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.