Page:Catullus, Tibullus and Propertius.djvu/67

Rh with his youthful temples wreathed in ivy, will meet him there, in the company of Calvus. All that we read of the latter is in his favour, with the exception, perhaps, of the scurrilous lampoons on Cæsar and his satellites, in which, as elsewhere, he emulated his brother poet. Like him, his career was brief, for he died of over-training and discipline in his thirty-fifth year, his famous speech against Vatinius having been delivered in his twenty-seventh, and having been his first forensic effort. It was apropos of that speech that Catullus made the following jeu d'esprit, with an allusion to his friend's union of vehement action with a person and stature small almost to dwarfishness:—

As is not uncommon with men of like stature, vehemence of gesticulation made up for insignificance of height and physique; and that Vatinius had reason to feel this, is gleaned from Seneca's tradition, that when he found how telling was its impression on his tribunal, he exclaimed, "Am I, then, judges, to be condemned simply because yon pleader is eloquent?" We have, however, more concern with him as a poet. The first piece of Catullus in which we are introduced to him