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]