Page:Catullus, Tibullus and Propertius.djvu/18

6 we know that he had two country-houses,—one at the Lago di Garda (which some have thought is still represented by the ruins of a considerable edifice at the extremity of the promontory on its southern shore, though later discoveries show that these are remains of baths of the date of Constantine, to say nothing of their extent being out of keeping with a poet's villa); and the other in the suburb of Tibur, where was his Tiburtine, or, as his ill-wishers called it, to tease him, his Sabine Farm (C. xliv.) Add to these a house and library at Rome, of which he wrote, as we have seen above, to Manlius, and an estate which he owed to the bounty of a friend, and of which little more is known than that it included amongst other goods and chattels a housekeeper; and we shall determine that Catullus was probably in nowise amenable to the charge of being a spendthrift or "distrest poet," but rather a man of good average means, in fair circumstances and good society. For the latter it is plain that his education would have fitted him. Though he had not, like Horace, the advantage of a Greek sojourn to give it finish and polish, he had enjoyed what was then at a premium in Latin towns even more than at Rome, a thorough introduction to Greek literature. Herein he laid the foundations of that deep familiarity with the Alexandrian poets, which, in common with his brother elegiast, Propertius, but perhaps with special manipulation all his own, characterises his other than erotic poetry. It is possible that the imitations of Alexan-