—— “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.