Chommoda dicebat, si quando commoda vellet
Dicere, et insidias Arrius hinsidias, etc.[593]
Just as the ears of men had recovered from this infliction—
Subito affertur nuntius horribilis,
Ionios fluctus, postquam illuc Arrius isset,
Iam non Ionios esse, sed Hionios.
Like fastidious and irritable poets of other times (Horace, Pope, Byron, etc.), Catullus waged internecine war against pedants, literary pretenders, and poetasters. He remonstrates in a vein of humorous exaggeration with his friend Licinius Calvus, for palming off on him as a gift on the Saturnalia (corresponding to our Christmas presents) a collection of the works of these 'miscreants,' (impiorum) originally sent to him by some pedantic grammarian, in acknowledgment of his services as an advocate—
Dii magni, horribilem ac sacrum libellum.
In the 36th poem he represents Lesbia as offering a holocaust to Venus of the work of 'the worst of all poets,' 'The Annals of Volusius,' in quittance of a vow on her reconcilement with Catullus. In another, addressed to Varus, probably the fastidious critic whom Horace quotes in the 'Ars Poetica[594],' he exposes the absurdity of one of their friends, who, though in other respects a man of sense, wit, and agreeable manners, entertained the delusion that he was a poet, and was never so happy as when he had surrounded himself with the newest and finest literary materials, and was plying his uncongenial occupation. In another he records the nemesis, in the form of a severe cough, which overtook him for allowing himself to be seduced by the hopes of a good dinner to read (or perhaps listen to the reading of) a speech of Cicero's friend and client Sestius,—