Varus me meus ad suos amores
Visum duxerat e foro otiosum—
bears the freshest impress of his recent Bithynian experiences. Poems xxviii and xlviii, inspired by his hatred of Memmius and his sympathy with the treatment, like to that which he had himself experienced, which his friends Veranius and Fabullus had met with at the hands of their chief Piso, probably belong to a later time, after the return of Piso from his province in 55 B.C. Some critics have found the motive of the famous lines addressed to Cicero—
Disertissime Romuli nepotum
Quot sunt quotque fuere, Marce Tulli—
in the speech delivered in the early part of 56 B.C., in defence of Caelius, of which, from the prominence given in it to the vices of Clodia, Catullus must have heard soon after his return to Rome. But the words of the poem hardly justify this inference. Catullus was not interested in the vindication of Caelius, who had proved false to him as a friend, and supplanted him as a rival. And he was himself so perfect a master of vituperation that he did not need to thank Cicero for his having done that office for him in regard to Clodia. Yet the reference to Cicero's eloquence, and to his supremacy in the law courts,—
Tanto pessimus omnium poeta
Quanto tu optimus omnium patronus—
seems to point to some exercise of Cicero's special talent as an advocate, for which Catullus was grateful. The great orator and the great poet, who speaks so modestly of himself in the contrast he draws between them, may have been brought together in many ways. They had common friends and acquaintances—Hortensius, Manlius Torquatus, Sestius, Licinius Calvus, Memmius, etc.; and they heartily hated the same persons, Clodia, Vatinius, Piso, and others. The intimate associates of Catullus shared the political views and sympathies of the orator. Cicero, too, was naturally attracted to young men of promise and genius,—if they did not belong too prominently to the 'grex Catilinae';—and, like Dr. Johnson in his relations to Beauclerk and Boswell, he may have valued their society more for their intellectual vivacity than their moral virtues.