History of Roman Literature from its Earliest Period to the Augustan Age. Vol. I

by John Colin Dunlop

CAIUS VALERIUS CATULLUS,

who was nearly contemporary with Lucretius, having come into the world a few years after him, and having survived him but a short period.

In every part of our survey of Latin Literature, we have had occasion to remark the imitative spirit of Roman poetry, and the constant analogy and resemblance of all the productions of the Latian muse to some Greek original. None of his poetical predecessors was more versed in Greek literature than Catullus; and his extensive knowledge of its beauties procured for him the appellation of Doctus[458]. He translated [pg 272]many of the shorter and more delicate pieces of the Greeks; an attempt which hitherto had been thought impossible, though the broad humour of their comedies, the vehement pathos of their tragedies, and the romantic interest of the Odyssey, had stood the transformation. His stay in Bithynia, though little advantageous to his fortune, rendered him better acquainted than he might otherwise have been with the productions of Greece, and he was therefore, in a great degree, indebted to this expedition (on which he always appears to have looked back with mortification and disappointment) for those felicitous turns of expression, that grace, simplicity, and purity, which are the characteristics of his poems, and of which hitherto Greece alone had afforded models. Indeed, in all his verses, whether elegiac or heroic, we perceive his imitation of the Greeks, and it must be admitted that he has drawn from them his choicest stores. His Hellenisms are frequent—his images, similes, metaphors, and addresses to himself, are all Greek; and even in the versification of his odes we see visible traces of their origin. Nevertheless, he was the founder of a new school of Latin poetry; and as he was the first who used such variety of measures, and perhaps himself invented some[459], he was amply [pg 273]entitled to call the poetical volume which he presented to Cornelius Nepos, Lepidum Novum Libellum. The beautiful expressions, too, and idioms of the Greek language, which he has so carefully selected, are woven with such art into the texture of his composition, and so aptly figure the impassioned ideas of his amorous muse, that they have all the fresh and untarnished hues of originality.

This elegant poet was born of respectable parents, in the territory of Verona, but whether at the town so called, or on the peninsula of Sirmio, which projects into the Lake Benacus, has been a subject of much controversy. The former opinion has been maintained by Maffei and Bayle[460], and the latter by Gyraldus[461], Schoell[462], Fuhrmann[463], and most modern writers.

The precise period, as well as place, of the birth of Catullus, is a topic of debate and uncertainty. According to the Eusebian Chronicle, he was born in 666, but, according to other authorities, in 667[464] or 668. In consequence of an invitation from Manlius Torquatus, one of the noblest patricians of the state, he proceeded in early youth to Rome, where he appears to have kept but indifferent company, at least in point of moral character. He impaired his fortune so much by extravagance, that he had no one, as he complains,

“Fractum qui veteris pedem grabati

In collo sibi collocare possit.”

This, however, must partly have been written in jest, as his finances were always sufficient to allow him to keep up a delicious villa, on the peninsula of Sirmio, and an expensive residence at Tibur. With a view of improving his pecuniary circumstances, he adopted the usual Roman mode of re-establishing a diminished fortune, and accompanied Caius Memmius, the celebrated patron of Lucretius, to Bithynia, when he was appointed Prætor of that province. His situation, however, was but little meliorated by this expedition, and, in the course of it, he lost a beloved brother, who was along with him, and whose death he has lamented in verses never surpassed in delicacy or pathos. He came back to Rome with a shattered constitution, and a lacerated heart. From the period of his return to Italy till his decease, his time appears to have been chiefly occupied with the prosecution of licentious amours, in the capital or among the solitudes of Sirmio. The Eusebian Chronicle places his death in 696, and some writers fix it in 705. It is evident, however, that he must have survived at least till 708, as Cicero, in his Letters, talks of his verses against Cæsar and Mamurra as newly written, and first seen by Cæsar in that year[465]. The distracted and unhappy state of his country, and his disgust at the treatment which he had received from Memmius, were perhaps sufficient excuse for shunning political employments[466]; but when we consider his taste and genius, we cannot help regretting that he was merely an idler, and a debauchee. He loved Clodia, (supposed to have been the sister of the infamous Clodius,) a beautiful but shameless woman, whom he has [pg 275]celebrated under the name of Lesbia[467], as comparing her to the Lesbian Sappho, her prototype in total abandonment to guilty love. He also numbered among his mistresses, Hypsithilla and Aufilena, ladies of Verona. Among his friends, he ranked not only most men of pleasure and fashion in Rome, but many of her eminent literary and political characters, as Cornelius Nepos, Cicero, and Asinius Pollio. His enmities seem to have been as numerous as his loves or friendships, and competition in poetry, or rivalship in gallantry, appears always to have been a sufficient cause for his dislike; and where an antipathy was once conceived, he was unable to put any restraint on the expression of his hostile feelings. His poems are chiefly employed in the indulgence and commemoration of these various passions. They are now given to us without any order or attempt at arrangement: They were distributed, indeed, by Petrus Crinitus, into three classes, lyric, elegiac, and epigrammatic,—a division which has been adopted in a few of the earlier editions; but there is no such separation in the best MSS., nor is it probable that they were originally thus classed by the author, as he calls his book Libellum Singularem; and they cannot now be conveniently reduced under these heads, since several poems, as the nuptials of Peleus and Thetis, are written in hexameter measure. To others, which may be termed occasional poems expressing to his friends a simple idea, or relating the occurrences of the day, in iambic or phalangian verse, it would be difficult to assign any place in a systematic arrangement. Under what class, for instance, could we bring the poem giving a detail of his visit to the house of the courtezan, and the conversation which passed there concerning Bithynia? The order, therefore, in which the poems have been arbitrarily placed by the latest editors and commentators, however immethodical, is the only one which can be followed, in giving an account of the miscellaneous productions of Catullus.

1. Is a modest and not inelegant dedication, by the poet, of the whole volume, to Cornelius Nepos, whom he compliments on having written a general history, in three books, an undertaking which had not previously been attempted by any Roman—

—— “Ausus es unus Italorum

Omne ævum tribus explicare chartis.”

2. Ad Passerem Lesbiæ. This address of Catullus to the favourite sparrow of his mistress, Lesbia, is well known, and, [pg 276]has been always celebrated as a model of grace and elegance. Politian[468], Turnebus, and others, have discovered in this little poem an allegorical signification, which idea has been founded on a line in an epigram of Martial, Ad Romam et Dindymum—

“Quæ si tot fuerint, quot ille dixit,

Donabo tibi passerem Catulli[469].”

That by the passer Catulli, however, Martial meant nothing more than an agreeable little epigram, in the style of Catullus, which he would address to Dindymus as his reward, is evident from another epigram, where it is obviously used in this sense—

“Sic forsan tener ausus est Catullus

Magno mittere passerem Maroni[470].”

and also from that in which he compares a favourite whelp of Publius to the sparrow of Lesbia[471]. That a real and feathered sparrow was in the view of Catullus, is also evinced by the following ode, in which he laments the death of this favourite of his mistress. The erroneous notion taken up by Politian, has been happily enough ridiculed by Sannazzarius, in an epigram entitled Ad Pulicianum—

“At nescio quis Pulicianus,” &c.

and Muretus expresses his astonishment, that the most grave and learned Benedictus Lampridius should have made this happy interpretation by Politian the theme of his constant conversation, “Hanc Politiani sententiam in omni sermone approbare solitum fuisse[472].” Why Lesbia preferred a sparrow to other birds, I know not, unless it was for those qualities which induced the widow of the Emperor Sigismond to esteem it more than the turtle-dove[473], and which so much excited the envy of the learned Scioppius, at Ingolstadt.

3. Luctus in morte Passeris. A lamentation for the death of the same sparrow—

“Qui nunc it per iter tenebricosum,

Illuc unde negant redire quemquam:

At vobis male sit, malæ tenebræ

Orci, quæ omnia bella devoratis.”

The idea in this last line was probably taken from Bion’s [pg 277]celebrated Idyllium—the lamentation of Venus for the death of Adonis, where there is a similar complaint of the unrelenting Orcus—

“Το δε παν καλον ἐς σε καταῥρει.”

This poem on the death of Lesbia’s sparrow has suggested many similar productions. Ovid’s elegy, In Mortem Psittaci[474], where he extols and laments the favourite parrot of his mistress, Corinna, is a production of the same description; but it has not so much delicacy, lightness, and felicity of expression. It differs from it too, by directing the attention chiefly to the parrot, whereas Catullus fixes it more on the lady, who had been deprived of her favourite. Statius also has a poem on the death of a parrot, entitled Psittacus Melioris[475]; and Lotichius, a celebrated Latin poet, who flourished in Germany about the middle of the 16th century, has, in his elegies, a similar production on the death of a dolphin[476]. Naugerius, In Obitum Borgetti Catuli, nearly copies the poem of Catullus—

“Nunc raptus rapido maloque fato,

Ad manes abiit tenebricosas,” &c.

It has been imitated closely, and with application to a sparrow, by Corrozet, Durant, and Monnoye, French poets of the 16th century—by Gacon and Richer, in the beginning, and R. de Juvigny, in the end, of the 18th century. In all these imitations, the idea of a departure to regions of darkness, whence no one returns, is faithfully preserved. Most of them are written with much grace and elegance; and this, indeed, is a sort of poetry in which the French remarkably excel.

4. Dedicatio Phaseli. This is the consecration to Castor and Pollux, of the vessel which brought the poet safe from Bithynia to the shores of Italy. By a figure, daring even in verse, he represents the ship as extolling its high services, and claiming its well-earned dedication to Castor and Pollux, gods propitious to mariners. From this poem we may trace the progress of Catullus’s voyage: It would appear that he had embarked from Pontus, and having coasted Thrace, sailed through the Archipelago, and then into the Adriatic, whence the vessel had been brought probably up the course of the Po, and one of its branches, to the vicinity of Sirmio.

There have been nearly as many parodies of this poem, as [pg 278]imitations of that last mentioned. The collector of the Catalecta Virgilii, has attributed to Virgil a satire on Ventidius, (under the name of Sabinus,) who, from a muleteer, became consul, in the reign of Augustus, and which is parodied from Catullus—

“Sabinus ille quem videtis hospites,” &c.

Another parody is a Latin poem, entitled Lycoris, by Adrien Valois, published at the end of the Valesiana, where a courtezan, retired from the world, is introduced, boasting of the various intrigues of her former life. Nicol Heinelius published not less than fifty parodies of this poem, in a small book entitled “Phaselus Catulli, et ad eundem Parodiarum a diversis auctoribus scriptarum decades quinque; ex Bibliotheca Nic. Heinelii, Jurisconsulti, Lips. 1642.” Scaliger has also translated the Phaselus of Catullus into Greek iambics.

5. Ad Lesbiam—

“Vivamus, mea Lesbia, atque amemus,

Rumoresque senum severiorum

Omnes unius æstimemus assis.

Soles occidere et redire possunt:

Nobis, cum semel occidit brevis lux,

Nox est perpetua una dormienda.

Da mihi basia mille, deinde centum.”

This sentiment, representing either the pleasure of conviviality, or delights of love, (and much more so as when here united,) in contrast with the gloom of death, possesses something exquisitely tender and affecting. The picture of joy, with Death in the distance, inspires a feeling of pensive morality, adding a charm to the gayest scenes of life, as the transientness of the rose enhances our sense of its beauty and fragrance; and as the cloud, which throws a shade over the horizon, sometimes softens and mellows the prospect. This opposition of images succeeds even in painting; and the Arcadian landscape of Poussin, representing the rural festivity of swains, would lose much of its charm if it wanted the monument and inscription. An example had been set of such contrasted ideas in many epigrams of the Greeks, and also in the Odes of Anacreon, who constantly excites himself and fellow-passengers to unrestrained enjoyment at every stage, by recalling to remembrance the irresistible speed with which they are hurried to the conclusion of their journey—

“Ὁ δ’ Ερως, χιτωνα δησας

Ὑπερ αυχενος παπυρῳ,

Μεθυ μοι διηκονειτω.

Τροχος αρματος γαρ οῖα

Βιωτος τρεχει κυλισθεις.

Ὀλιγη δε κεισομεσθα

Κονις, ὀστεων λυθεντων.”

Od. IV.

“The ungodly,” says the Wisdom of Solomon, “reason with themselves, but not aright. Our life is short—our time is a very shadow that passeth away—and, after our end, there is no returning. Come on, therefore, let us enjoy the good things that are present, and let us speedily use the creatures like as in youth. Let us fill ourselves with costly wine and ointments, and let no flower of the spring pass by us; let us crown ourselves with rose-buds, before they be withered. Let none of us go without his part of our voluptuousness; let us leave tokens of our joyfulness in every place: For this is our portion, and our lot in this[477].”

Among the Latin poets no specimen, perhaps, exists so perfect of this voluptuous yet pensive morality or immorality, as the Vivamus, mea Lesbia, of Catullus. It is a theme, too, in which he has been frequently followed, if not imitated, by succeeding poets—by Horace, in particular, who, amid all the delights of love and wine, seldom allows himself to forget the closing scene of existence. Many of them too, like Catullus, have employed the argument of the certainty and speediness of death for the promotion of love and pleasure—

“Interea, dum fata sinunt, jungamus amores;

Jam veniet tenebris Mors adoperta caput[478].”

And, in like manner, Propertius—

“Dum nos fata sinunt, oculos satiemus amore;

Nox tibi longa venit nec reditura dies.”

There is not much of this in the amatory or convivial poetry of the moderns. Waller has some traces of it; but a modern prose writer hath most beautifully, and with greater boldness than any of his predecessors, represented not merely the thoughts, but the actual image of mortality and decay, as exciting to a more full and rapid grasp at tangible enjoyments. Anastasius, while journeying amid the tombs of Scutari, breathing the damp deadly effluvia, and treading on a swelling soil, ready to burst with its festering contents, asks him[pg 280]self,—“Shall I, creature of clay like those here buried—I, who travel through life as I do on this road, with the remains of past generations strewed around me—I, who, whether my journey last a few hours, more or less, must still, like those here deposited, in a short time rejoin the silent tenants of a cluster of tombs—be stretched out by the side of some already sleeping corpse—and be left to rest, for the remainder of time, with all my hopes and fears, all my faculties and prospects, consigned to a cold couch of clammy earth—Shall I leave the rose to blush along my path unheeded—the purple grape to wither unculled over my head * * *? Far from my thoughts be such folly! Whatever tempts, let me take—whatever bears the name of enjoyment henceforth, let me, while I can, make my own[479].”—The French writers, like Chaulieu and Gresset, who paint themselves as finding in philosophy and the Muses sufficient compensation for the dissatisfaction attending worldly pleasures, frequently urge the shortness of life, not as an argument for indulging in wantonness or wine, but for enjoying, to the utmost, the innocent delights of rural tranquillity—

“Fontenay, lieu délicieux,

Ou je vis d’abord la lumiere,

Bientôt au bout de ma carriere

Chez toi je joindrai mes ayeux.

“Muses, qui dans ce lieu champêtre

Avec soin me fites nourrir—

Beaux arbres qui m’avez vu naître

Bientôt vous me verrez mourir:

“Cependant du frais de votre ombre

Il faut sagement profiter,

Sans regret pret a vous quitter

Pour ce Manoir terrible et sombre.”—Chaulieu.

The united sentiment of enjoying the delights of love, and beauties of nature, as suggested by the shortness of the period allotted for their possession, has been happily expressed by Mallet, in his celebrated song to the Scotch tune, The Birks of Invermay:

“Let us, Amanda, timely wise,

Like them improve the hour that flies;

For soon the winter of the year,

And Age, life’s winter, will appear.

At this thy living bloom must fade,

As that will strip the verdant shade:

Our taste of pleasure then is o’er—

The feathered songsters love no more:

And when they droop, and we decay,

Adieu, the shades of Invermay!”

It will not fail, however, to be remarked, that in the ode of Catullus, which has recalled these verses to our recollection, there is a double contrast, from comparing the long, dark, and everlasting sleep—the μακρον, ατερμονα, νηγρετον ὑπνον, with the quick and constant succession of suns, by which we are daily enlightened—

“Soles occidere et redire possunt:

Nobis, cum semel occidit brevis lux,

Nox est perpetua una dormienda.”

Poets, in all ages, have been fond of contrasting the destined course of human life with the reparation of the sun and moon, and with the revival of nature, produced by the succession of seasons. The image drawn from the sun, and here employed by Catullus, is one of the most natural and frequent. It has been beautifully attempted by several modern Latin poets. Thus by Lotichius—

“Ergo ubi permensus cœlum sol occidit, idem

Purpureo vestit lumine rursus humum:

Nos ubi decidimus, defuncti munere vitæ,

Urget perpetua lumina nocte sopor.”

And still more successfully by Jortin—

“Hei mihi lege ratà sol occidit atque resurgit.

* * * *

Nos domini rerum—nos magna et pulchra minati,

Cum breve ver vitæ robustaque transiit ætas,

Deficimus; neque nos ordo revolubilis auras

Reddit in ætherias, tumuli nec claustra resolvit.”

Other modern Latin poets have chosen this ode as a sort of theme or text, which they have dilated into long poems. Of these, perhaps the most agreeable is a youthful production of Muretus—

“Ludamus, mea Margari, et jocemur,” &c.

The most ancient French imitator is the old poet Baif, in a sort of Madrigal. He was followed by Ronsard, Bellay, Pellisson, La Monnoye, and Dorat. The best imitation, I think, is that by Simon, which I shall give at full length, once for all as a fair specimen of the French mode of imitating the lighter poems of Catullus—

“Vivens, O ma Julie!

Jurons d’aimer toujours:

Le printemps de la vie

Est fait pour les amours.

Si l’austère vieillesse

Condamne nos desirs,

Laissons lui sa sagesse,

Et gardons nos plaisirs.

“L’Astre dont la lumiere

Nous dispense les jours,

Au bout de sa carriere

Recommence son cours.

Quand le temps, dans sa rage,

A fletti les appas,

Les roses du bel âge

Ne refleurissent pas.

“D’une pudeur farouche

Fuis les deguisemens;

Viens donner à ma bouche

Cent baisers ravissans—

Mille autres—Pose encore

Sur mes lèvres de feu

Tes lèvres que j’adore—

Mourons à ce doux jeu.

“De nos baisers sans nombre

Le feu rapide et doux

S’échappe comme l’ombre,

Et passe loin de nous:

Mais le sentiment tendre

D’un heureux souvenir,

Dans mon cœur vient reprendre,

La place du plaisir.”

7. Ad Lesbiam. His mistress had asked Catullus how many kisses would satisfy him, and he answers that they must be as numerous as the sands of the sea—

“Aut quam sidera multa, cum tacet nox,

Furtivos hominum vident amores.”

These two lines seem to have been in the view of Ariosto, in the 14th canto of the Orlando—

“E per quanti occhi il ciel le furtive opre

Degli amatori, a mezza notte, scopre.”

Martial likewise imitates, and refers to this and to the 5th poem of Catullus, in the 34th epigram of the 6th book—

“Basia da nobis, Diadumene, pressa: quot? inquis—

Oceani fluctus me numerare jubes;

Et maris Ægæi sparsas per littora conchas,

Et quæ Cecropio monte vagantur apes.

Nolo quot arguto dedit exorata Catullo

Lesbia: pauca cupit, qui numerare potest.”

The verses of Catullus have been also imitated in Latin by Sannazzarius, by Joannes Secundus, of course, in his Basia, and by almost all the ancient amatory poets of France.

8. Ad Seipsum. This is quite in the Greek taste: About a third of the Odes of Anacreon are addressed Εις σεαυτον. Catullus here playfully, yet feelingly, remonstrates with himself, for still pursuing his inconstant Lesbia, by whom he had been forsaken.

9. Ad Verannium. This is one of the most pleasing of the shorter poems. Catullus congratulates his friend Verannius on his return from Spain, and expresses his joy in terms more touching and natural than anything in the 12th Satire of Juvenal, or the 36th Ode of the 1st Book of Horace, which were both written on similar occasions.

10. De Varri Scorto. Catullus gives an account of a visit which he paid at the house of a courtezan, along with his friend Varrus, and relates, in a lively manner, the conversation which he had with the lady on the subject of the acquisitions made by him in Bithynia, from which he had lately returned. There seems here a hit to have been intended against Cæsar, of whose conduct in that country some scandalous anecdotes were afloat. The epigram, however, appears chiefly directed against those cross-examiners, who are not to be put off with indefinite answers, and in whose company one must be constantly on guard. In fact, the lady detects Catullus making an unfounded boast of his Bithynian acquisitions, and he accordingly exclaims,

“Sed tu insulsa male, et molesta vivis,

Per quam non licet esse negligentem.”

11. Ad Furium et Aurelium. This ode commences in a higher tone of poetry than any of the preceding. Catullus addresses his friends, Furius and Aurelius, who, he is confident, would be ready to accompany him to the most remote and barbarous quarters of the globe—

“Furi et Aureli, comites Catulli,

Sive in extremos penetrabit Indos,

Littus ut longe resonante Eoà

Tunditur undâ.”

This verse was no doubt in the view of Horace, in the sixth Ode of the second Book, where he addresses his friend Septimius, and adopts the elegant and melodious Sapphic stanza employed by Catullus—

“Septimi, Gades aditure mecum, et

Cantabrum indoctum juga ferre nostra, et

Barbaras Syrtes, ubi Maura semper

Æstuat unda.”

Horace, however, has closed his ode with a few lines, perhaps the most beautiful and tender in the whole circle of Latin poetry, and which strike us the more, as pathos is not that poet’s peculiar excellence—

“Ille te mecum locus et beati,” &c.

Catullus, on the other hand, after preserving an elevated strain of poetry for four stanzas, concludes with requesting his friends to deliver a ridiculous message to his mistress, who

“Nec meum respectet, ut ante, amorem,

Qui illius culpa cecidit; velut prati

Ultimi flos, prætereunte postquam

Tactus aratro est.”

This last most beautiful image has been imitated by various poets. Virgil has not disdained to transfer it to his Æneid—

“Purpureus veluti cum flos succisus aratro

Languescit moriens[480].”

Fracastoro has employed the same metaphor with hardly less elegance in his consolatory epistle to Turri, on the loss of his child—

—— “Jacet ille velut succisus aratro

Flos tener, et frustra non audit tanta gementem;”

and Ariosto has introduced it in the eighteenth canto of the Orlando—

“Come purpureo fior languendo muore

Che ’l vomere al passar tagliato lassa.”

13. Ad Fabullum. Our poet invites Fabullus to supper, on condition that he will bring his provisions along with him—

—— “Nam tui Catulli

Plenus sacculus est aranearum.”

On his own part, he promises only a hearty welcome, and the most exquisite ointments. In the poetry of social kindness and friendship, Catullus is eminently happy; and we regret to find that this tone, which has so much prevailed in the preceding odes, subsequently changes into bitter and gross invective.

The thirteen following poems are chiefly occupied with vehement and indelicate abuse of those friends of the poet, Furius and Aurelius, who were men of some quality and distinction, but had wasted their fortunes by extravagance and debauchery. In a former ode, we have seen him confident that they would readily accompany him to the wildest or remotest quarters of the globe: But he had subsequently quarrelled with them, partly because they had stigmatized his verses as soft and effeminate; and, in revenge for this affront, he upbraids them with their poverty and vices. Of these thirteen poems, the last, addressed to Furius, is a striking picture of the sheltered situation of a villa. In the common editions, the description refers to the villa of Catullus himself, but Muretus thinks, it was rather meant to be applied to that of Furius:

“Furi, villula vostra non ad Austri,” &c.

27. Ad Pocillatorem puerum. This address, in which Catullus calls on his cupbearer to pour out for him copious and unmixed libations of Falernian, is quite in the spirit of Anacreon: it breathes all his easy and joyous gaiety, and the enthusiasm inspired by the grape.

28. Ad Verannium et Fabullum—

“Pisonis comites cohors inanis,” &c.

Catullus condoles with these friends on account of the little advantage they had reaped from accompanying the Prætor Piso to his province—comparing their situation to the similar circumstances in which he had himself been placed with Memmius in Bithynia.

There is a parody on this piece of Catullus by the celebrated Huet, Bishop of Avranches—

“Bocharti comites cohors inanis.” &c.

In his youth, Huet had accompanied Bochart to Sweden, on the invitation of Queen Christina, and appears to have been as little gratified by his northern expedition, as Catullus by his voyage to Bithynia.

29. In Cæsarem. Julius Cæsar, while yet but the general of the Roman republic, had been accustomed, during his stay in the north of Italy, to lodge at the house of the father of Catullus in Verona. Notwithstanding the intimacy which in consequence subsisted between Cæsar and his father, Catullus lampooned the former on more than one occasion. In the present epigram, he pours on him an unmeasured abuse, chiefly for having bestowed the plunder of Britain and Gaul on his favourite, the infamous Mamurra, who appropriated the public money, and the spoils of whole nations, to support his boundless extravagance. There is a story which has become very common on the authority of Suetonius, that Cæsar invited Catullus to supper on the day on which he first read some satirical verses of the poet against himself and Mamurra, and that he continued to lodge with his father as before[481]. It appears that on one occasion, when some scurrilous verses by Catullus were shown to him, he supped with Cicero at his villa near Puteoli. On the 19th, he staid at the house of Philippus till one in the afternoon, but saw nobody; he then walked on the shore across to Cicero’s villa—bathed after two o’clock, and heard the verses on Mamurra read, at which he never changed countenance[482]. Now, this was in the year 708, after the civil war had been ended, by the defeat and death of the younger Pompey in Spain. It is most likely that this 29th epigram was the one which was read to him at Cicero’s villa; and the 57th epigram, also directed against Cæsar and Mamurra, is probably that concerning which the above anecdote is related by Suetonius. Though it stands last of the two in the works of Catullus, it was evidently written before the 29th. He talks in it of Cæsar and Mamurra, as of persons who were still on a footing of equality—in the other, he speaks of their dividing the spoils of the provinces, Gaul, Britain, Pontus, and Spain. The coolness and indifference which Cæsar showed with regard to the first epigram written against him, and the forgiveness he extended to its author, encouraged Cicero, who was a gossip and newsmonger, or those who attended him, to read to him another of the same description while bathing at the Puteolan Villa.

31. Ad Sirmionem Peninsulam. This heart-soothing invocation, which is perhaps the most pleasing of all the productions of Catullus, is addressed to the peninsula of Sirmio, in [pg 287]the territory of Verona, on which the principal and favourite villa of our poet was situated. Sirmio was a peninsular promontory, of about two miles circumference, projecting into the Benacus, now the Lago di Garda—a lake celebrated by Virgil as one of the noblest ornaments of Italy, and the praises of which have been loudly re-echoed by the modern Latin poets of that country, particularly by Fracastoro, who dwelt in its vicinity, and who, while lamenting the untimely death of his poetical friend, Marc Antonio del Torri, beautifully represents the shade of Catullus, as still nightly wandering amidst these favourite scenes—

“Te ripæ flevere Athesis; te voce vocare

Auditæ per noctem umbræ, manesque Catulli,

Et patrios mulcere novâ dulcedine lucos[483].”

Vestiges of the magnificent house supposed to have belonged to Catullus, are yet shown on this peninsula. Its ruins, which lie near the borders of the lake, still give the idea of an extensive palace. There are even now, as we are informed by travellers[484], sufficient remains of mason-work, pilasters, vaults, walls, and subterraneous passages, to assist the imagination in representing to itself what the building was when entire, at least in point of extent and situation. The length of the whole construction, from north to south, is about 700 feet, and the breadth upwards of 300. The ground on which it stood does not appear to have been level, and the fall to the west was supplied by rows of vaults, placed on each other, the top of which formed a terrace. On the east, the structure had been raised on those steep and solid rocks which lined the shore; on the front, which was to the north, and commanded a magnificent view of the lake, an immense portico seems to have projected from the building: under the ruins, there are a number of subterraneous vaults, one of which ran through the middle of the edifice, and along its whole length[485].

The peninsula on which the villa of Catullus was situated, is not surpassed in beauty or fertility by any spot in Italy. “Sirmione,” says Eustace[486], “appears as an island, so low and so narrow is the bank that unites it to the mainland. The promontory spreads behind the town, and rises into a hill entirely covered with olives. Catullus,” he continues, “undoubtedly inhabited this spot, and certainly he could not have chosen a more delightful retreat. In the centre of a magni[pg 288]ficent lake, surrounded with scenery of the greatest variety and majesty, secluded from the world, yet beholding from his garden the villas of his Veronese friends, he might have enjoyed alternately the pleasures of retirement, and society; and daily, without the sacrifice of his connexions, which Horace seemed inclined to make in a moment of despondency, he might have contemplated the grandeur and agitation of the ocean, without its terrors and immensity. Besides, the soil is fertile, and its surface varied; sometimes shelving in a gentle declivity, at other times breaking in craggy magnificence, and thus furnishing every requisite for delightful walks and luxurious baths; while the views vary at every step, presenting rich coasts or barren mountains, sometimes confined to the cultivated scenes of the neighbouring shore, and at other times bewildered and lost in the windings of the lake, or in the recesses of the Alps. In short, more convenience and more beauty are seldom united[487].” No wonder, then, that Catullus, jaded and disappointed by his expedition to Bithynia, should, on his return, have exclaimed with transport, that the spot was not to be matched in the wide range of the world of waters; or that he should have unloaded his mind of its cares, in language so perfect, yet simple, that it could only have flowed from a real and exquisite feeling. No poem in the Latin language expresses tender feelings more tenderly, and home feelings more naturally, than the Invocation to Sirmio, in which the verses soothe and refresh us somewhat [pg 289]in the manner we suppose Catullus himself to have been, by the trees that shaded the promontory, and by the waters of the lake below—

“Quam te libenter, quamque lætus inviso!

Vix me ipse credens Thyniam, atque Bithynos

Liquisse campos, et videre te in tuto.

O quid solutis est beatius curis?

Cum mens onus reponit, ac peregrino

Labore fessi venimus larem ad nostrum,

Desideratoque acquiescimus lecto.

Hoc est, quod unum est pro laboribus tantis.

Salve, O venusta Sirmio, atque hero gaude.”

These lines show that the most refined and tender feelings were as familiar to the bosom of Catullus as the grossest. Nothing can be more delicate than his description of the emotions of one, who, after many wanderings and vicissitudes of fortune, returns to his home, and to the scenes beloved in youth or infancy: Nothing can be more beautiful than his invocation to the peninsula—his fond request that the delightful promontory, and the waters by which it was surrounded, should join in welcoming him home; and, above all, his heartfelt expression of delight at the prospect of again reclining on his accustomed couch.

It appears to me, however, that the beauty and the pathos of the poem is in some degree injured by the last verse,—

“Ridete quicquid est domi cachinnorum,”

which introduces the idea of obstreperous mirth, instead of that tone of tenderness which pervades the preceding lines of the ode. One would almost suppose, as probably has happened in some other cases, that a verse had been subjoined to this which properly belonged to a different ode, where mirth, and not tenderness, prevailed.

The modern Latin poets of Italy frequently apostrophize their favourite villas, in imitation of the address to Sirmio. Flaminius, in a poem, Ad Agellum suum, has described his attachment to his farm and home, and the first lines of it rival the tender and pleasing invocation of Catullus. Some of the subsequent lines are written in close imitation of the Roman poet—

—— “Jam libebit in cubiculo

Molles inire somnulos.

Gaudete, fontes rivulique limpidi.”

As also the whole of his address to the same villa, commencing—

“Umbræ frigidulæ, arborum susurri.”

One of the most pleasing features in the works of the modern Latin poets of Italy, is the descriptions of their villas, their regret at leaving them, or their invitations to friends to come and witness their happiness. Hence Fracastoro’s villa, in the vicinity of Verona, Ambra, and Pulcherrima Mergellina, are now almost esteemed classic spots, like Tusculum or Tibur.

The invocation to the peninsula of Sirmio was evidently written soon after the return of Catullus from Bithynia; and his next poem worth noticing is a similar address to his villa near Tibur. The thought, however, in this poem, is very forced and poor. Catullus having been invited by his friend Sextius, according to a common custom at Rome, to be one of a party assembled at his house for the purpose of hearing an oration composed by their host, had contracted such a cold from its frigidity, that he was obliged to leave Rome, and retire to this seat, in order to recover from its effects. For his speedy restoration to health, he now gives thanks to his salubrious villa. This residence was situated on the confines of the ancient Latian and Sabine territories, and the villas there, as we learn from this ode, were sometimes called Tiburtine, from the town of Tibur, and sometimes Sabine, from the district where they lay; but the former appellation, it seems, was greatly preferred by Catullus. As long as the odes of Horace survive, the

“Domus Albuneæ resonantis,

Et præceps Anio, et Tiburni lucus, et uda

Mobilibus pomaria rivis,”

will be remembered as forming one of the most delightful retreats in Italy, and one which was so agreeable to its poet, that he wished that of all others it might be the shelter and refuge of his old age. From the present aspect of Tivoli, the charm of the villas at the ancient Tibur may be still appreciated. “We ascended,” says Eustace, “the high hill on which Tivoli stands, passing through groves of olives, till we reached the summit. This town, the Tibur of the ancients, stands in a delightful situation, sheltered by Monte Catillo, and a semicircular range of Sabine mountains, and commanding, on the other side, an extensive view over the Campagna, bounded by the sea, Rome, Mount Soracte, and the pyramidal hills of Monticelli and Monte Rotondo, the ancient [pg 291]Eretum. But the pride and ornament of Tivoli are still, as anciently, the falls and the windings of the Anio, now Teverone. This river having meandered from its source through the vales of Sabina, glides gently through Tivoli, till, coming to the brink of a rock, it precipitates itself in one mass down the steep, and then boiling for an instant in its narrow channel, rushes headlong through a chasm in the rock into the caverns below.* * * To enjoy the scenery to advantage, the traveller must cross the bridge, and follow the road which runs at the foot of the classic Monte Catillo, and winds along the banks of the Anio. As he advances he will have on his left the steep banks covered with trees, shrubs, and gardens, and on his right the bold but varying swells of the hills shaded with groves of olives. These sunny declivities were anciently interspersed with splendid villas, the favourite abodes of the most luxurious and refined Romans. They are now replaced by two solitary convents, but their site, often conjectural or traditionary, is sometimes marked by scanty vestiges of ruins, and now and then by the more probable resemblance of a name[488].” Eustace does not particularly mention the farm or villa of Catullus. In the travels, however, which pass under the name of M. Blainville, written in the beginning of last century, we are informed, that a monastery of the religious order of Mount Olivet was then established on the spot where formerly stood the Tiburtine villa of Catullus[489]. M. de Castellan fixes on the same spot, on account of its situation between the Sabine and Tiburtine territory. “D’ailleurs,” continues he, “il n’est pas d’endroit plus retiré, mieux garanti des vents, que cet angle rentrant de la vallée, entouré de tous côtes par de hautes montagnes; ce qui est encore un des caracteres du local choisi par notre poëte, qui pretendoit y être à l’abri de tout autre vent que de celui qui l’expose à la vengeance de sa maitresse[490].” It would appear from Forsyth’s Travels, that a spot is still fixed on as the site of the residence of Catullus. “The villa of Catullus,” he says, “is easily ascertained by his own minute description of the place, by excavated marbles, and by the popular name of Truglia.” This spot, which is close to the church of St Angelo in Piavola, is on the opposite side of the Anio from Tibur, about a mile north from that town, and on the north side of Monte Catillo, or what might be called the back of that hill, in reference to the situation of Tibur. The Anio [pg 292]divides the ancient Latian from the Sabine territory, and the villa of Catullus was on the Sabine side of the river, but was called Tiburtine from the vicinity of Tibur[491].

The Romans, and particularly the Roman poets, as if the rustic spirit of their Italian ancestry was not altogether banished by the buildings of Rome, appear to have had a genuine and exquisite relish for the delights of the country. This feeling was not inspired by fondness for field-sports, since, although habituated to violent exercises, the chase never was a favourite amusement among the Romans, and they preferred seeing wild animals baited in the amphitheatre, to hunting them down in their native forests. The country then was not relished as we are apt to enjoy it, for the sake of exercise or rural pastimes, but solely for its amenity and repose, and the mental tranquillity which it diffused. With them it seems to have been truely,

“The relish for the calm delight

Of verdant vales and fountains bright;

Trees that nod on sloping hills,

And caves that echo tinkling rills.”.

Love of the country among the Romans thus became conjoined with the idea of a life of pastoral tranquillity and retirement,—a life of friendship, liberty, and repose,—free from labour and care, and all turbulent passions. Scenes of this kind delight and interest us supremely, whether they be painted as what is desired or what is enjoyed. We feel how natural it is for a mind with a certain disposition to relaxation and indolence, when fatigued with the bustle of life, to long for security and quiet, and for those sequestered scenes in which they can be most exquisitely enjoyed. There is much less of this in the writings of the Greeks, who were originally a sea-faring and piratical, and not, like the Italians, a pastoral people. It is thus that, even in their highest state of refinement, the manners and feelings of nations bear some affinity to their original rudeness, though that rudeness itself has been imperceptibly converted into a source of elegance and ornament.

34. Seculare carmen ad Dianam. This is the first strictly lyric production of Catullus which occurs, and there are only three other poems of a similar class. In Greece, the public games afforded a noble occasion for the display of lyric poetry, and the sensibility of the Greeks fitted them to follow its highest flights. But it was not so among the Romans. They had no solemn festivals of assembled states: Their active and ambitious life deadened them to the emotions which lyric poetry should excite; and the gods, whose praises form the noblest themes of the Æolian lyre, were with them rather the creatures of state policy, than of feeling or imagination.

45. De Acme et Septimio. Here our poet details the mutual blandishments and amorous expressions of Acme and Septimius, with the approbation bestowed on them by Cupid. This amatory effusion has been freely translated by Cowley:—

“Whilst on Septimius’ panting breast.

Meaning nothing less than rest,” &c.

49. Ad M. Tullium. In this poem, which is addressed to Cicero as the most eloquent of the Romans, Catullus modestly returns the orator thanks for some service he had rendered him.

51. Ad Lesbiam. This is the translation of the celebrated ode of Sappho, which has been preserved to us by Longinus, Φαινεται μοι κηνος, &c. The fourth stanza of the original Greek has not been translated, but in its place a verse is inserted in all the editions of Catullus, containing a moral reflection, which one would hardly have expected from this dissolute poet:

“Otium, Catulle, tibi molestum est:

Otio exultas, nimiumque gestis;

Otium reges prius et beatas

Perdidit urbes.”

This stanza is so foreign from the spirit of high excitation in which the preceding part of the ode is written, that Maffei suspected it had belonged to some other poem of Catullus; and Handius, in his Observationes Criticæ, conjectures that the fourth stanza, which Catullus translated from the original Greek, having been lost, and a chasm being thus left, some idle librarian or scholiast of the middle ages had interpolated these four lines of misplaced morality, that no gap might appear in his manuscript[492]. It is not impossible, however, that this verse may have been intended to express the answer of the poet’s mistress.

Many amatory poets have tried to imitate this celebrated ode; but most of them have failed of success. Boileau has also attempted this far-famed fragment; but although he has produced an elegant enough poem, he has not expressed the vehement passion of the Greek original so happily as Catullus. How different are the rapidity and emotion of the following stanza,

“Lingua sed torpet, tenuis sub artus

Flamma dimanat, sonitu suopte

Tintinant aures—gemina teguntur

Lumina nocte,”

from the languor of the corresponding lines of the French poet!

“Une nuage confus se repand sur ma vue,

Je n’entend plus, je tombe en de douces langueurs,

Et passe, sans haleine, interdite, perdue;

Un frisson me saisit—je tremble, je me meurs.”

These lines give us little idea of that furious passion of which Longinus says the Greek ode expresses all the symptoms. Racine has been much more happy than Boileau in his imitation of Sappho. Phædra, in the celebrated French tragedy which bears the name of that victim of love, thus paints the effects of the passion with which she was struck at her first view of Hippolytus:—

“Athènes me montra mon superbe ennemi:

Je le vis, je rougis, je palis à sa vue—

Un trouble s’eleva dans mon ame éperdue,

Mes yeux ne voyoient plus, je ne pouvois parler;

Je sentis tout mon cœur et transir et brûler[493].”

On this passage Voltaire remarks, “Peut on mieux imiter Sappho? Ces vers, quoique imites, coulent de source; chaque [pg 295]mot trouble les ames sensibles, et les penetre; ce n’est point une amplification: c’est le chef d’œuvre de la nature et de l’art[494].” A translation by De Lille, which has a very close resemblance to that of Boileau, is inserted in the delightful chapter of the Voyage du Jeune Anacharsis, which treats of Lesbos and Sappho. Philips, it is well known, attempted a version of the lyric stanzas of Sappho, which was first printed with vast commendation in the 229th Number of the Spectator, where Addison has also remarked, “that several of our countrymen, and Dryden in particular, seem very often to have copied after this ode of Sappho, in their dramatic writings, and in their poems upon love.”

58. Ad Cœlium de Lesbia. In this ode, addressed to one of her former admirers, Catullus gives an account, both tender and pathetic, of the debaucheries and degraded condition of Lesbia, to his passion for whom, he had attributed such powerful effects in the above imitation of Sappho.

61. In Nuptias Juliæ et Manlii. We come now to the three celebrated epithalamiums of Catullus. The first is in honour of the nuptials of Julia and Manlius, who is generally supposed to have been Aulus Manlius Torquatus, an intimate friend of the poet, and a descendant of one of the most noble patrician families in Rome. This poem has been entitled an Epithalamium in most of the ancient editions, but Muretus contends that this is an improper appellation, and that it should be inscribed Carmen Nuptiale. “An epithalamium,” he says, “was supposed to be sung by the virgins when the bride had retired to the nuptial chamber, whereas in this poem an earlier part of the ceremony is celebrated and described.” This earlier part, indeed, occupies the greater portion of the poem, but towards the conclusion the bride is represented as placed in the chamber of her husband, which may justify its ordinary title:

“Jam licet venias, Marite;

Uxor in thalamo est tibi,” &c.

In this bridal song the poet first addresses Hymen; and as the bride was now about to proceed from her paternal mansion to the house of her husband, invokes his aid in raising the nuptial hymn. He then describes the bride:—

“Floridis velut enitens

Myrtus Asià ramulis;

Quos Hamadryades Deæ

Ludicrum sibi roscido

Nutriunt humore.”

A similar image is frequent with other poets, and has been adopted by Pontanus[495] and Naugerius[496].

The praises of Hymen follow next:—

“Nil potest sine te Venus,

Fama quod bona comprobet,

Commodi capere: at potest

Te volente. Quis huic Deo

Compararier ausit?

Nulla quit sine te domus

Liberos dare, nec parens

Stirpe jungier: at potest

Te volente. Quis huic Deo

Compararier ausit?”

Claudian, in his epithalamium on the nuptials of Palladius and Celerina, and the German poet Lotichius, extol Hymen in terms similar to those employed in the first of the above stanzas: and the advantages he confers, alluded to in the second, have been beautifully touched on by Milton, as also by Pope, in his chorus of youths and virgins, forming part of the Duke of Buckingham’s intended tragedy—Brutus:

“But Hymen’s kinder flames unite,

And burn for ever one,

Chaste as cold Cynthia’s virgin light,

Productive as the sun.

“O source of every social tye,

United wish and mutual joy,

What various joys on one attend!

As son, as father, brother, husband, friend.”

Catullus now proceeds to describe the ceremonies with which the bride was conveyed to the house of her husband, and was there received. He feigns that he beholds the nuptial pomp and retinue approaching, and encourages the bride to come forth, by an elegant compliment to her beauty; as also, by reminding her of the fair fame and character of her intended husband. As she approaches, he intimates the freedom of the ancient Fescennine verses, which were first sung at marriage festivals.

The bride being at length conducted to her new habitation, the poet addresses the bridegroom, and shuts up the married pair: But before concluding, in reference to Torquatus, one [pg 297]of the husband’s names, he alludes, with exquisite delicacy and tenderness, to the most-wished-for consequence of this happy union:—

“Torquatus, volo, parvulus

Matris e gremio suæ

Porrigens teneras manus,

Dulce rideat ad patrem,

Semihiante labello.”

The above verse has been thus imitated in an Epithalamium on the marriage of Lord Spencer, by Sir William Jones, who pronounces it a picture worthy the pencil of Domenichino:

“And soon to be completely blest,

Soon may a young Torquatus rise,

Who, hanging on his mother’s breast,

To his known sire shall turn his eyes,

Outstretch his infant arms a while,

Half ope his little lips and smile.”

And thus by Leonard, in his pastoral romance of Alexis, where, however, he has omitted the semihiante labello, the finest feature in the picture:—

“Quel tableau! quand un jeune enfant,

Penché sur le sein de sa mère,

Avec un sourire innocent

Etendra ses mains vers son père.”

This nuptial hymn has been the model of many epithalamiums, particularly that of Jason and Creusa, sung by the chorus in Seneca’s Medea, and of Honorius and Maria, in Claudian. The modern Latin poets, particularly Justus Lipsius, have exercised themselves a great deal in this style of composition; and most of them with evident imitation of the work of Catullus. It has also been highly applauded by the commentators; and more than one critic has declared that it must have been written by the hands of Venus and the Graces—“Veneris et Gratiarum manibus scriptum esse.” I wish, however, they had excepted from their unqualified panegyrics the coarse imitation of the Fescennine poems, which leaves on our minds a stronger impression of the prevalence and extent of Roman vices, than any other passage in the Latin classics. Martial, and Catullus himself elsewhere, have branded their enemies; and Juvenal, in bursts of satiric indignation, has reproached his countrymen with the most shocking crimes. But here, in a complimentary poem to a patron and [pg 298]intimate friend, these are jocularly alluded to as the venial indulgences of his earliest youth.

62. Carmen Nuptiale. Some parts of this epithalamium have been taken from Theocritus, particularly from his eighteenth Idyl, where the Lacedæmonian maids, companions of Helen, sing before the bridal-chamber of Menelaus[497]. This second nuptial hymn of Catullus may be regarded as a continuation of the above poem, being also in honour of the marriage of Manlius and Julia. The stanzas of the former were supposed to be sung or recited in the person of the poet, who only exhorted the chorus of youths and virgins to commence the nuptial strain. But here these bands contend, in alternate verses; the maids descanting on the beauty and advantages of a single life, and the lads on those of marriage.

The young men, companions of the bridegroom, are supposed to have left him at the rising of the evening star of love:—

—— “Vesper Olympo

Expectata diu vix tandem lumina tollit.

* * * * *

Hespere, qui cœlo lucet jucundior ignis?”

These lines appear to have been imitated by Spenser in his Epithalamium—

“Ah! when will this long weary day have done!

Long though it be, at last I see it gloom,

And the bright evening star, with golden crest,

Appear out of the east;

Fair child of beauty, glorious lamp of love,

How cheerfully thou lookest from above!”

The maids who had accompanied the bride to her husband’s house, approached the youths who had just left the bridegroom, and they commence a very elegant contention concerning the merits of the star, which the chorus of virgins is pleased to characterize as a cruel planet. They are silenced, however, by the youths hinting that they are not such enemies to Hesper as they pretend to be. Then the maids, draw a beautiful, and, with Catullus, a favourite comparison between an unblemished virgin, and a delicate flower in a garden:

“Ut flos in septis secretus nascitur hortis,

Ignotus pecori, nullo convulsus aratro,

Quem mulcent auræ, firmat sol, educat imber;

Multi illum pueri, multæ optavere puellæ.

Idem cum tenui carptus defloruit ungui,

Nulli illum pueri, nullæ optavere puellæ.

Sic virgo dum intacta manet, tum cara suis; sed

Cum castum amisit, polluto corpore, florem,

Nec pueris jucunda manet, nec cara puellis.”

To the sentiment delineated by this image, the youths reply by one scarcely less beautiful, emblematical of the happiness of the married state; and as this was a theme in which the maidens were probably not unwilling to be overcome, they unite in the last stanza with the chorus of young men, in recommending to the bride to act the part of a submissive spouse.

Few passages in Latin poetry have been more frequently imitated, and none more deservedly, than the above-quoted verses of Catullus, who certainly excels almost all other writers, in the beauty and propriety of his similes. The greatest poets have not disdained to transplant this exquisite flower of song. Perhaps the most successful imitation is one by the Prince of the romantic bards of Italy, in the first canto of his Orlando, and which it may be amusing to compare with the original:

“La Verginella è simile alla rosa,

Che in bel giardin su la nativa spina,

Mentre sola, e sicura si riposa,

Nè gregge, nè pastor se le avvicina;

L’aura soave, e l’alba rugiadosa,

L’acqua, la terra al suo favor s’inchina:

Giovini vaghi, e donne innamorate,

Amano averne e seni, e tempie ornate.

Ma non si tosto dal materno stelo

Rimossa viene, e dal suo ceppo verde;

Che quanto avea dagli uomini, e dal cielo,

Favor, grazia, e bellezza tutto perde.

La vergine, che il fior, di che più zelo,

Che de begli occhi, e della vita, aver dè,

Lascia altrui corre, il pregio, ch’avea dinanti,

Perde nel cor de tutti gli altri amanti.”

The reader may perhaps like to see how this theme has been managed by an old French poet nearly contemporary with Ariosto:

“La jeune vierge est semblable à la rose,

Au beau jardin, sur l’épine native,

Tandis que sûre et seulette repose,

Sans que troupeau ni berger y arrive;

L’air doux l’échauffe, et l’Aurore l’arrose,

La terre, l’eau par sa faveur l’avive;

Mais jeunes gens et dames amoureuses,

De la cueillir ont les mains envieuses;

La terre et l’air, qui la soulaient nourrir,

La quittent lors et la laissent flétrir[498].”

It is evident that Ariosto has suggested several things to the French poet, as he has also done to the imitators in our own language, in which the simile has been frequently attempted, but not with much success. Ben Jonson has translated it miserably, substituting doggerel verse for the sweet flow of the Latin poetry, and verbal antithesis and conceit for that beautiful simplicity of idea which forms the chief charm of the original:

“Look how a flower that close in closes grows,

Hid from rude cattle, bruised by no plows,” &c.

One of the best of the numerous English imitations is that in the Lay of Iolante, introduced in Bland’s Four Slaves of Cythera:

“A tender maid is like a flow’ret sweet,

Within the covert of a garden born;

Nor flock nor hind disturb the calm retreat,

But on the parent stalk it blooms untorn,

Refresh’d by vernal rains and gentle heat,

The balm of evening, and the dews of morn:

Youths and enamoured maidens vie to wear

This flower—their bosoms grace, or twined around their hair.

“No sooner gathered from the vernal bough,

Where fresh and blooming to the sight it grew.

Than all who marked its opening beauty blow,

Forsake the tainted sweet, and faded hue.

And she who yields, forgetful of her vow,

To one but newly loved, another’s due,

Shall live, though high for heavenly beauty prized,

By youths unhonoured, and by maids despised.”

One of the lines in the passage of Catullus,

“Multi illum pueri—multæ optavere puellæ,”

and its converse,

“Nulli illum pueri—nullæ optavere puellæ,”

have been copied by Ovid in his Metamorphoses[499], and applied to Narcissus,

“Multi illum pueri, multæ cupiere puellæ.

Sed fuit in tenerâ tam dura superbia formâ,

Nulli illum juvenes, nullæ tetigere puellæ.”

The origin of the line,

“Nec pueris jucunda manet, nec cara puellis,”

may be traced to a fragment of the Greek poet Mimnermus:

“Ἀλλ’ ἐχθρος μεν παισιν, ατιμαστος δε γυναιξιν.”

63. De Ati.—The story of Atis is one of the most mysterious of the mythological emblems. The fable was explained by Porphyry; and the Emperor Julian afterwards invented and published an allegory of this mystic tale. According to them, the voluntary emasculation of Atis was typical of the revolution of the sun between the tropics, or the separation of the human soul from vice and error. In the literal acceptation in which it is presented by Catullus, the fable seems an unpromising and rather a peculiar subject for poetry: indeed, there is no example of a similar event being celebrated in verse, except the various poems on the fate of Abelard. It is likewise the only specimen we have in Latin of the Galliambic measure; so called, because sung by Galli, the effeminate votaries of Cybele. The Romans, being a more sober and severe people than the Greeks, gave less encouragement than they to the celebration of the rites of Bacchus, and have poured forth but few dithyrambic lines. The genius of their language and of their usual style of poetry, as well as their own practical and imitative character, were unfavourable to the composition of such bold, figurative, and discursive strains. They have left no verses which can be strictly called dithyrambic, except, perhaps, the nineteenth ode of the second book of Horace, and a chorus in the Œdipus of Seneca. If not perfectly dithyrambic, the numbers of the Atis of Catullus are, however, strongly expressive of distraction and enthusiasm. The violent bursts of passion are admirably aided by the irresistible torrent of words, and by the cadence of a measure powerfully denoting mental agony and remorse. In this production, now unexampled in every sense of the word, Catullus is no longer the light agreeable poet, who counted the kisses of his mistress, and called on the Cupids to lament her sparrow. His ideas are full of fire, and his language of wildness: He pours forth his thoughts with an energy, rapidity, and enthusiasm, so different from his usual tone, and, indeed, from that of all Latin poets, that this production has been supposed to be a translation from some ancient Greek dithyrambic, of which it breathes all the passion and poetic phrensy. The employment of long compound epithets, which constantly recur in the Atis,—

“Ubi cerva sylvicultrix, ubi aper nemorivagus,” ——

is also a strong mark of imitation of the Greek dithyrambics; it being supposed, that such sonorous and new-invented words were most befitting intoxication or religious enthusiasm[500]. Anacreon, in his thirteenth ode, alludes to the lamentations and transports of Atis, as to a well-known poetical tradition:

“Ὁι μεν καλην Κυβηβην

Τον ἡμιθηλυν Ἀττιν

Ἐν ὀυρεσιν βοωντα,

Λεγουσιν έκμανηναι.”

Atis, it appears from the poem of Catullus, was a beautiful youth, probably of Greece, who, forsaking his home and parents, sailed with a few companions to Phrygia, and, having landed, hurried to the grove consecrated to the great goddess Cybele,—

“Adiitque opaca sylvis redimita loca Deæ,”

There, struck with superstitious phrensy, he qualified himself for the service of that divinity; and, snatching the musical instruments used in her worship, he exhorted his companions, who had followed his example, to ascend to the temple of Cybele. At this part of the poem, we follow the new votary of the Phrygian goddess through all his wild traversing of woods and mountains, till at length, having reached the temple, Atis and his companions drop asleep, exhausted by fatigue and mental distraction. Being tranquillized in some measure by a night’s repose, Atis becomes sensible of the misery of his situation; and, struck with horror at his rash deed, he returns to the sea-shore. There he casts his eyes, bathed in tears, over the ocean homeward; and comparing his former happiness with his present wretched condition, he pours forth a complaint unrivalled in energy and pathos. Gibbon talks of the different emotions produced by the transition of Atis from the wildest enthusiasm to sober pathetic complaint for his irretrievable loss[501]; but, in fact, his complaint is not soberly pathetic—to which the Galliambic measure would be little suited: it is, on the contrary, the most impassioned expression of mental agony and bitter regret in the wide compass of Roman literature:

“Abero foro, palæstrâ, stadio et gymnasiis?

Miser, ah miser! querendum est etiam atque etiam, anime:

Ego puber, ego adolescens, ego ephebus, ego puer;

Ego gymnasii fui flos, ego eram decus olei;

Mihi januæ frequentes, mihi limina tepida,

Mihi floridis corollis redimita domus erat,

Linquendum ubi esset, orto mihi Sole, cubiculum.

Egone Deûm ministra et Cybeles famula ferar?

Ego Mænas, ego mei pars, ego vir sterilis ero?

Ego viridis algida Idæ nive amicta loca colam?

Ego vitam agam sub altis Phrygiæ columinibus,

Ubi cerva sylvicultrix, ubi aper nemorivagus?

Jam jam dolet quod egi, jam jamque pœnitet.”

One is vexed, that the conclusion of this splendid production should be so puerile. Cybele, dreading the defection and escape of her newly acquired votary, lets loose a lion, which drives him back to her groves,—

“Ubi semper omne vitæ spatium famula fuit.”

Muretus attempted a Latin Galliambic Address to Bacchus in imitation of the measure employed in the Atis of Catullus, and he has strenuously tried to make his poem resemble its model by an affected use of uncouth compound epithets. Pigna, an Italian poet, has adopted similar numbers in a Latin poem, on the metamorphosis of the water nymph, Pitys, who was changed into a fir-tree, for having fled from the embraces of Boreas. In many of the lines he has closely followed Catullus; but it seems scarcely possible that any modern poet could excite in his mind the enthusiasm essential for the production of such works. Catullus probably believed as little in Atis and Cybele as Muretus, but he lived among men who did; and though his opinions might not be influenced, his imagination was tinged with the colours of the age.

Atis is the name of one of the tragic operas of Quinault, which, I believe, was the most popular of his pieces except Armide; but it has little reference to the classic story of the votary of Cybele. The French Atis is a vehement and powerful lover, who elopes with the nymph Sangaride on the wings of the Zephyrs, which had been placed by Cybele, who was herself enamoured of the youth, at the disposal of Atis. It seems a poor production in itself, (how different from the operas of Metastasio!) but it was embellished by splendid scenery, and the music of Lulli, adapted to the chorus of Phrygians, and Zephyrs, and Dreams, and Streams, and Corybantes.

64. Epithalamium Pelei et Thetidis.—This is the longest and most elaborate of the productions of Catullus. It displays much accurate description, as well as pathetic and im[pg 304]passioned incident. Catullus was a Greek scholar, and all his commentators seem determined that his best poems should be considered as of Greek invention. I do not believe, however, that the whole of this epithalamium was taken from any one poet of Greece, as the Coma Berenices was from Callimachus; but the author undoubtedly borrowed a great deal from various writers of that country. Hesiod wrote an Epithalamium, Ἐις Πηλεα και Θετιν[502], some fragments of which have been cited by Tzetzes, in his prolegomena to Lycophron’s Cassandra; and judging from these, it appears to have suggested several lines of the epithalamium of Catullus. The adornment, however, and propriety of its language, and the usual practice of Catullus in other productions, render it probable, that he has chiefly selected his beauties from the Alexandrian poets. Valckenar, in his edition of Theocritus, (1779,) has shown, that the Idyls of Theocritus, particularly the Adoniazusi, have been of much service to our Latin poet; and a late German commentator has pointed out more than twenty passages, in which he has not merely imitated, but actually translated, Apollonius Rhodius[503].

The proper subject of this epithalamium is the festivals held in Thessaly in honour of the nuptials of Peleus and Thetis; but it is chiefly occupied with a long episode, containing the story of Ariadne. It commences with the sailing of the ship Argo on the celebrated expedition to which that vessel has given name. The Nereids were so much struck with the unusual spectacle, that they all emerged from the deep; and Thetis, one of their number, fell in love with Peleus, who had accompanied the expedition, and who was instantly seized with a reciprocal passion. Little is said as to the manner in which the courtship was conducted, and the poet hastens to the preparations for the nuptials. On this joyful occasion, all the inhabitants of Thessaly flock to its capital, Pharsalia. Every thing in the royal palace is on a magnificent scale; but the poet chiefly describes the stragula, or coverlet, of the nuptial couch, on which was depicted the concluding part of the story of Theseus and Ariadne. Ariadne is represented as standing on the beach, where she had been abandoned, while asleep, by Theseus, and gazing in fixed despair at the departing sail of her false lover. Never was there a finer picture drawn of complete mental desolation. She was incapable of exhibiting violent signs of grief: She neither beats her bosom, nor bursts into tears; but the diadem which had compressed her locks—the light mantle which had floated around her form—the veil [pg 305]which had covered her bosom—all neglected, and fallen at her feet, were the sport of the waves which dashed the strand, while she herself, regardless and stupified with horror at her frightful situation, stood like the motionless statue of a Bacchante,—

“Saxea ut effigies Bacchantis prospicit Evoe;

Non flavo retinens subtilem vertice mitram,

Non contecta levi velatum pectus amictu,

Non tereti strophio luctantes vincta papillas;

Omnia quæ toto delapsa e corpore passim

Ipsius ante pedes fluctus salis alludebant.”

The above passage is thus imitated by the author of the elegant poem Ciris, which has been attributed to Virgil, and is not unworthy of his genius:

“Infelix virgo tota bacchatur in urbe:

Non styrace Idæo fragrantes picta capillos,

Cognita non teneris pedibus Sicyonia servans,

Non niveo retinens baccata monilia collo.”—v. 167.

Catullus, leaving Ariadne in the attitude above described, recapitulates the incidents, by which she had been placed in this agonizing situation. He relates, in some excellent lines, the magnanimous enterprize of Theseus—his voyage, and arrival in Crete: He gives us a picture of the youthful innocence of Ariadne, reared in the bosom of her mother, like a myrtle springing up on the solitary banks of the Euphrates, or a flower whose blossom is brought forth by the breath of spring. The combat of Theseus with the Minotaur is but shortly and coldly described. It is obvious that the poet merely intended to raise our idea of the valour of Theseus, so far as to bestow interest and dignity on the passion of Ariadne, and to excuse her for sacrificing to its gratification all feelings of domestic duty and affection. Having yielded and accompanied her lover, she was deserted by him, in that forlorn situation, her deep sense of which had changed her to the likeness of a Bacchante sculptured in stone. Her first feelings of horror and astonishment had deprived her of the power of utterance; but she at length bursts into exclamations against the perfidy of men, and their breach of vows, which

—— “Cuncta aerii discerpunt irrita venti.

Jam jam nulla viro juranti femina credat,

Nulla viri speret sermones esse fideles:

Qui, dum aliquid cupiens animus prægestit apisci,

Nil metuunt jurare, nihil promittere parcunt.

Sed simul ac cupidæ mentis satiata libido est,

Dicta nihil metuêre, nihil perjuria curant.”

This passage has been obviously imitated by Ariosto, in his Orlando—

“Donne, alcuna di voi mai più non sia

Che a parole d’amante abbia a dar fede.

L’amante per aver quel che desia,

Senza curar che Dio tutto ode e vede,

Avviluppa promesse, e giuramenti,

Che tutti spargon poi per l’aria i venti.”

After indulging in such general reflections, Ariadne complains of the cruelty and ingratitude of Theseus in particular, whom she thus apostrophizes—

“Quænam te genuit solâ sub rupe leæna?

Quod mare conceptum spumantibus exspuit undis?

Quæ Syrtis, quæ Scylla, vorax quæ vasta Charybdis?”

These lines seem to have been suggested by the address of Patroclus to Achilles, near the commencement of the sixteenth book of the Iliad—

“—— Ὀυκ αρα σοι γε πατηρ ἠν ἱπποτα Πηλευς,

Ὀυδε Θετις μητηρ· γλαυκη δε σε τικτε Θαλασσα,

Πετραι δ’ ἠλιβατοι, ὁτι τοι νεος ἐστιν απηνης.”

Catullus, having put the expression of this idea in the mouth of a princess abandoned by her lover, it became a sort of Formula for deserted heroines among subsequent poets. Thus Ovid, in the eighth book of his Metamorphoses—

“Non genitrix Europa tibi est, sed inhospita Syrtis,

Armeniæ tigres, austroque agitata Charybdis;”

and thus Virgil makes Dido address Æneas—

“Nec tibi Diva parens, generis nec Dardanus auctor,

Perfide, sed duris genuit te cautibus horrens

Caucasus, Hyrcanæque admôrunt ubera tigres.”

Tasso, who was a great imitator of the Latin poets, attributes, from the lips of Armida, a similar genealogy to Rinaldo—

“Nè te Sofia produsse, e non sei nato

Dell’ Azzio sangue tu. Te l’onda insana

Del mar produsse, e ’l Caucaso gelato,

E le mamme allattar de tigre Ircana.”

Boileau had happily enough parodied those rodomontades in the earlier editions of the Lutrin; but the passage has been omitted in all those subsequent to that of 1683—

“Non, ton père à Paris ne fut point boulanger,

Et tu n’es point du sang de Gervais, l’horloger;

Ta mère ne fut point la maîtresse d’une coche:

Caucase dans ses flancs te forma d’une roche,

Une tigresse affreuse en quelque antre ecarté,

Te fit sucer son lait avec sa cruauté.”

I do not think the circumstances in which Armida pours forth her reproaches are judiciously selected. The Ariadne of Catullus vents her complaints when her betrayer is beyond reach of hearing, and Dido, though in his presence, before he had taken his departure: But Armida runs after, and overtakes Rinaldo, in which there is something degrading. She expresses, however, more tenderness and amorous devotedness amid her revilings, than any of her predecessors—

“Struggi la fede nostra; anch’io t’affretto;

Che dico nostra? Ah non più mia: fedele

Sono a te solo, idolo mio crudele!”

When she has ended her complaints of the cruelty and ingratitude of Theseus, Ariadne expresses a very natural wish, that the ship Argo had never reached her native shores—

“Jupiter Omnipotens, utinam ne tempore primo

Gnosia Cecropiæ tetigissent littora puppes.”

Thus, apparently, imitated by Virgil—

“Felix, heu nimium felix! si littora tantum

Nunquam Dardaniæ tetigissent nostra carinæ.”

But both these passages, it is probable, were originally drawn from the beginning of the Medea of Euripides—

“Ἐιθ’ οφελ’ Αργους μη διαπτασθαι σκαφος

Κολχων ες αιαν κυανεας συμπληγαδας.”

Catullus proceeds with a much closer imitation of Euripides—

“Nunc quo me referam? quali spe perdita nitar?

An patris auxilium sperem, quemne ipsa reliqui?”

which is almost translated from the Medea—

“Νυν ποι τραπωμαι; ποτερα προς πατρος δομους

Ὁυς σοι προδουσα και πατραν αφικομην.”

The grief and repentance of Ariadne are at length followed by a sense of personal danger and hardship; and her pathetic [pg 308]soliloquy terminates with execrations on the author of her misfortunes, to which—

“Annuit invicto cœlestûm numine rector;

Quo tunc et tellus, atque horrida contremuerunt

Æquora, concussitque micantia sidera mundus,”

an image probably derived from the celebrated description in the Iliad—Ἠ και κυανεησιν, &c. This promise of Jupiter was speedily accomplished, in the well-known and miserable fate of Ægeus, the father of Theseus.

We are naturally led to compare with Catullus, the efforts of his own countrymen, particularly those of Ovid and Virgil, in portraying the agonies of deserted nymphs and princesses. Both these poets have borrowed largely from their predecessor. Ovid has treated the subject of Ariadne not less than four times. In the epistle of Ariadne to Theseus, he has painted, like Catullus, her disordered person—her sense of desertion, and remembrance of the benefits she had conferred on Theseus: But the epistle is a cold production, chiefly because her grief is not immediately presented before us; and she merely tells that she had wept, and sighed, and raved. The minute detail, too, into which she enters, is inconsistent with her vehement passion. She recollects too well each heap of sand which retarded her steps, and the thorns on the summit of the mountain. Returning from her wanderings, she addresses her couch, of which she asks advice, till she becomes overpowered by apprehension for the wild beasts and marine monsters, of which she presents her false lover with a faithful catalogue. The simple ideas of Catullus are frequently converted into conceits, and his natural bursts of passion, into quibbles and artificial points. In the eighth book of the Metamorphoses, the melancholy part of Ariadne’s story is only recalled, in order to introduce the transformation of her crown into a star. In the third book of the Fasti, she deplores the double desertion of Theseus and Bacchus. It is in the first book of the Art of Love, that Ovid approaches nearest to Catullus, particularly in the sudden contrast between the solitude and melancholy of Ariadne, and the revelry of the Bacchanalians. Some of Virgil’s imitations of Catullus have been already pointed out: But part of the complaint of Dido is addressed to her betrayer, and contains a bitterness of sarcasm, and eloquence of reproof, which neither Catullus nor Ovid could reach.

The desertion of Olimpia by Bireno, related in the tenth canto of the Orlando Furioso, has, in its incidents at least, a [pg 309]strong resemblance to the poem of Catullus. Bireno, Duke of Zealand, while on a voyage from Holland to his own country, touches on Frisia; and, being smit with love for Olimpia, daughter of the king, carries her off with him; but, in the farther progress of the voyage, he lands on a desert island, and, while Olimpia is asleep, he leaves her, and sets sail in the darkness of night. Olimpia awakes, and, finding herself alone, hurries to the beach, and then ascends a rock, whence she descries, by light of the moon, the departing sail of her lover. Here, and afterwards while in her tent, she pours forth her plaints against the treachery of Bireno. In the details of this story, Ariosto has chiefly copied from Ovid; but he has also availed himself of several passages in Catullus. As Ariosto, in his story of Olimpia, principally chose Ovid for his model, so Tasso, in that of Armida, seems chiefly to have kept his eye on Virgil and Catullus. But Armida is not like Ariadne, an injured and innocent maid, nor a stately queen, like Dido; but a voluptuous and artful magician,

—— “Che nella doglia amara

Gia tutte non obblia l’arte e le frodi.”

It has been mentioned, that the desertion of Ariadne was represented on one compartment of the coverlet of the nuptial couch of Peleus—on another division of it the story of Bacchus and Ariadne was exhibited. The introduction of Bacchus and his train closes the episode with an animated picture, and forms a pleasing contrast to the melancholy scenes that precede it. At the same time, the poet, delicately breaking off without even hinting at the fair one’s ready acceptance of her new lover, leaves the pity we feel for her abandonment unweakened on the mind.

65. Ad Ortalum. This is the first of the elegies of Catullus, and indeed the earliest of any length or celebrity which had hitherto appeared in the Latin language. Elegies were originally written by the Greeks in alternate hexameter and pentameter lines, “versibus impariter junctis.” This measure, which was at first appropriated to deplore misfortunes, particularly the loss of friends, was soon employed to complain of unsuccessful love, and, by a very easy transition, to describe the delights of gratified passion:

—— “Querimonia primùm,

Post etiam inclusa est voti sententia compos.”

Matters were in this state in the age of Mimnermus, who was contemporary with Solon, and was the most celebrated elegiac [pg 310]poet of the Greeks. Hence, from his time every poem in that measure, whatever was the subject, came to be denominated elegy. The mixed species of verse, however, was always considered essential, so that the complaint of Bion on the death of Adonis, or that of Moschus on the loss of Bion, is hardly accounted such, being written in a different sort of measure. In the strict acceptation of the term, scarcely any Greek elegy has descended to us entire, except perhaps a few lines by Callimachus on the death of Heraclitus.

This elegy of Catullus may be considered as a sort of introduction to that which follows it. Hortalus, to whom it is addressed, had requested him to translate from Callimachus the poem De Coma Berenices. He apologizes for the delay which had taken place in complying with the wishes of his friend, on account of the grief he had experienced from the premature death of his brother, for whom he bursts forth into this pathetic lamentation:—

“Nunquam ego te, vitâ frater amabilior,

Aspiciam posthac; at certe semper amabo,

Semper mœsta tuâ carmina morte canam;

Qualia sub densis ramorum concinit umbris

Daulias, absumpti fata gemens Ityli.”

This simile is taken from the 19th book of the Odyssey—

“Ὡς δ’ ὁτε Πανδαρεου κουρη, χλωρηις αηδων,

Καλον αειδησιν, έαρος νεον ἰσταμενοιο,

Δενδρεων ἐν πεταλοισιν καθεζομενη πυκινοισιν

Παιδ’ ολοφυρομενη Ιτυλον φιλον,”

and it appears in turn to have been the foundation of Virgil’s celebrated comparison:—

“Qualis populeâ mœrens Philomela sub umbrâ

Amissos queritur fœtus,” &c.

This simile has been beautifully varied and adorned by Moschus[504] and Quintus Calaber[505], among the Greeks; and among the modern Italians by Petrarch, in his exquisite sonnet on the death of Laura:—

“Qual Rossignuol che si soave piagne,” &c.

and by Naugerius, in his ode Ad Auroram,

“Nunc ab umbroso simul esculeto,

Daulias late queritur: querelas

Consonum circa nemus, et jocosa reddit imago.”

66. De Coma Berenices, is the poem alluded to in the former elegy: it is translated from a production of Callimachus, of which only two distichs remain, one preserved by Theon, a scholiast, on Aratus, and the other in the Scholia on Apollonius Rhodius[506].

Callimachus was esteemed by all antiquity as the finest elegiac poet of Greece, or at least as next in merit to Mimnermus. He belonged to the poetic school which flourished at Alexandria from the time of Ptolemy Philadelphus to that of Ptolemy Physcon, and which still sheds a lustre over the dynasty of the Lagides, in spite of the crimes and personal deformities with which their names have been sarcastically associated.

After the partition of the Greek empire among the successors of Alexander, the city to which he had given name became the capital of the literary world; and arts and learning long continued to be protected even by the most degenerate of the Ptolemies. But the school which subsisted at Alexandria was of a very different taste and description from that which had flourished at Athens in the age of Pericles. In Egypt the Greeks became a more learned, and perhaps a more philosophical people, than they had been in the days of their ancient glory at home; but they were no longer a nation, and with their freedom their whole strength of feeling, and peculiar tone of mind, were lost. Servitude and royal munificence, with the consequent spirit of flattery which crept in, and even the enormous library of Alexandria, were injurious to the elastic and native spring of poetic fancy. The Egyptian court was crowded with men of erudition, instead of such men of genius as had thronged the theatre and Agora of Athens. The courtly literati, the academicians, and the librarians of Alexandria, were distinguished as critics, grammarians, geographers, or geometricians. With them poetry became a matter of study, not of original genius or invention, and consequently never reached its highest flights. Though not without amenity and grace, they wanted that boldness, sublimity, and poetic enthusiasm by which the bards of the Greek republics were inspired. When, like Apollonius Rhodius, they attempted poetry of the highest class, they rose not above an elegant mediocrity; or when they attained perfection, as in the instance of Theocritus, it was in the inferior and more delicate branches of the art. Accordingly, these erudite and ornate poets chiefly selected as the subjects of their muse didactic topics of astronomy and physics, or ob[pg 312]scure traditions derived from ancient fable. Lycophron immersed himself in such a sea of fabulous learning, that he became nearly unintelligible, and all of them were marked with the blemishes of affectation and obscurity, into which learned poets are most apt to fall. Among the pleiad of Alexandrian poets, none had so many of the faults and beauties of the school to which he belonged as Callimachus. He was conspicuous for his profound knowledge of the ancient traditions of Greece, for his poetic art and elegant versification, but he was also noted for deficiency of invention and original genius:—

“Battiades semper toto cantabitur orbe,

Quamvis ingenio non valet, arte valet[507].”

The poem of Catullus has some faults, which may be fairly attributed to his pedantic model—a certain obscurity in point of diction, and that ostentatious display of erudition, which characterized the works of the Alexandrian poets. The Greek original, however, being lost, except two distichs, it is impossible to institute an accurate comparison; but the Latin appears to be considerably more diffuse than the Greek. One distich, which is still extant in the Scholia on Apollonius, has been expanded by Catullus into three lines; and the following preserved by Theon has been dilated into four:—

“Ἡ δε Κονων μ’ ἐβλεψεν εν ῆερι τον Βερενικης

Βοστρυχον, ὁν κεινη πασιν ἐθηκε Θεοις[508]”

“Idem me ille Conon cœlesti lumine vidit

E Bereniceo vertice cæsariem,

Fulgentem clare; quam multis illa Deorum,

Lævia protendens brachia, pollicita est.”

Here the three words τον Βερενικης βοστρυχον have been extended into “E Bereniceo vertice cæsariem fulgentem,” and the single word ἐθηκε has formed a whole Latin line,

“Lævia protendens brachia, pollicita est[509].”

The Latin poem, like its Greek original, is in elegiac verse, and is supposed to be spoken by the constellation called Coma Berenices. It relates how Berenice, the queen and sister of Ptolemy, (Euergetes,) vowed the consecration of her [pg 313]locks to the immortals, provided her husband was restored to her, safe and successful, from a military expedition on which he had proceeded against the Assyrians. The king having returned according to her wish, and her shorn locks having disappeared, it is supposed by one of those fictions which poetry alone can admit, that Zephyrus, the son of Aurora, and brother of Memnon, had carried them up to heaven, and thrown them into the lap of Venus, by whom they were set in the sky, and were soon afterwards discovered among the constellations by Conon, a court astronomer. In order to relish this poem, or to enter into its spirit, we must read it imbued as it were with the belief and manners of the ancient Egyptians. The locks of Berenice might be allowed to speak and desire, because they had been converted into stars, which, by an ancient philosophic system, were supposed to be possessed of animation and intelligence. Similar honours had been conferred on the crown of Ariadne and the ship of Isis, and the belief in such transformations was at least of that popular or traditionary nature which fitted them for the purposes of poetry. The race, too, of the Egyptian Ptolemies, traced their lineage to Jupiter, which would doubtless facilitate the reception of the locks of Berenice among the heavenly orbs. Adulation, however, it must be confessed, could not be carried higher; the beautiful locks of Berenice, though metamorphosed into stars, are represented as regretting their former happy situation, and prefer adorning the brow of Berenice, to blazing by night in the front of heaven, under the steps of immortals, or reposing by day in the bosom of Tethys:—

“Non his tam lætor rebus, quam me abfore semper,

Abfore me a dominæ vertice discrucior.”

But though the poem of Callimachus may have been seriously written, and gravely read by the court of Ptolemy, the lines of Catullus often approach to something like pleasantry or persiflage:

“Invita, O Regina, tuo de vertice cessi ...

Sed qui se ferro postulet esse parem?

Ille quoque eversus mons est, quem maximum in oris

Progenies Phthiæ clara supervehitur;

Quum Medi properare novum mare, quumque juventus

Per medium classi barbara navit Athon.

Quid facient crines, quum ferro talia cedant?”

These lines seem intended is a sort of mock-heroic, and remind us strongly of the Rape of the Lock:

“Steel could the labours of the gods destroy,

And strike to dust the imperial towers of Troy;

Steel could the works of mortal pride confound,

And hew triumphal arches to the ground.

What wonder, then, fair nymph! thy hairs should feel

The conquering force of unresisted steel?”

The Coma Earini of Statius[510], is a poem of the same description as the Coma Berenices. It is written in a style of sufficiently elegant versification; but what in Callimachus is a courtly, though perhaps rather extravagant compliment, is in Statius a servile and disgusting adulation of the loathsome monster, whose vices he so disgracefully flattered. Antonio Sebastiani, a Latin poet of modern Italy, has imitated Catullus, by celebrating the locks of a princess of San-Severino. The beauty and virtues of his heroine had excited the admiration of earth, and the love of the gods, but with these the jealousy of the goddesses. By their influence, a malady evoked from Styx threatens the life of the princess, and occasions the loss of her hair. The gods, indignant at this base conspiracy, commission Iris to convey the fallen locks to the sky, and to restore to the princess, along with health, her former freshness and beauty.

68. Ad Manlium. The principal subject of this elegy, is the story of Laodamia: The best parts, however, are those lines in which the poet laments his brother, which are truly elegiac—

“Tu, mea, tu moriens, fregisti commoda, frater;

Tecum unà tota est nostra sepulta domus;

Omnia tecum unà perierunt gaudia nostra,

Quæ tuus in vita dulcis alebat amor:

Quojus ego interitu totâ de mente fugavi

Hæc studia, atque omnes delicias animi.”

Catullus seems to have entertained a sincere affection for his brother, and to have deeply deplored his loss; hence he generally writes well when touching on this tender topic. Indeed, the only remaining elegy of Catullus worth mentioning, is that entitled Inferiæ ad Fratris Tumulum, which is another beautiful and affectionate tribute to the memory of this beloved youth. Vulpius had said, in a commentary on Catullus, that his brother died while accompanying him in his expedition with Memmius to Bithynia. This, however, is denied by Ginguené, who quotes two lines from the Inferiæ—

“Multas per gentes, et multa per æquora vectus,

Adveni has miseras, frater, ad inferias,”

in order to show that the poet was at a distance at the time of his brother’s death, and celebration of his funeral rites. It is possible, however, that these lines may refer to some subsequent pilgrimage to his tomb, or, what is most probable, his brother may have died at Troy, while Catullus was in Bithynia.

None of the remaining poems of Catullus, though written in elegiac verse, are at all of the description to which we now give the name of elegy. They are usually termed epigrams, and contain the most violent invectives on living characters, for the vices in which they indulged, and satire the most unrestrained on their personal deformities; but few of them are epigrams in the modern acceptation of the word. An epigram, as is well known, was originally what we now call a device or inscription, and the term remained, though the thing itself was changed[511]. A Greek anthology consisting of poems which expressed a simple idea—a sentiment, regret, or wish, without point or double meaning, had been compiled by Meleager before the time of Catullus; and hence he had an opportunity of imitating the style of the Greek epigrams, and occasionally borrowing their expressions, though generally with application to some of his enemies at Rome, whom he wished to hold up to the derision or hatred of his countrymen. Most of these poems were called forth by real occurrences, and express, without disguise, his genuine feelings at the time: His contempt, dislike, and resentment, all burst out in poetry. So little is known concerning the circumstances of his life, or the history of his enmities or friendships, that some of the lighter productions of Catullus are nearly unintelligible, while others appear flat and obscure; and in none can we fully relish the felicity of expression or allusion.

These epigrams of Catullus are chiefly curious and valuable, when considered as occasional or extemporary productions, which paint the manners, as well as echo the tone of thought and feeling, which at the time prevailed in fashionable society at Rome. What chiefly obtrudes itself on our attention, is the gross personal invective, and indecency of these compositions, so foreign from anything that would be tolerated in modern times. The art of rendering others satisfied with themselves, and consequently with us—the practice of dissembling our feelings, at first to please, and then by habit,—the custom, if not of flattering our foes, at least of meeting those we dislike, without reviling them, were talents unknown in the ancient [pg 316]republic of Rome. The freedom of the times was accompanied by a frankness and sincerity of language, which we would consider as rude. Even the best friends attacked each other in the Senate, and before the various tribunals of justice, in the harshest and most unmeasured terms of abuse. Philip of Macedon, in an amicable interview with the Roman general Flaminius, who was accounted the most polite man of his day, apologized for not having returned an immediate answer to some proposition which had been made to him, on the ground that none of those friends, with whom he was in the habit of consulting, were at hand when he received it; to which Flaminius replied, that the reason he had no friends near him was, that he had assassinated them all. Matters were little better in the days of Catullus. At the time he flourished, everything was made subservient to political advancement; and what we should consider as the most inexpiable offences, were forgotten, or at least forgiven, as soon as the interests of ambition required. Accordingly, no person seems to have blamed the bitter invectives of Catullus; and none of his contemporaries were surprised or shocked at the unbridled freedom with which he reviled his enemies. He was merely considered as availing himself of a privilege, which every one was entitled to exercise. In his days, ridicule and raillery were oftener directed by malice than by wit: But the Romans thought no terms unseemly, which expressed the utmost bitterness of private or political animosity, and an excess of malevolence was received as sufficient compensation for deficiency in liveliness or humour. As little were the Romans offended by the obscene images and expressions which Catullus so frequently employed. Such had not yet been proscribed in the conversation of the best company. “Among the ancients,” says Porson, in his review of Brunck’s Aristophanes[512], “plain speaking was the fashion; nor was that ceremonious delicacy introduced, which has taught men to abuse each other with the utmost politeness, and express the most indecent ideas in the most modest language. The ancients had little of this: They were accustomed to call a spade, a spade—to give everything its proper name. There is another sort of indecency which is infinitely more dangerous, which corrupts the heart without offending the ear.” Hence the Muse of light poetry thought not of having recourse to the circumlocutions or suggestions of modern times. Nor did Catullus suffer in his reputation, either as an author or man of fashion, from the impurities by which his poems [pg 317]were poisoned. All this would have been less remarkable in the first age of Roman literature, as indelicacy of expression is characteristic of the early poetry of almost every nation. The French epigrams of Regnier, and his contemporaries Motin and Berthelot, are nearly as gross as those of Catullus; but at the close of the Roman republic, literature was far advanced; and if it be true, that as a nation grows corrupted its language becomes pure, the words and expressions of the Romans, in these last days of liberty, should have been sufficiently chaste. The obscenities of Catullus, however, it must be admitted, are oftener the sport of satire, than the ebullitions of a voluptuous imagination. His sarcastic account of the debaucheries of Lesbia, is more impure than the pictures of his enjoyment of her love.

No subject connected with the works of Catullus is more curious than the different sentiments, which, as we have seen, he expresses with regard to this woman. His conflict of mind breathes into his poetry every variety of passion. We behold him now transported with love, now reviling and despising her as sunk in the lowest abyss of shame, and yet, with this full knowledge of her abandoned character, her blandishments preserve undiminished sway over his affections. “At one time,” says a late translator of Catullus, “we find him upbraiding Lesbia bitterly with her licentiousness, then bidding her farewell for ever; then beseeching from the gods resolution to cast her off; then weakly confessing utter impotence of mind, and submission to hopeless slavery; then, in the epistle to Manlius, persuading himself, by reason and example, into a contented acquiescence in her falsehoods, and yet at last accepting with eagerness, and relying with hope, on her proffered vow of constancy. Nothing can be more genuine than the rapture with which he depicts his happiness in her hours of affection; nor than the gloomy despair with which he is overwhelmed, when he believes himself resolved to quit her for ever.” And all this, he wrote and circulated concerning a Roman lady, belonging, it is believed, to one of the first and most powerful families of the state!

Lesbia, as formerly mentioned, is universally allowed to be Clodia, the sister of the turbulent Clodius; but there has been a great deal of discussion and dispute, with regard to the identity of the other individuals against whom the epigrams are directed. Justus Lipsius[513] has written a dissertation with regard to Vettius and Cominius. The former he supposes to be the person mentioned in Cicero’s Letters to Atticus, and [pg 318]by Suetonius, as having been suborned by Cæsar, to allow himself to be seized with a weapon on his person, and to confess that he had been employed by the Chiefs of the Senate to assassinate Pompey—a device contrived by Cæsar, in order to set Pompey and the Senate at variance. Cominius was an accuser by profession, and impeached C. Cornelius, whom Cicero defended[514]. Lipsius believes Alphenus to be Pompey, and thinks that the epigram, directed against him, is supposed to be written in the person of Cicero. He is of opinion that the poet durst not venture to mention Pompey’s name, and therefore designed him by an assumed one; but the epigrams on Julius Cæsar prove that Catullus was neither so scrupulous nor timid. The greatest number, however, and the most cutting of the epigrams, are aimed at Gellius, his successful rival in the affections of Lesbia—

—— “Quem Lesbia malit,

Quam te cum totâ gente, Catulle, tuâ.”

There were two persons of this name at Rome in the time of Catullus—an uncle and nephew. The first was a notorious profligate, who had wasted his patrimony, and afterwards headed mobs in the Forum for hire[515]. The nephew was equally dissolute. After the death of Cæsar, he conspired to assassinate Cassius in the midst of his army, and, having been pardoned, deserted to Antony. One of the various crimes of which he was suspected, identifies him as the Gellius branded by our poet, and whose vices were so great—

—— “Quantum non ultima Tethys,

Non genitor nympharum abluit Oceanus.”

This idea, by the way, of crimes of such crimson dye that they cannot be washed out by the wide world of waters, seems to have been originally derived from some verses of the chorus in the Choephoræ of Æschylus—

—— “ποροι τε παντες ἐκ μιας ὁδου

Βαινοντες τον χαιρομυσου

Φονον καθαιροντες ἰουσαν ατην.”

The great successor of Æschylus expressed the same idea, in different language, in the Œdipus Tyrannus—

“Ὀιμαι γαρ ὀυτ’ αν Ιστρον ὀυτε Φασιν αν

Νιψαι καθαρμω τηνδε στεγην, ὁσα

Κευθει.”

Seneca, imitating Catullus, in his Hercules Furens, says—

—— “Arctoum licet

Mæotis in me gelida transfundat mare,

Et tota Thetis per meas currat manus,

Hærebit altum facinus.” ——

There is a remarkable resemblance betwixt this idea and a well-known passage in Macbeth:

“Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood

Clean from my hand?” ——

Much dispute has existed with regard to the comparative merit of the epigrammatic productions of Catullus, and those of Martial, who sharpened the Latin epigram, and endeavoured to surprise, by terminating an ordinary thought with some word or expression, which formed a point. Of the three great triumvirs of Latin literature, Joseph Scaliger, Lipsius, and Muretus, the last considers Catullus as far superior to his successor, as the wit of a gentleman to that of a scoffer and buffoon, while the two former award the palm to Martial. Their respective merits are very well summed up by Vavassor.—“Catullum quidem, puro ac simplici candore, et nativa quadam, minimeque adscita, excellere venustate formæ, quæ accedat quam proxime ad Græcos. Martialem acumine, quod proprium Latinorum, et peculiare tunc fieri cœpit, valere; adeoque Catullum toto corpore epigrammatis esse conspicuum, Martialem clausula præcipue, atque ultimo fine, in quo relinquat, cum delectatione, aculeum spectari[516].”

There can, I think, be no doubt, that, as an epigrammatist, Martial is infinitely superior to Catullus; but it is not on his epigrams that the fame of Catullus rests: He owes his reputation to about a dozen pieces, in which every word, like a note of music, thrills on the heart-strings. It is this felicitous selection of the most appropriate and melodious expressions, which seem to flow from the heart without study or premeditation, which has rendered him the most graceful of poets:—

—— “Ce naif agrement,

Ce ton de cœur, ce negligé charmant,

Qui le rendit le poëte des Graces[517].”

Few poets, besides, have shown more freshness in their conceptions—more truth and nature in their delineations of amatory passion—more heartfelt tenderness in grief—and [pg 320]none, certainly, ever possessed a more happy art of embellishing trivial incidents, by the manner in which he treated them. Indeed, the most exquisite of his productions, in point of grace and delicacy, are those which were called forth by the most trifling occasions; while, at the same time, his Epithalamium of Peleus and Thetis proves, that he was by no means deficient in that warmth of imagination, energy of thought, and sublimity of conception, which form the attributes of perfection in those bards who tread the higher paths of Parnassus. Catullus is a great favourite with all the early critics and commentators of the 16th century. The elder Scaliger alone has pronounced on him a harsh and unmerited sentence: “Catullo,” says he, “docti nomen quare sit ab antiquis attributum, neque apud alios comperi, neque dum in mentem venit mihi. Nihil enim non vulgare est in ejus libris: ejus autem syllabæ cùm duræ sint, tum ipse non raro durus; aliquando vero adeo mollis, ut fluat, neque consistat. Multa impudica, quorum pudet—multa languida, quorum miseret—multa coacta, quorum piget[518].” In conclusion, the reader may, perhaps, like to hear the opinion of the pure and saintly Fenelon, concerning this obscene pagan.—“Catulle, qu’on ne peut nommer sans avoir horreur de ses obscenitéz, est au comble de la perfection pour une simplicité passionnée—

‘Odi et amo: quare id faciam fortasse requiris.

Nescio; sed fieri sentio, et excrucior.’

Combien Ovide et Martial, avec leurs traits ingenieux et façonnéz, sont ils au dessous de ces paroles negligées, ou le cœur saisi parle seul dans un espéce de désespoir.”

The different sorts of poetry which Catullus, though not their inventor, first introduced at Rome, were cultivated and brought to high perfection by his countrymen. Horace followed, and excelled him in Lyric compositions. The elegiac measure was adopted with success by Ovid, Tibullus, and Propertius, and applied by them to the expression of amatory sentiments, which, if they did not reach the refinement, or pure devotedness of the middle ages[519], were less gross than those of Catullus.

In his epigrammatic compositions, Catullus was imitated by several of his own contemporaries, most of whom also ranked in the number of his friends. Their works, however, have almost entirely perished. Quintus Lutatius Catulus, who is praised as an orator and historian by Cicero[520], has left two epigrams—one, Ad Theotimum, translated from Callimachus, the name Theotimus being merely substituted for that of Cephissus—and the other, Ad Roscium Puerum, addressed to the celebrated actor in his youth, and quoted by Cicero in his treatise, De Naturâ Deorum[521]—

“Constiteram, exorientem Auroram forte salutans;

Cum subito a lævâ Roscius exoritur.

Pace mihi liceat, Cœlestes, dicere vestrâ;

Mortalis visus pulchrior esse deo[522].”

This epigram formed a theme and subject of poetical contest among the French beaux esprits of the 17th century, who vied with each other in sonnets and madrigals, entitled La Belle Matineuse, written in imitation of the above verses. One will suffice as a specimen—

La Belle Matineuse.

“Le silence régnait sur la terre et sur l’onde,

L’air devenait serein, et l’Olympe vermeil,

Et l’amoureux Zephyr affranchi du sommeil

Ressuscitait les fleurs d’une haleine féconde.

L’Aurore déployait l’or de sa tresse blonde,

Et semait de rubis le chemin du soleil.

Enfin ce Dieu venait au plus grand appareil,

Qu’il fût jamais venus pour éclairer le monde.

Quand la jeune Philis au visage riant,

Sortant de son palais, plus clair que l’Orient,

Fit voir une lumière et plus vive et plus belle.

Sacre flambeau de jour, n’en soyez point jaloux;

Vous parûtes alors aussi peu devant elle,

Que les feux de la nuit avoient fait devant vous.”

From a vast collection of Italian sonnets on the same subject, I select one by Annibal Caro, the celebrated translator of Virgil—

“Eran l’aer tranquillo, e l’onde chiare,

Sospirava Favonio, e fuggia Clori,

L’alma Ciprigna innanzi ai primi albori

Ridendo empia d’amor la terra e ’l mare.

“La rugiadosa Aurora in ciel più rare

Facea le stelle; e di più bei colori

Sparse le nubi, e i monti; uscia già fuori

Febo, qual più lucente in Delfo appare.

“Quando altra Aurora un più vezzoso ostello

Aperse, e lampeggiò sereno, e puro

Il Sol, che sol m’abbaglia, e mi disface.

“Volsimi, e ’n contro a lei mi parve oscuro,

(Santi lumi del ciel, con vostra pace)

L’Oriente, che dianzi era si bello.”

Licinius Calvus was equally distinguished as an orator and a poet. In the former capacity he is mentioned with distinction by Cicero; but it was probably his poetical talents that procured for him the friendship of Catullus, who has addressed to him two Odes, in which he is commemorated as a most delightful companion, from whose society he could scarcely refrain. Calvus was violently enamoured of a girl called Quintilia, whose early death he lamented in a number of verses, none of which have descended to us. There only remain, an epigram against Pompey, satirizing his practice of scratching his head with one finger, and a fragment of another against Julius Cæsar[523]. The sarcasm it contains would not have been pardonable in the present age; but the dictator, hearing that Calvus had repented of his petulance, and was desirous of a reconciliation, addressed a letter to him, with assurances of unaltered friendship[524]. The fragments of his epigrams which remain, do not enable us to judge for ourselves of his poetical merits. He is classed by Ovid among the licentious writers[525]; but he is generally mentioned along with Catullus, which shows that he was not considered as greatly inferior to his friend—

“Nil præter Calvum et doctus cantare Catullum.”

Pliny, in one of his letters, talking of his friend Pompeius Saturnius, mentions, that he had composed several poetical pieces in the manner of Calvus and Catullus[526]; and Augurinus, as quoted by Pliny in another of his epistles, says,

“Canto carmina versibus minutis

His olim quibus et meus Catullus,

Et Calvus ——”[527]