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—