Page:Catullus, Tibullus and Propertius.djvu/62



we have just seen Catullus bidding fair to sink into despondency, there is no reason to suppose that this state of spirits at once, or ever entirely, shut out gayer moods upon occasion, much less that it put an end to social intercourse with those literary compeers of whom in his brief life the poet had no lack. When at Rome he contrived to amuse himself by no means tristely, if we may accept the witness of one or two lively pieces that seem to belong to the period after the Bithynian campaign, and to the closing years of his career. One stray piece—"To Camerius" (C. liv.)—gives a little hint of the company he kept, and the manner in which his days were frittered away, even when a cloud had overshadowed his life. It is a playful rallying of an associate of lighter vein upon the nature of his engagements and rendezvous, and affords a glimpse of Roman topography not so common in Catullus as could have been wished. Wishing to track his friend to his haunts, the poet says he sought him in the Campus Minor, which would seem to have been a distinct division of the