tone of feeling and its
clear ringing melody alone. The bright spirit of the day awakens the
inward eye which creates pictures and images of beauty in harmony
with itself. The poet sees Hymenaeus coming from the distant rocks
of Helicon, robed in saffron, and wreathed with fragrant amaracus,
in radiant power and glory, chanting the song with his ringing voice,
beating the ground with his foot, shaking the pine-torch in his hand.
As the doors of the house are opened, and the bride is expected by
the singers outside, by one vivid flash of imagination he reveals all
their eager excitement--
Viden ut faces
Splendidas quatiunt comas?
The two pictures, further on in the poem, of a peaceful old age
prolonged to the utmost limit of human life--
Usque dum tremulum movens
Cana tempus anilitas
Omnia omnibus annuit,--
and of infancy, awakening into consciousness and affection,--
Torquatus volo parvulus
Matris e gremio suae
Porrigens teneras manus,
Dulce rideat ad patrem
Semihiante labello;
Sit suo similis patri
Manlio et facile insciis
Noscitetur ab omnibus,
Et pudicitiam suae
Matris indicet ore[69];
are drawn with the truest and most delicate hand.
The whole conception and execution of this poem, as also of the Attis
and of the Epithalamium of Peleus and Thetis, leave no doubt that
Catullus was richly endowed with the vision and the faculty of
genius, as well as with impassioned feeling and the gift of musical
expression.
The poem which immediately follows is also an Epithalamium, intended
to be sung by young men and maidens, in alternate parts. It is written
in hexameter verse, and in rhythm, thought, and feeling resembles some
of the golden fragments from the Epithalamia of Sappho. The whole poem
sounds like a song in a rich idyll. Its charm consists in its calm
and mellow tone, in the dramatic truth with which the feelings
and thoughts natural to the young men and maidens are alternately
expressed, and especially in the beauty of its two famous similes.
In the first of these a flower is again the symbol of the bloom and
innocence of maidenhood, growing up apart and safe from all rude
contact. The idea in the concluding lines of the simile--
Idem cum tenui carptus defloruit ungui,
Nulli illum pueri, nullae optavere puellae,--
may probably have been suggested by a passage in Sappho, of which
these two lines remain,
[Greek:
hoian tan hyakinthon en oresi poimenes andres
possi katasteiboisi, chamai de te porphyron anthos.]
In the second simile, which is supposed to be spoken by the young men,
the vine growing upon a bare field, scarcely rising above the ground,
unheeded and untended, is compared to the maid who
'Grows, lives, and dies in single blessedness;'
while the same vine, when wedded to the elm, is regarded as the symbol
of the usefulness, dignity, and happiness which await the bride.
The absence of all personal allusion in this poem, and its resemblance
in tone and rhythm to some fragments of the Lesbian poetess, might
suggest the idea that it was translated, or at least imitated, from
the Greek. But, on the other hand, from its harmony with the kind
of subject and imagery in which Catullus most delights, and from the
close observation of Italian Nature, shown in such lines as this--
Iam iam contingit summum radice flagellum,--
it seems more probable that it was an adaptation of the style of his
great model to some occasion within his own experience, than that it
was a mere exercise in translation, like his 'Coma Berenices.'
The 'Attis' is the most original of all his poems. As a work of pure
imagination, it is the most remarkable poetical creation in the Latin
language. In this poem Catullus throws himself, with marvellous power,
into a character and situation utterly alien to common experience, and
pours an intense flood of human feeling and passion into a legend of
strange Oriental fanaticism. The effect of the piece is, in a great
measure, produced by the startling vividness of its language and
imagery, and by the impetuous rush of its metre. Though the poem may
have been partly founded on Greek materials, yet Catullus has treated
the subject in a thoroughly original manner. It is difficult to
believe that any translation could produce that impression of genuine
creative power, which is forced upon every reader of the Attis.
There is nothing at all like the spirit of this poem in extant Greek
literature. No other writer has presented so life-like an image of the
frantic exultation and fierce self-sacrificing spirit of an inhuman
fanaticism; and of the horror and sense of desolation which the
natural man, more especially a Greek or Roman, would feel in the
midst of the wild and strange scenes described in the poem, when first
awaking to the consciousness of his voluntary bondage, and of the
forfeiture of his country and parents, and the free social life
of former days. A few touches in the poem--as, for instance, the
expressions, 'niveis manibus,' 'roseis labellis,' and 'Ego gymnasii
fui flos,'--all introduced incidentally,--force upon the mind the
contrast between the tender youth and beauty of Attis and the fierce
power of the passion that possesses him. The false excitement and
noisy tumult of the evening deepen the sense of the terrible reality
and blank despair of the morning.
The effect of the whole drama of human passion and agony is
intensified by the vividness of all its pictorial environment;--by the
vision of the wild surging seas, through which the swift ship and its
mad crew were borne, and of the gloom and horror of the woods that hid
the sounding rites of the goddess, and the tall columns of her temple.
With what a powerful and rapid touch he paints the aspect of sky,
earth, and sea in the early morning--
Sed ubi oris aurei Sol radiantibus oculis
Lustravit aethera album, sola dura, mare ferum,
Pepulitque noctis umbras vegetis sonipedibus.
Everything is seen in those sharply-defined forms, which imprint
themselves on the brain in moments of intense excitement or agony.
These three poems are composed with the unity and simplicity of the
purest art. Like the shorter poems they have taken shape under the
influence of one powerful motive; and the feeling with which they were
conceived is sustained at its height through the whole composition. It
is more difficult to find any single motive which combines into unity
the original nucleus of the Epithalamium of Peleus and Thetis with
the long episode of the desertion of Ariadne, which interrupts the
continuity of the 64th poem. The form of art to which it belongs is
the 'Epyllion' or heroic idyll, of which several specimens are found
among the poems of Theocritus. This form was due to the invention of
the Alexandrians; and Catullus in the selection of his subject and in
his manner of treating it takes up the position of an imitator. But
there is no reason to suppose that he is reproducing, still less
translating, any particular work of these poets, or that his
contemporaries--Cinna, Calvus, and Cornificius,--merely reproduced
some Alexandrine original in their Zmyrna, Io, and Glaucus. A
comparison of the imagery of this poem with that of the earlier
Epithalamia, and a consideration of the passionate beauty with which
the subject of love and marriage is treated, favour the conclusion
that the style and substance of the poem are the workmanship of
Catullus. It may be doubted whether any Alexandrine poet, except
perhaps Apollonius, whom Catullus in this poem[70] often imitates, but
does not translate, had sufficient imagination to produce the original
which Catullus is supposed to have copied. But the plan of the
poem may have been suggested by some Alexandrine model. The more
complicated structure of the 68th poem is fashioned after a particular
style of Greek art: and on entering upon a new and larger adventure,
Catullus may have trusted to the guidance of those whom he regarded
as his masters. The Alexandrians studied pictorial representation of
outward scenes and of passionate situations, and works of tapestry
on which such representations were wrought were common among their
'deliciae vitae[71].' Thus, the mode in which the story of Ariadne is
told is one likely to have occurred to an Alexandrine poet. It would
be also in keeping with the over-subtlety of a class of poets who
owed more to learning than to inspiration, to combine apparently
incongruous parts into one whole by some obscure link of connexion.
Thus Catullus may have intended, in imitation of Callimachus or some
other Alexandrian, to paint two pictures of the love of an immortal
for a mortal,--the love of Thetis for Peleus, and of Bacchus for
Ariadne,--and to heighten the effect of each by the contrast presented
in the pendent picture. The original good fortune and the unbroken
happiness of Peleus are more vividly realised by the contrast
presented to the imagination in the betrayal and passionate agitation
of Ariadne. The thought of the crowds of mortals and immortals who
come together to celebrate the marriage of the Thessalian prince
brings into greater relief the utter loneliness of Ariadne, when first
discovered by 'Bacchus and his crew.' Or the original unifying motive
of both pictures might be sought in the concluding lines, written in
a graver tone than anything else in Catullus; and it might be supposed
that he intended by the two pictures of divine favour granted to
mortals (in one of which retribution is exacted for what he regards as
the greatest sin in actual life--a violation of good faith) to enforce
the lesson that it is owing to the sins of the latter time that
the Gods have withdrawn their gracious presence from the earth. The
thought contained in the lines
Sed postquam tellus scelerest imbuta nefando, etc.,
is pure and noble, and purely and nobly expressed. These lines reveal
a genuine and unexpected vein of reverence in the nature of Catullus.
The sins which he specifies as alienating the Gods from men are those
most rife in his own time, with which he has dealt in a more realistic
fashion in his satiric epigrams. All this may, perhaps, be said. But
on the other hand, Catullus is the least didactic of poets. He is also
the least abstract and reflective. We cannot suppose (in the case of
such a writer) all the concrete passionate life of the poem taking
shape in his imagination in order to embody any idea however noble.
The idea was the afterthought, not the creative germ. Nor can we think
that the conception of the whole poem existed in his mind before,
or independently of, the separate conception of its parts. He was
attracted to both subjects by the charm which the Greek mythology and
the bright spectacle of the heroic age had for his imagination, by
their harmony with the feelings and passions with which he had most
sympathy in real life, and by the scope which they afforded to his
peculiar power as a pictorial artist. The device of the tapestry, by
which the tale of Ariadne is told, was especially favourable to the
exercise of this gift. He looked back upon an ideal vision of the
golden morning of the world, when men were so stately and noble,
and women so fair and true, that even the blessed Gods and Goddesses
deigned to visit them, and to unite with them in marriage. The
original motive of the two poems appears to be purely imaginative.
If there was any intention to give artificial unity to the poem,
by pointing the contrast between a love calm and happy from the
beginning, and one at first passionate and afterwards betrayed, or
between the holiness and nobleness of an ideal past, and the sin
and baseness of the actual present, that intention was probably
not present to the mind of the poet when he first contemplated his
subject, but came to him in the course of its development.
It may be said, therefore, that if any principle of unity is aimed
at in the poem, it is one so artificial as rather to detract from the
artistic merit of the composition. There is a similar want of unity
in the 'Pastor Aristaeus' of Virgil, which was also composed in the
manner of the Alexandrine Epyllion. The Alexandrians seem to have
aimed rather at a combination of diverse effects than at a composition
'simplex et unum.' They cared much for the elaboration of details,
little for the consistency of the whole. And the same tendency appears
in their imitators. Neither can the poem be called a successful
specimen of narrative. There is scarcely any story to tell in
connexion with the marriage of Peleus. It is a succession of pictures,
not a tale of passion or adventure. The romance of Theseus and Ariadne
is told much less distinctly and simply than the myth of Orpheus
and Eurydice in Virgil. There is dramatic power in the soliloquy of
Ariadne, as in that of Attis, but the dramatic faculty in Catullus
is rather a phase of his special lyrical gift, which enables him to
identify himself with some single passionate situation, than the
power of giving life to various types of character. The imaginative
excellence of the poem is idyllic rather than epic or dramatic. There
is a wonderful harmony of tone in his whole conception of the heroic
age. He does not attempt to reproduce the picturesque life represented
by Homer, nor the majestic passions imagined by the Attic tragedians,
but he has his own vision of the stately and beautiful figures
belonging to an ideal foretime,--
O nimis optato saeclorum tempore nati
Heroes, saluete, deum genus.
There is a sense of the freshness and brightness of the early morning
in his conception of the time when the first ship, manned by the
flower of Greek warriors, 'broke the silence of the seas'
(Illa rudem cursu prima imbuit Amphitriten),
and when the Gods and Goddesses of Olympus, the mysterious Powers
over-ruling mortal destiny, and the other beings, half-human,
half-divine, whom Greek imagination so lavishly created, appeared in
their bodily presence to do honour to the union of a mortal with an
immortal. The poem abounds in pictures, or suggestions of pictures,
taken from the world of divine and human life, and of outward Nature.
Such are those of the Nereids gazing on the Argo--
Emersere feri candenti e gurgite vultus
Aequoreae monstrum Nereides admirantes,--
of Ariadne watching with pale and anxious face the perilous encounter
of Theseus with the Minotaur--
Quam tum saepe magis fulgore expalluit auri,--
and again, looking on the distant fleet--
Saxea ut effigies bacchantis,--
of the advent of Bacchus--
Cum thiaso Satyrorum et Nysigenis Silenis,--
a passage which has inspired one of the masterpieces of modern
art,--of Prometheus--
Extenuata gerens veteris vestigia poenae--
of the aged Parcae--
infirmo quatientes corpora motu--
spinning the thread of human destiny, as with clear-ringing voice they
poured forth their truthful prophecy. So too the eye of an artist
is shown in the description of the scenes in which the action takes
place, and in the illustrative imagery with which the subject is
adorned,--as in the pictures from mountain and sea scenery at lines
240 and 269; and in that image of a waste expanse of sea called up in
the lines--
Idomeneosne petam montes? a gurgite lato
Discernens ponti truculentum ubi dividit aequor?
A genuine love of Nature, which his more personal poems only faintly
suggest, appears in the lines describing the gifts which Chiron
brought with him from the plains and vast mountain chains and
river-banks of Thessaly--
Nam quoscumque ferunt campi, quos Thessala magnis
Montibus ora creat, quos propter fluminis undas
Aura parit flores tepidi fecunda Favoni,
Hos indistinctis plexos tulit ipse corollis,
Quo permulsa domus iucundo risit odore[72];
and in the enumeration of the various trees which Peneus, quitting
Tempe,--
Tempe quae silvae cingunt super inpendentes,--
planted before the vestibule of the palace.
The diction and rhythm of the poem are characterised by excellences
of a quite different sort from those of his other pieces. Both produce
the impression of very careful study and labour. In no previous
work of Latin genius was so much use made of an artificial poetical
diction. Though this diction has not the _naivete_ or charm of his
simpler pieces, yet it is very effective in its own way. It reveals
new and unsuspected wealth in the ore of the Latin language. The old
rhetorical artifices of alliteration, assonance, etc. are used more
sparingly than in Lucretius, yet they do appear, as in the lines--
Peliaco quondam prognatae vertice pinus,--
Aut tereti tenues tinnitus aere ciebant,--
Putridaque infirmis variabant pectora palmis.--etc., etc.
As in the Attis we find such word-formations as _sonipedibus_,
_silvicultrix_, _nemorivagus_, so in this poem we have _fluentisono_,
_raucisonos_, _clarisona_, _flexamino_, etc. We recognise his old
partiality for diminutives, as in the
Frigidulos udo singultus ore cientem,
and
Languidulosque paret tecum coniungere somnos.
But there are many peculiarities of style which are scarcely, if
at all, observable in his other poems. New artifices, such as those
familiar to the Greek idyll, of the recurring chime of the same or
similar words, are frequent, as in the lines--
Vos ego saepe meo vos carmine compellabo;--
Cui Iupiter ipse
Ipse suos divom genitor concessit amores;--
Sicine me patriis avectam, perfide, ab oris,
Perfide, deserto liquisti in litore Theseu?
Sicine discedens neglecto numine divom;--
Nulla fugae ratio, nulla spes; omnia muta
Omnia sunt deserta, ostentant omnia mortem, etc.
The phrases are to a much greater extent cast in a Greek mould[73].
The words follow one another in a less natural order. Ornamental
epithets, metaphorical phrases, and the substitution of abstract for
concrete words, occur much more frequently. Latin poetry creates for
itself an artificial diction by assimilating, to a much greater extent
than in any earlier work of genius, the long-accumulated wealth of
Greek poetry. This was a gain to its resources, opening up and giving
expression to a new range of emotions, but a gain against which must
be set off a considerable loss of freshness and _naivete_.
The rhythm also is elaborately constructed after a Greek model,--the
model, not of Homer, but of the later poets who wrote in his metre.
It is much more carefully and correctly finished than the rhythm
of Lucretius. Each separate line has a smoother cadence. The whole
movement is more regular, more calm, and more stately. But with all
the occasional roughness of Lucretius there is much more life and
force in his general movement. It is much more capable of presenting
a continuous thought or action to the mind. The lines of Catullus seem
intended to be dwelt on separately, and each to bring out some point
of detail. There is generally a pause in the sense at the end of
each line, and thus the lines, when read continuously, produce an
impression of monotony[74], which is increased by the frequent use
of spondaic lines. The uniformity of his pauses, and the sameness of
structure in a large number of his hexameters, enable us to appreciate
the great improvement in rhythmical art which appeared some ten years
later in the Bucolics of Virgil. Yet if Catullus does not, in this his
most elaborate work, equal the natural force of language and rhythm
displayed in his simpler pieces, the poem, as a whole, has a noble and
stately movement, in unison with the noble and stately pictures of an
ideal fore-time which it brings before the imagination.
The four longer elegiac pieces which follow add little to
our impression of the art of Catullus. In the 'Epistle to
Manlius'--perhaps owing to the trouble by which his mind was darkened
at the time of its composition--he does not use the elegiac metre,
as a vehicle of his personal feelings, with much force or clearness.
There is much more than in his phalaecians and iambics the appearance
of effort, and there is much greater uncertainty as to his meaning.
The 67th poem keeps alive with some vivacity a scandalous story of
his native province which might well have been allowed to sink into
oblivion. In the 'Coma Berenices,' and the poem addressed to Allius,
he again writes under the influence of his Alexandrian masters. He
seems to have regarded the 'Carmina Battiadae' with the admiration
which youthful genius, not yet sure of its own powers, entertains for
culture and established reputation,--the kind of admiration which led
Burns to imagine that his own early inspiration might be of less value
to the world than 'Shenstone's art.' Like Burns, too, Catullus is
least happy when he gives up his own language, which he wields easily
and powerfully, and the forms of art which came naturally to him, in
deference to the standard of poetic taste recognised in his day.
His selection of the 'Coma Berenices' as a task in translation,
illustrates the attraction which the union of beauty and passion with
truth and constancy of affection had for his imagination. The poem
to Allius is the most artificially constructed of all his pieces. He
endeavours to unite in it three distinct threads of interest,--that
of his passion for Lesbia, that of the romance of Laodamia and
Protesilaus, and that of his brother's death in the Troad. Although
this triple combination is accomplished with much mechanical
ingenuity[75], yet the effect of the poem as a whole is disappointing,
and its motive,--gratitude for a service which no honourable man,
according to our modern ideas of honour, would have rendered,--does
not make amends for the want of simplicity in its structure. Yet as
written in the heyday of his passion for Lesbia, and largely inspired
by that passion, it has, along with an Alexandrian superfluity of
ornament and illustration, many beauties of expression and feeling.
The passionate devotion of Laodamia for Protesilaus is conceived with
sympathetic power,--
Quo tibi tum casu pulcherrima Laudamia,
Ereptum est vita dulcius atque anima
Coniugium[76].
There is an exquisite picture of his own stolen meetings with his
'candida diva'; and depth and sincerity of affection are purely and
simply expressed in the last two lines--
Et longe ante omnes mihi quae me carior ipse'st,
Lux mea qua viva vivere dulce mihi'st.
In this poem too, although the application of the image is an
incongruous adaptation of an old Homeric simile, we meet with a
descriptive passage which, more perhaps than any other in his poems,
shows that Catullus was a true lover and close observer of Nature,--
Qualis in aerii perlucens vertice montis
Rivos muscoso prosilit e lapide
Qui cum de prona praeceps est valle volutus
Per medium sensim transit iter populi,
Dulce viatori lasso in sudore levamen,
Cum gravis exustos aestus hiulcat agros[77].
The perfection attained by Catullus in his best lyrical poetry, and
the power displayed in his longer pieces, are so high and genuine that
we are hardly surprised at the enthusiasm of those who have ranked
him, in respect both of art and genius, foremost among Roman poets. If
the pure essence of poetry could be separated from the whole spiritual
and intellectual being of the poet, much might be said in favour
of that estimate. Others, who think that the work accomplished by
Lucretius, Virgil, and Horace is, both in quantity and quality, of
more lasting value to the world, cannot forget that had they died at
the same early age as Catullus, their names would have been unknown,
or perhaps remembered as those of Cinna and Cornificius are now. From
the exquisite skill with which Catullus has treated light and playful
themes, he has been sometimes compared to modern poets who have no
other claim to recognition than a similar facility. But if he is to be
compared with any, it is not with the minor poets, ancient or modern,
but with the greater, that he is to be ranked. The two eminent English
scholars who have made a special study of this poet, and have done
more than almost any others in recent times to elucidate his meaning
and gain for him his just recognition, look upon him as the equal of
Sappho and Alcaeus. Among modern poets he has been compared to one,
most unlike him in all the outward conditions of his life, and in
many of the conditions of his art,--the poet Burns[78]. In general
intellectual power, in the breadth of his human sympathies, the modern
poet is much the greater. He is, in all ways, the larger man. But in
some endowments of heart and genius the ancient poet is far from being
the inferior. He was more fortunate in his nearness to the greatest
source of poetic culture, and in the use of a medium of expression,
not of a local and limited influence, but one which brings him into
immediate relation with educated men of all ages and countries. But
in the passionate ardour of their temperament, and the robustness,
too closely allied with coarseness, of their fibre; in their
susceptibility to beautiful and tender emotions, and the mobility of
nature with which they yielded to impulses the most opposite to these;
in their large capacity of love and scorn, of pleasure and pain; in
their genuine sincerity and firm hold on real life; in the keenness
of their satire, and their shrewd observation of the world around
them;--in their simple and direct force of feeling and expression;
in the freshness of their love for the fairer objects in Nature
with which they were most familiar,--they have much in common. The
resemblance of the concluding lines of the 'Final renunciation of
Lesbia' to the sentiment of the 'Daisy' has been already noticed. The
scornful advice, conveyed in the words 'pete nobiles amicos,' finds
many an echo in the tones of the modern poet. The art of both is so
inseparably associated with their lives, that our admiration of it can
hardly help being enhanced or qualified by personal sympathy with,
or dislike of their characters. In the case of Catullus it must be
allowed that if a careless pursuit of pleasure, an apparent absence
of all high aims in life, the too frequent indulgence in the coarsest
language and the vilest imputations, could alienate our affections
from a great poet, his art would be judged at a disadvantage. But his
own frank revelations, from which we learn his faults, must equally
be taken as the unintended evidence of his nobler and more generous
nature. If his passions led him too far astray, he himself, so far as
now appears, alone suffered from them. There is no trace in him of the
selfish calculation, or the baser falsehood, which renders 'the life
of pleasure,' as led by many men, detestable. There was in his case no
'hardening of all within' as its effect. The small volume bequeathed
by him to the world is in itself a sufficient result of his few years.
If he is in a great degree unreflective, if he does not consciously
realise what are the ends of life, yet he does not look on life in a
spirit of cynicism or frivolity. Whatever vein of reflection appears
in him is not devoid of reverence and seriousness. His too frequent
coarseness is to be explained by the manners of his age and race;
and the imputations which he makes on his enemies were, in all
probability, never meant to be taken seriously. Although unfortunate
in his love, he has shown a capacity of ardent, self-forgetful, and
constant devotion, that deserved a better object. He could care for
another more than for his own life and happiness. And he had, in a
degree rarely equalled, a virtue which devoted lovers often want, the
truest, kindliest, most considerate and appreciative affection for
many friends. His very dependence on their sympathy in all his joy
and sorrow is a claim on the sympathy of the world. If to love warmly,
constantly, and unselfishly be the best title to the love of others,
few poets, in any age or country, deserve a kindlier place in the
hearts of men than 'the young Catullus.'
[Footnote 1: Cf. 'L. Iulium Calidum, quem post Lucretii
Catullique mortem multo elegantissimum poetam nostram tulisse
aetatem vere videor posse contendere.'--Corn. Nep. Vit. Att.
12.]
[Footnote 2: 'Multa satis lusi.'--lxviii^a. 17. The
context shows that the 'lusi,'--like Horace's 'lusit
Anacreon,'--refers to the composition of amatory poetry
founded on his own experience. It was for this kind of poetry
that Manlius had applied to him, and he pleads his grief as an
excuse for his inability to write any at that time, although
he had written much in his earliest youth.]
[Footnote 3: E.g. xvi. 12; liv. 6.]
[Footnote 4: Martial iv. 14,--
Sic forsan tener ausus est Catullus
Magno mittere passerem Maroni.
Ibid. xi. 6. 16,--
Donabo tibi passerem Catulli.]
[Footnote 5: B. Schmidt conjectures that the collection as
we now have it was made after books were generally written in
parchment. His whole collected poems would thus be more easily
enclosed in a single volume, than when written on the old
papyrus rolls.]
[Footnote 6: Three poems formerly attributed to
Catullus,--those between xvii and xxi,--are now omitted from
all editions. On the other hand, one poem, lxviii, must, in
all probability, be divided into two, and possibly some lines
now attached to others are parts of separate poems.]
[Footnote 7: Cf. B. Schmidt, quoting Bruner, Prolegomena, p.
xcviii.]
[Footnote 8: x. 6.]
[Footnote 9: xvii. 7; liii. 1; lvi. 1.]
[Footnote 10: ix.]
[Footnote 11: xxv, xl, xlii, etc.]
[Footnote 12: Cf. viii, xxxviii, lxv, etc.]
[Footnote 13: liii.]
[Footnote 14: Cf. 'quae etiam aleret adulescentis et
parsimoniam patrum suis sumptibus sustentaret.' Cic. Pro M.
Caelio, 16, 38. Gellius, another of her lovers, was probably
about the same age, or a year or two younger than Caelius. Cf.
Schwabe, p. 112, etc.]
[Footnote 15: B. Schmidt supposes that he did not die till 52
B.C., and that he must have been born in 82 B.C. The reasons
he assigns for this belief are not convincing. He thinks that
it was unlikely that Catullus should have been reconciled to
Julius Caesar in the winter of 55-54 B.C., so soon after the
offence was committed, which must have been after the first
invasion of Britain by Julius Caesar in the summer and autumn
of 55. He shows that the reconciliation could not have
taken place in the winter of 54-3, as Caesar was absent in
Transalpine Gaul. He supposes therefore that it must have
taken place in the winter of 53-2. He thinks it probable that
Catullus' reconciliation must have taken place about the same
time or subsequently to that of Calvus, who was likely to have
influenced Catullus' political action, and that Calvus could
not have desired to be reconciled till after the autumn of
54, when he prosecuted Vatinius. It seems quite arbitrary to
suppose that a considerable time must have elapsed between the
offence and the apology of Catullus. If Catullus was in Verona
in the winter of 55-4, and in his father's house, and Julius
Caesar was then, as was his habit, living on intimate terms
with and enjoying the hospitality of the father of Catullus,
that of itself affords an explanation of their meeting and
reconciliation. If Catullus required to be induced by any
one to make an apology, it is more likely that his father's
influence moved him to do so than the example and influence of
Calvus.]
[Footnote 16: Cf. x, xiii, xxvi, xli, ciii.]
[Footnote 17: lviii. 3; lxxix. 2.]
[Footnote 18: Cf. cx, xli.]
[Footnote 19: Reading suggested by Munro.]
[Footnote 20: E.g. lxiv. 240-41:--
Ceu pulsae ventorum flamine nubes,
Aerium nivei montis liquere cacumen.
And this most characteristic feature of Alpine
scenery,--lxviii^b. 17, etc.:--
Qualis in aerii perlucens vertice montis
Rivos muscoso prosilit e lapide, etc.]
[Footnote 21: For his influence on the art of the [Greek:
neoteroi] cf. Schmidt, Prolegomena, p. lxii.]
[Footnote 22: Schmidt believes that Cinna was a native of
Brescia; Prol. lxiii; but he does not there give his reason
for his belief.]
[Footnote 23: Cf. xcv. 7:
At Volusi Annales Paduam morientur ad ipsam.]
[Footnote 24: The epigram on Cominius (cviii) was probably
written at Rome, as he was not of sufficient importance
to have made an impression on the people of Verona. The
accusation of C. Cornelius, which excited odium against him,
was made in 65 B.C. But it does not follow that the poem
was written by Catullus at that time. He may have become
acquainted with him later, and avenged some private pique by
reference to the unpopularity formerly excited by him. There
is no direct reference to the trial of Cornelius in the poem,
which appears among others referring to a much later date.]
[Footnote 25: lxviii. 15-18.]
[Footnote 26: In the 'docto avo' we have an allusion to the
author of the 'Istrian War.']
[Footnote 27: lxviii^b.]
[Footnote 28: The _Caelius_ addressed in some of the poems is
not M. Caelius Rufus, but a Veronese friend and confidant of
Catullus--
'Flos Veronensum ... iuvenum.'
Caesar, Bell. Civ. i. 2, mentions M. Caelius Rufus simply as
M. Rufus, Cicero in his epistles addresses him as 'mi Rufe.']
[Footnote 29: Among other indications the vow of
Lesbia (xxxvi) throws light on her literary taste and
accomplishment.]
[Footnote 30: On the whole question compare Mr. Munro's
Criticisms and Elucidations, etc., pp. 194-202.
It has been argued on the other side that public opinion
would not have tolerated the publicity given to an adulterous
intrigue, especially one with a Roman matron so high in rank
as the wife of Metellus Celer. But the state of public opinion
in the last years of the Republic is not to be gauged either
by that of an earlier time, or by that existing during the
stricter censorship of the Augustan _regime_. Catullus himself
(cxiii) testifies to what is known from other sources, the
extreme laxity with which the marriage tie was regarded in the
interval between 'the first and second consulships of Pompey.'
Perhaps, however, if Metellus Celer had survived Catullus,
the Lesbia-poems might never have been publicly given to the
world. After his death Clodia by her manner of life forfeited
all claim to the immunities of a Roman matron.]
[Footnote 31: lxviii^b. 105-6.]
[Footnote 32: The poem lxviii--
Quod mihi fortuna casuque oppressus acerbo--
was addressed to Manlius just after Catullus had heard of his
brother's death, i.e. probably late in the year 60, or early
in the year 59 B.C. Manlius was himself suffering then from
a great and sudden sorrow. The expressions in lines 1, 5, 6,
'casu acerbo,' 'sancta Venus,' 'desertum in lecto caelibe,'
make it at least highly probable that this sorrow was the
premature death of his young bride. If this generally accepted
opinion is true, the Epithalamium must have been written some
time before 59 B.C.]
[Footnote 33: That of Westphal.]
[Footnote 34: Schmidt supposes that poems ix, xii, xiii belong
to a later date, 56 B.C., when he thinks that Veranius and
Fabullus were with some otherwise unknown Piso in the Province
of Hispania Citerior, and that the poems xxviii,
Pisonis comites, cohors inanis,
and xlvii,
Porci et Socration, duae sinistrae
Pisones, etc.,
belong to the same period.
But not to speak of the fact that the character imputed
to Piso, in the phrase 'duae sinistrae,' and in the words
'vappa,' 'verpa,' 'verpus,' applied to him, are in exact
accordance with that ascribed to him in the virulent invective
of Cicero (In L. Calpurnium Pisonem Oratio), it is difficult
to see how the words in xxviii,
Satisne cum isto
Vappa frigoraque et famem tulistis?
could apply to either the climate or the condition of Hispania
Citerior at that time. But they closely coincide with the
words of Cicero applied to the government by Piso of his
province of Macedonia (17-40), 'An exercitus nostri interitus
ferro, _fame_, _frigore_, pestilentia?' On the other hand, the
words in ix,
Visam te incolumem audiamque Hiberum
Narrantem loca, facta, nationes,
would be applicable to the adventures and dangers of Julius
Caesar in further Spain in 61 B.C. There is no difficulty
in supposing that the two young friends went together on two
different occasions on the staff of two different provincial
governors. The tone of the two different sets of poems is
so different, the one set so bright and happy, the other so
savage and bitter, that it is almost inconceivable that they
belong to the same time and the same circumstances.]
[Footnote 35: Schmidt supposes that the person to whom this
letter is written is the same as the Allius of lxviii^b; that
the lines beginning
Non possum reticere
are a continuation of what used to be thought a separate poem,
Quod mihi fortuna, etc.,
that Manlius was the praenomen of Allius, and that he is
addressed in the first part of the poem by the praenomen,
in the latter by the gentile name. But the letter to Manlius
clearly indicates the recent loss of his bride, or some
distress connected with his marriage (lines 1, 5, 6), whereas
at the end of the letter to Allius he says, 'Sitis felices et
tu simul et tua vita;' lxviii. 155.]
[Footnote 36: There is some uncertainty both as to the reading
and interpretation of the lines (lxviii. 15-19). The most
generally accepted view is that Manlius had written to let
Catullus know that several fashionable rivals were supplanting
him in his absence. Mr. Munro supposes that the letter was
written from Baiae, and that the _hic_ is so to be explained.
Another view of the passage is that Manlius had, without any
reference to Clodia, merely rallied Catullus on leading a dull
and lonely life at Verona, a place quite unsuitable for the
pleasures of a man of fashion.]
[Footnote 37: Cf. poems x. 30, etc., and xcv.]
[Footnote 38: Cf. Munro's Criticisms and Elucidations of
Catullus, p. 214.]
[Footnote 39: An entirely different interpretation has
recently been given to this poem (Schmidt, Prolegomena, xxxix,
etc.). It is supposed not to be complimentary, but bitterly
sarcastic. It is said that Catullus could not, except in
irony, have described himself as
'pessimus omnium poeta;'
and if those words applied to himself as a poet are irony,
so must the words applied in strong contrast to Cicero as an
advocate (tanto--quanto) be equally ironical. In that case the
_omnium_ in the last line must not be taken in connexion with
optimus, but with patronus. Cicero's readiness to be 'omnium
patronus' is sarcastically commented on with immediate
reference to his defence of Vatinius, which startled some of
his best friends among the constitutional party. The formal
address 'Marce Tulli' is also ironical. (If that is so,
probably also the 'Romuli nepotum' is used in mock heroic
irony, like the 'Remi nepotum' in lviii.) What then is
the favour for which Catullus writes these ironically
complimentary thanks? Schmidt supposes that Cicero had
expressed either publicly or privately a very poor opinion
of Catullus' poems, and that Catullus revenges himself by
professing to agree with him, to be most grateful for the
criticism (gratias tibi maximas Catullus agit), and to repay
it by heaping ironical coals on his head.
It is just possible that the poem might have been so
understood in the set to which Catullus belonged, if we were
certain that it was written at the time when Cicero defended
Vatinius. But the general public could hardly have understood
it so, and it is not surprising that it never occurred to any
one to understand it in that sense till within the last year
or two. It is not in keeping with Catullus' straightforward,
outspoken vituperation, nor with the manners of the time (as
shown in Cicero's speeches), to write an epigram which would
leave the object of it in doubt whether it was written in
earnest or derision. No doubt Catullus did not seriously think
himself 'the worst of living poets,' worse for instance than
Volusius. But there is an irony of modest self-depreciation,
as that of Virgil when he applies to himself the words
'argutos inter strepere anser olores,' as well as of insulting
banter. The change in the construction of the 'omnium' in
the two consecutive lines would be at least startling. That
Catullus, a young man, not intimate with Cicero, should
address him as Marce Tulli is not perhaps more remarkable than
that a young poet of the present day should in writing to a
man of great eminence, twenty years his senior, address him as
Mr. ----. Cicero writes banteringly and good-naturedly to one
of his correspondents, Volumnius, probably a much younger
man (Fam. vii. 32): 'Quod sine praenomine familiariter, ut
debebas, ad me epistolam misisti, primum addubitavi, num a
Volumnio senatore esset, quorum mihi est magnus usus.'
There is no reason for supposing that Cicero ever passed any
criticism favourable or unfavourable on Catullus, though in
his letters he twice uses his phrases; and if he did, it was
not in Catullus' way to retaliate without making it perfectly
clear what he was retaliating for. Cicero was constantly in
the way of doing kindnesses to all sorts of people, in the
law-courts or by recommending them to some of his influential
friends. He especially says that he had always done what he
could to foster the genius of poets. He was attracted to young
men like Catullus (he was not of the 'grex Catilinae'); and of
his friend Calvus he writes with genuine appreciation. It is
more natural as well as more pleasant to think of these two
men of genius, in so far as they came in contact, having
agreeable relations with one another, than to believe that
the poet wrote these apparently straightforward, kindly
appreciative lines in revenge for some real or fancied
disparagement of his verses.]
[Footnote 40: Cf. xxiv. 7:--
Qui? non est homo bellus? inquies. Est.]
[Footnote 41: Two of the four poems connected with Calvus
allude to his antagonism to Vatinius, which went on actively
between the years 56 and 54 B.C. In none of them is there any
allusion to Lesbia, who was never out of Catullus, thoughts or
his verse till after his Bithynian journey.]
[Footnote 42: Horace contrasts the 'dirge of Simonides'
('Ceae retractes munera neniae') with the lighter poetry
of love.]
[Footnote 43: Cf. Munro's Lucretius, p. 468, third edition.]
[Footnote 44: lxxii. 5-8:--
Nunc te cognovi: quare etsi impensius uror,
Multo mi tamen es vilior et levior.
Qui potis est? inquis. Quia amantem iniuria talis
Cogit amare magis, set bene velle minus.]
[Footnote 45: lxxxv. 1.]
[Footnote 46: xi. 23.]
[Footnote 47: lxxvi.]
[Footnote 48:
'Calvus, if those now silent in the tomb
Can feel the touch of pleasure in our tears
For those we loved, who perished in their bloom,
And the departed friends of former years:
Oh then, full surely thy Quintilia's woe,
For the untimely fate that bade ye part,
Will fade before the bliss she feels to know
How very dear she is unto thy heart.'--Martin.]
[Footnote 49: Compare also his humorous notice of the
compliment which he heard in the crowd paid to the speech of
Calvus against Vatinius--
Dii magni, salaputium disertum.]
[Footnote 50: xii.]
[Footnote 51: xxxviii.]
[Footnote 52: Mr. Munro, in his Elucidations (pp. 209,
etc.), shows that the whole point of the poem consists in the
contrast drawn between the 'Zmyrna' of Cinna and the 'Annals
of Volusius.' Baehrens admits the reading 'Hortensius' into
the text, but adds in a note on the word, _vox corrupta est_.]
[Footnote 53: lxxvi. 1-4.]
[Footnote 54: Cf. lxiii. 12:--
Neu me odisse putes hospitis officium.]
[Footnote 55: Att. vii. 7. 6: 'Placet igitur etiam me expulsum
et agrum Campanum perisse et adoptatum patricium a plebeio,
Gaditanum a Mytilenaeo, et Labieni divitiae et Mamurrae
placent et Balbi horti et Tusculanum.']
[Footnote 56: lxxvi. 19.]
[Footnote 57: xvi. 5-6.]
[Footnote 58: lxxxiv. Cicero also was afflicted by a bore of
the same name, who stayed away from Rome in order 'that he
might pass whole days discussing philosophy with Cicero at
Formiae.' The Arrius of this poem is supposed to be Q. Arrius,
Praetor in 73 B.C., whom Cicero speaks of as having been in
the habit of acting as a kind of Junior Counsel along with
Crassus ('qui fuit M. Crassi quasi secundarum'), and having,
though a man of the lowest origin and without either culture
or natural ability, got into a considerable practice. The
words 'Hoc misso in Syriam' are supposed to imply that he was
sent as a legatus to join Crassus in his Syrian province. The
poem would thus be written about the end of 55 B.C. Schmidt.]
[Footnote 59: Hor. A. P. 437-38:--
Quintilio si quid recitares, Corrige, sodes,
Hoc aiebat et hoc.
Schmidt supposes him to be the Alphenus Varus, the Jurist, to
whom the 30th poem, written in a tone of tender reproach, is
addressed. Catullus does not seem to address the same person
by different names, unless Manius and Allius are the same.
Thus M. Caelius Rufus is addressed as Rufus, the Caelius
addressed in other poems being a native of Verona. As both
Alphenus Varus and Quintilius Varus were natives of Cremona,
Catullus was likely to have known both.]
[Footnote 60: vii. 7-8.]
[Footnote 61: xi. 22-24.]
[Footnote 62: xvii. 12-15 and 15-16.]
[Footnote 63: E.g.
Litus ut longe resonante Eoa
Tunditur unda.]
[Footnote 64: 'Criticisms and Elucidations,' etc. p. 73.]
[Footnote 65: The pride of Roman nationality is, perhaps,
unconsciously betrayed in such phrases as 'Romuli nepotum,' in
the lines addressed to Cicero.]
[Footnote 66: xxxiv. 7-12:--
Quam mater prope Deliam
Deposivit olivam,
Montium domina ut fores
Silvarumque virentium
Saltuumque reconditorum
Amniumque sonantum.]
[Footnote 67: lxi. 122-46.]
[Footnote 68: lxiv. 89-90.]
[Footnote 69:
'Soon my eyes shall see, mayhap,
Young Torquatus on the lap
Of his mother, as he stands
Stretching out his tiny hands,
And his little lips the while
Half open on his father's smile.
'And oh! may he in all be like
Manlius his sire, and strike
Strangers when the boy they meet
As his father's counterfeit,
And his face the index be
Of his mother's chastity.'--Martin.]
[Footnote 70: Cf. Mr. Ellis's notes on the poem.]
[Footnote 71: Cf. Plaut. Pseud. 147:--
Neque Alexandrina beluata conchyliata tapetia.
Mr. Ellis, in his Commentary on Catullus, p. 226, mentions
that both the marriage of Peleus and Thetis, and the legend
of Ariadne, were common subjects of ancient art. He points out
also that the idea of the quilt on which the Ariadne story was
represented was borrowed from Apollonius, i. 730-66.]
[Footnote 72:
'Whate'er of loveliest decks the plain, whate'er
The giant mountains of Thessalia bear,
Whate'er beneath the west's warm breezes blow,
Where crystal streams by flowery margents flow,
These in festoons or coronals inwrought
Of undistinguishable blooms he brought,
Whose blending odours crept from room to room,
Till all the house was gladdened with perfume.'--Martin.]
[Footnote 73: E.g. 'Argivae robora pubis'--'decus
innuptarum'--'funera nec funera,' etc., etc. Mr. Ellis's
commentary largely illustrates the influence exercised by the
phraseology of the Greek poets,--especially Homer, Euripides,
Apollonius--on the poetical diction of Catullus in this poem.]
[Footnote 74: This monotony, as is pointed out by Mr. Ellis,
is, in a great degree, the result of the coincidence of the
accent and rhythmical ictus in the last three feet of the
line.]
[Footnote 75: Westphal, pp. 73-83, has given an elaborate
explanation of the principle on which the various parts of the
poem are arranged and connected with one another.]
[Footnote 76: The lines immediately following these are in the
worst style of learned Alexandrinism.]
[Footnote 77:
'As some clear stream, from mossy stone that leaps,
Far up among the hills, and, wimpling down
By wood and vale, its onward current keeps
To lonely hamlet and to stirring town,
Cheering the wayworn traveller as it flows
When all the fields with drought are parched and bare.'
--Martin.]
[Footnote 78: This parallel was first pointed out by the writer of
an excellent article on Catullus in the North British Review,
referred to by Mr. Munro in his 'Criticisms and Elucidations,'
p. 234.]
THE END.
Transcriber's Note:
Sundry damaged or missing punctuation has been repaired.
Page 28: 'Neibuhr' corrected to 'Niebuhr' (2nd entry)
"Niebuhr went so far as to assert that the Romans ..."
Page 53: AEneas and Aeneas both occurred on this page. Both spellings
are correct, but as there is only the single instance of AEneas, with
the ae ligature, and around 30 instances of Aeneas, wihout the ligature,
AEneas has been amended to Aeneas. The AE/ae ligature has not otherwise
been used in this book.
page 148: 'advorsam' is correct; alternative spelling for 'adversam'.
page 157: 'adoped' corrected to 'adopted'
"... into the forms which he adopted from Greece."
page 447: 'dulness' is correct; Oxford Dictionary gives it as an
alternative spelling.
page 468: 'Luaguidnlosque' corrrected to 'Languidulosque'
"Languidulosque paret tecum coniungere somnos."
End of Project Gutenberg's The Roman Poets of the Republic, by W. Y. Sellar