Miser, Catulle, desinas ineptire—
in which he recalls the bright days of the past—
Fulsere quondam candidi tibi soles,—
and steels his heart against useless regret:—and another poem written in a different metre, in the same mood, and apparently after the wounds, which had been partially healed, had broken out afresh,—
Si qua recordanti benefacta priora voluptas, etc.;[583]
in which he prays for a deliverance from his passion as from a foul disease, or a kind of madness;—and lastly, the final renunciation (xi),—
Furi et Aureli comites Catullo,—
in which scornful irony is combined with an imaginative power and creative force of expression which he has only equalled or surpassed in one or two other of his greatest works,—such as the 'Attis' and the Epithalamium of Manlius. Other tales of love told by poets have been more beautiful in their course, or more pathetic in their issue; none have been told with more truthful realism, or more desperate intensity of feeling.
The fame of Catullus, as alone among ancient poets of love, rivalling the traditional glory of Sappho, does not rest only on those poems which record the varying vicissitudes of his own experience. His longer and more artistic poems are all concerned with some phase of this passion, either in its more beautiful and pathetic aspects, or in its perversion and corruption. Thus he not only selects from Greek legends the story of the desertion of Ariadne, of the brief union of Protesilaus and Laodamia, of the glory and blessedness of Peleus and Thetis, but he makes the tragic deed of Attis, instigated by the fanatical hatred of love,—'Veneris nimio odio,'—the subject of his art. Others of his poems are inspired by sympathy with the happiness of his friends in the enjoyment of their love, and with their sorrow when that love is interrupted by death. The most charming of all his longer poems is the Epithalamium which celebrates the union of Manlius with his bride. No truer picture of the passionate devotion of lovers has ever been painted than that presented in the few playful and tender but burning lines of the 'Acme and Septimius.' His own experience did not teach him the lessons of cynicism. At the close as at the beginning of his career, he finds in the union of passion with truth and constancy the most real source of happiness. The elegiac lines in which he comforts his friend Calvus for the loss of Quintilia bear witness to the strength and delicacy of his friendship, and, along with others of his poems, make us feel that the life of pleasure in that age was not only brightened by genius and culture, but also elevated by pure affection and unselfish sympathy,—
Si quicquam mutis gratum acceptumque sepulchris