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,
addressed to Varus, probably the fastidious critic whom Horace quotes
in the 'Ars Poetica[594],' 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, 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, spontaneous language. There are, indeed, even in
his simplest poems, a few strokes of imaginative expression, as, for
instance,--
Aut quam sidera multa, cum facet nox,
Furtivos hominum vident amores,[595]--
and this, written with the feeling and with the application which Burns
makes of the same image,--
Velut prati
Ultimi flos, praetereunte postquam
Tactus aratro est;[596]--
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.[597]
But the great charm of the style in these shorter poems is its
simple directness, and its popular idiomatic ring. There is nothing,
apparently, studied about it, no ornament or involution, no otiose
epithets, no subtle allusiveness. Yet 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 ἄοιδος--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[598],--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 more prosaic 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'[599]. 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[600], 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[601],--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[602]--
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.[603]
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.[604]
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 idyl. 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,
οἵαν τὰν ὑάκινθον ἐν ὤρεσι ποίμενες ἄνδρες
πόσσι καταστείβοισι, χάμαι δέ τε πόρφυρον ἄνθος.
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 idyl, 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[605] 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[606].' 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 veleris 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[607];
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 naïveté 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, &c. 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 idyl, 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[608].
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 naïveté.
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[609], 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[610], 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[611]--
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 two last lines--
Et longe ante omnes mihi quae me carior ipso'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.[612]
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[613]. 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 547: Cf. 'L. Julium Calidum, quern post Lucretii Catullique
mortem multo elegantissimum poetam nostram tulisse aetatem vere videor
posse contendere.'--Corn. Nep. Vit. Att. 12.]
[Footnote 548: '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 549: E. g. xvi. 12; liv. 6.]
[Footnote 550: 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 certainly be divided into two, and possibly
some lines now attached to others are parts of separate poems.]
[Footnote 551: x. 6.]
[Footnote 552: xvii. 7; liii. 1; lvi. 1.]
[Footnote 553: ix.]
[Footnote 554: xxv, xl, xlii, etc.]
[Footnote 555: Cf. viii, xxxviii, lxv, etc.]
[Footnote 556: liii.]
[Footnote 557: 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 558: Cf. x, xiii, xxvi, xli, ciii.]
[Footnote 559: lviii. 3; lxxix. 2.]
[Footnote 560: Cf. cx, xli.]
[Footnote 561: Reading suggested by Mr. Munro.]
[Footnote 562: 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 563: 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 564: lxviii. 15-18.]
[Footnote 565: In the 'docto avo' we have an allusion to the author of
the 'Istrian War.']
[Footnote 566: lxviii^b.]
[Footnote 567: 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 also, in his letters to Caelius, addresses him as mi Rufe,
Ep. II. 9. 3, 12. 2.]
[Footnote 568: Among other indications the vow of Lesbia (xxxvi.)
throws light on her literary taste and accomplishment.]
[Footnote 569: 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 régime. 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 570: lxviii^b. 105-6.]
[Footnote 571: 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 572: That of Westphal.]
[Footnote 573: 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 574: Cf. poems x. 30, etc., and xcv.]
[Footnote 575: Cf. Munro's Criticisms and Elucidations of Catullus, p.
214.]
[Footnote 576: Cf. xxiv. 7:--
'Qui? non est homo bellus? inquies. Est.'
]
[Footnote 577: 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 578: Horace contrasts the 'dirge of Simonides' ('Ceae
retractes munera neniae') with the lighter poetry of love.]
[Footnote 579: Cf. Munro's Lucretius, p. 468, third edition.]
[Footnote 580: 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 581: lxxxv. 1.]
[Footnote 582: xi. 23.]
[Footnote 583: lxxvi.]
[Footnote 584:
'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 585: Compare also his humourous notice of the compliment
which he heard in the crowd paid to the speech of Calvus against
Vatinius--
'Dii magni, salaputium disertum.'
]
[Footnote 586: xii.]
[Footnote 587: xxxviii.]
[Footnote 588: 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 589: lxxvi. 1-4.]
[Footnote 590: Cf. lxviii. 12:--
'Neu me odisse putes hospitis officium.'
]
[Footnote 591: lxxvi. 19.]
[Footnote 592: xvi. 5-6.]
[Footnote 593: lxxxiv.]
[Footnote 594: Hor. A. P. 437-38:--
'Quintilio si quid recitares, Corrige, sodes,
Hoc aiebat et hoc'--
]
[Footnote 595: vii. 7-8.]
[Footnote 596: xi. 22-24.]
[Footnote 597: xvii. 12-13 and 15-16.]
[Footnote 598: E.g.
'Litus ul longe resonante Eoa
Tunditur unda.'
]
[Footnote 599: 'Criticisms and Elucidations, etc.' p. 73.]
[Footnote 600: The pride of Roman nationality, is perhaps,
unconsciously betrayed in such phrases as 'Romuli nepotum,' in the
lines addressed to Cicero.]
[Footnote 601: xxxiv. 7-12:--
'Quam mater prope Deliam
Deposivit olivam,
Montium domina ut fores
Silvarumque virentium
Saltuumque reconditorum
Amniumque sonantum.'
]
[Footnote 602: lxi. 122-46.]
[Footnote 603: lxiv. 89-90.]
[Footnote 604:
'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 605: Cf. Mr. Ellis' notes on the poem.]
[Footnote 606: 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. 730-06.]
[Footnote 607:
'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 608: 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 609: 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 610: 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 611: The lines immediately following these are in the worst
style of learned Alexandrinism.]
[Footnote 612:
'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 613: 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.]