Page:Catullus, Tibullus and Propertius.djvu/14

2 Poem lii. of the actual consulship of Vatinius in 47; but it is clear from Cicero that that worthy whilst ascending the ladder of office had a habit of enforcing his affirmations by the oath, "as sure as I shall be consul," and so that the poet ridiculed a mere prospect, and not an accomplished fact—

Similarly, the argument for a much later date than 57 for Catullus's lampoons on Cæsar and Mamurra may as well be used on the other side, as it is obvious that such attacks would be on all accounts subdued after the Dictatorship was established, though policy and statesmanship doubtless counsel ignorance or oversight of such petty and ephemeral warfare. On the whole, it should seem that there are allusions in the poems of Catullus which must have been written in 54 and in 53, but scarcely a shadow of any grounds for believing him to have survived the later of these dates.

Beyond the birth-date, we have literally no souvenirs of the childhood or early youth of Catullus, for he has recorded scarcely any admonitus locorum, like Horace, and does not deal in playfully-described miracles to