Page:Catullus, Tibullus and Propertius.djvu/98

86

At the close of this chant of the fatal sisters, Catullus draws a happy picture, such as Hesiod had drawn before him, of the blissful and innocent age when the gods walked on earth, and mixed with men as friend with friend, before the advent of the iron age, when sin and death broke up family ties, and so disgusted the minds of the just Immortals that thenceforth there was no longer any "open vision"—

It is by no means so easy to give any adequate idea of the "Atys," which is incomparably the most remarkable poem of Catullus in point of metrical effects, of flow and ebb of passion, and of intensely real and heart-studied pathos. The subject, however, is one which, despite the praises Gibbon and others have bestowed on Catullus's handling of it, is unmeet for presentment in extenso before English readers. The sensible and correctly-judging Dunlop did not err in his remark that a fable, unexampled except in the various poems on the fate of Abelard, was somewhat unpromising and peculiar as a subject for poetry. In a metre named, from the priests of Cybele, Galliambic, Catullus represents—it may be from his experience and research in Asia Minor—the contrasts of enthusiasm and repentant dejection of one who, for