Si tu oblitus es, at Dii meminerunt, meminit Fides,
Quæ te ut pæniteat postmodo facti faciet tui.
What passion of grief in:—
Heu, heu, nostræ crudele venenum
Vitæ, heu, heu, nostræ pestis amicitiæ!
But nothing that Catullus has left us equals in fascinating interest, or exceeds in charm, the poems inspired by the woman who was at once the bliss and the curse of his life—
Lesbia nostra, Lesbia illa,
Illa Lesbia, quam Catullus unam
Plusquam se, atque suos amavit omnes.
Whether she is to be identified with the sister of P. Clodius Pulcher, and the wife of Metellus Celer, seems to us, in spite of the arguments of Schwaber, Munro, Ellis, and Sellar, extremely doubtful. It is a point which need not be discussed here, and is, indeed, of little importance. That she was a woman of superb and commanding beauty, a false wife, a false mistress, and of immeasurable profligacy, Catullus has himself told us. There could only be one end to a passion of which such a siren was the object; and, exquisite as the poems are which precede the breaking of the spell, it is in the poems recording the gradual process of disenchantment, and the struggle between the old love and the new loathing, that Catullus touches us most. How piercing is the pathos of such a poem as the Si qua recordanti (lxxvi.), or the epigram in which he says that he loves and loathes, but knows not why, only knows that it is so, and that he is on the rack:—