Page:Catullus, Tibullus and Propertius.djvu/16

4 not a few acquaintances and family ties amongst them. Such ties, as is seen in the cases of Catullus and Horace, were stronger in the provinces than in Rome; and we shall see anon that the former was influenced by the tenderest and most touching fraternal affection; but the charms of a residence at Rome, from the school-boy period up to his brief life's end, asserted a power which was rarely interrupted by rustication or foreign travel; and he cannot herein be accused of the volatility or changeableness which characterised others of his craft and country. This would be a power certain to grow with years, and the more so as books, society, culture, were accumulated in the capital. "At Rome," wrote the poet to Manlius—

It is little more than guess-work to speculate on the rank and calling of Catullus's father. From the life of Julius Cæsar by Suetonius we gather that he was on terms of intimacy with, and a frequent host of, that great man; and it is not improbable that he and the son who died in Asia Minor may have been merchants, though the death in question would consist as well with the surmise that Catullus's brother was on some prætor's staff. Attempts have been made to establish against the poet himself a charge of impecuniousness and wastefulness; but "the cobwebs in his purse" in the invitation to Fabullus (C. xiii.) are a figure of speech which need not be literally interpreted; his allusions in C. xi., "Concerning Varus's Mistress," to a