Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 5.djvu/260

Rh 248 CATULLUS among the other inhabitants of Italy, he adds the words &quot; ut meos quoque attingaru&quot; (xxxviii. 13). His occasional residence in his native place is further attested by the statement of Suetonius (Julius C&amp;lt;xsar, 73), that &quot; Julius Csesar accepted the poet s apology for his scurrilous verses upon him, invited him to dine with him on the same day, and continued his intimacy with his father as before.&quot; As this incident could only have happened during the time that Julius Caesar was Pro consul, the scene of it must have been in the Cisalpine province, and at the house of the poet s father, in or near Verona. The verses apologized for were those contained in poems xxix. and Ivii., the former of which must have been written after Caesar s invasion of Britain, so that this interview probably took place in the winter of 55-54 B.C. The fact that his father was the host of the great pro consul, and lived on terms of intimacy with him, justifies the inference, that he was, in wealth and rank, one of the principal men of the province, an inference confirmed by the social position which Catullus himself assumed in Rome, and by his enjoyment of property independent of his father (cf. poems xxxi. and xliv.) during his father s lifetime. The only other important statement concerning the poet s life which rests on external authority is that of Apuleius, that the real name of the Lesbia of the poems was Clodia. One other statement, not concerning the poet s life, but concerning the reputation which he enjoyed after his death, is given in the Life of Adieus by Cornelius Nepos (12, 4). It is to the effect that he regarded Lucretius and Catullus as the two greatest poets of his own time. The volume of poems which Catullus collected and published before his death consists of 116 pieces, varying in length from 2 to 408 lines, the great mass of them being, however, short pieces, written in some lyric or iambic, or in elegiac metre. These poems are not arranged either in chronological order or in accordance with the character of the topics with which they deal. The only principle which seems to have guided the author in his arrangement was that of placing the longer poems, of a less personal and fugitive character, in the middle of the volume, while the first part contained those written in lyric or iambic metres, and the latter part consisted entirely of verses written in the elegiac metre. Many of the last treat of the same topics and refer to the same persons as those forming the subject of the short poems at the beginning of the volume. The elegiac, as well as the phalecian and iambic metres, were employed by him as the vehicle both of his tenderest and his bitterest feelings. Though no chronological order is observed, yet internal evidence enables us to determine the occasions on which many of the poems were written, and the order in which they followed one another. They give a very vivid image of various phases of the poet s life, and of the strong feelings with which persons and things affected him. They throw much light also on the social life of Rome and of the provincial towns of Italy in the years preceding the outbreak of the second civil war. Apart from their poetic charm, they thus possess the interest of bringing vividly before us some aspects of one of the most critical epochs in the history of the ancient world. In this respect they may be compared with the letters of Cicero, which record the impression produced by the same time on a man of similar susceptibility of feeling and keenness of apprehension, but of character and pursuits as far removed as possible from those of the provincial poet, who modestly contrasts the greatness of the &quot; most eloquent of the descendants of Romulus&quot; with his own humble pretensions. The poems extend over a period of seven or eight years, from 61 or 62 till 54 B.C. Among the earliest are those which record the various stages of the author s passion for Lesbia. It is in connection with this passion that he is generally mentioned, or alluded to, by the later Roman poets, such as Propertius, Ovid, Juvenal, and Martial The real name of Lesbia, as we learn from Apuleius, was Clodia. The admiration which Catullus felt for the great Lesbian poetess, which is clearly indicated by the imitation of her language in his 51st and 62d poems, affords an obvious explanation of the Greek name which he gave to his Roman mistress. After the exhaustive examination of the subject by Schwabe, it may be regarded as certain that she was the notorious sister of Publius Clodius Pulcher, the /SOUJTTIS who plays an important part in the drama of Cicero s fortunes, brought before us in the first three books of the Letters to Atticus, the &quot; Palatina Medea,&quot; whose character stands out so prominently in the speech Pro Caelio, the &quot; quadrantaria Clyternnestra,&quot; as she was called by her lover Cselius (Quintilian, viii. 6, 23), in reference to the suspicion she incurred of having poisoned her husband, Q. Metellus Celer (consul, 60 B.C.) in 59 B.C. (cf. Munro, Journal of Philology, iii.) In the year 56 she charged M. Caelius Rufus, after tiring of him, as she had of Catullus, with an attempt to poison her. It was in defence of him that Cicero described the spell she exercised over young men, in language which might have been applied to her previous relations with the youthful poet, as well as thosa with the youthful orator and politician. It may probably have been on hearing of this defence, that Catullus, whose feelings had by that time changed from passionate devotion to scornful animosity, wrote the short poem (xlviii.) Disertissime Romuli nepotum, which asso ciates his name with the great orator of the age. Poerna concerning Lesbia occur both among the earliest and the latest of those contained in the series. They record the various stages of passion through which Catullus passed, from absolute devotion and a secure sense of returned affection, through the various conditions of distrust and jealousy, attempts at renunciation, and short-lived &quot;amoris- integrations, &quot; through the &quot; odi et amo &quot; state, and the later state of savage indignation against both Lesbia and his rivals, and especially against Caelius Rufus, till he finally attains, not without much suffering and loss, the last state of scornful indifference. Among the earliest of the poems connected with Lesbia, and among those written in the happiest vein, are ii. and iii. (Passer, ddicice mere puellce and Lugete, Veneres Cupidinesque], and v. and vii. The 8th, Miser Catulle, desinas ineptire, perhaps the most beautiful of them all, expresses the first awakening of the poet to a sense of her unworthiness, before the gentler have given place to the fiercer feelings of his nature. His- final renunciation is sent in a poem written after his return from the East, with a union of imaginative and scornful power, to his two butts, Furius and Aurelius (xi., Furi et Aureli, comites Catulli), who, to judge by the way Catullus writes of them, appear to have been hangers on upon him, who repaid the pecuniary and other favours they received by giving him grounds for jealousy, and making imputa tions on his character (cf. xv., xvi., xviii., xxiii.) The intrigue of Caelius Rufus with Lesbia began in 59 or 58 B.C. (cf. Schwabe, Qucest. Catulli, p. 66). It was probably in the earlier stages of this liaison that the 68th poem was written, from which it appears that Catullus, at the time living at Verona, and grieving for the recent death of his brother in the Troad, had heard of Lesbia s infidelity, and, in consideration of her previous faithless ness in his favour, was not inclined to resent it very warmly &quot;Kara verecundae furta feremus herae,&quot; Two other poems in the series express the grief which Catullus felt for the death of his brother one, the 65th,