The remaining three species of measure employed by Catullus, are the sapphic stanza, used in the seventh and fifty-first odes; the hexameter lines, which we have in the epithalamium of Peleus and Thetis; and the pentameter lines, used alternately with the hexameters, and thereby constituting elegiac verse, which is employed in all the elegies of Catullus. Of these three measures, the structure is well known.—(Vulpius, Diatribe de Metris Catulli.)
O blame not the bard, if he fly to the bowers,
Where Pleasure lies carelessly smiling at Fame;
He was born for much more, and in happier hours
His soul might have glowed with a holier flame.
Moore.
Nibby, in his Viaggio Antiquario ne contorni di Roma, (Ed. 1819. 2 Tom. 8vo,) in opposition to all previous authority, has denied that this was the site of the villa of Catullus, which he has removed to a spot due east from Tibur, between the Acque Albule and Ponte Lucano. His opinion, however, is rested on the 26th poem of Catullus, of which he has totally misunderstood the meaning,—
“Furi, Villula nostra non ad Austri
Flatus opposita est, nec ad Favoni,
Nec sævi Boreæ, aut Apeliotæ;