His native district afforded scope for the culture, which was the serious charm of his life, as well as for the pleasures which formed a large part of it. It was in the youth of Catullus that the power of Greek studies was first felt by the impressionable race, half-Italian, half-Celtic, of Cisalpine Gaul, which still remained outside of Italy, and is called by him 'Provincia.' Among the men of letters belonging to the last age of the Republic,—Cato, the grammarian and poet, the great teacher of the poets of the new generation[21], described in lines quoted by Suetonius as
Latina Siren
Qui solus legit ac facit poetas,—
Cornelius Nepos, the friend who early recognised the genius of Catullus and to whom one of his 'libelli' was dedicated in the lines now prefixed to the collection,—Quintilius Varus, probably the Varus of poems x and xxii, and the friend whose death Horace laments in an Ode to Virgil, and whose candour as a critic he commends in the Ars Poetica,—Furius Bibaculus, Cornificius, and Caecilius, most of whom were among the intimate friends of Catullus, came from, or resided in, the North of Italy[22]. In the poem already mentioned he speaks of the mistress of Caecilius as being—
Sapphica puella
Musa doctior,—
an indication that, not only in Rome but even in the northern province, the finest literary taste and culture was shared by women. Catullus shows in the earlier stage of his poetic career his familiarity both with the 'Muse of Sappho,' and with the more laboured art of Callimachus. His special literary butt, 'Volusius,' whose poems are ridiculed under the title of 'Annales Volusi,' was also his 'Conterraneus,' being a native of the ancient 'Padua,' a town at the mouth of the Po[23]. The strength of the impulse first given to literary study in this age is marked also by the eminent names from the North of Italy, which belong to the next generation, those of Virgil, Cornelius Gallus, Aemilius Macer, Livy, etc. There is no proof that Catullus left his native district in order to complete his education, though it is not improbable that he may have done so and come under the instruction of the 'Latina Siren,' with whom he was later on terms of familiar intimacy (lvi); nor have we any sure sign of his presence at Rome before the year 61 b.c.[24] He tells us that he began his career both as an amatory poet and as a man of pleasure in his earliest youth,—
Tempore quo primum vestis mihi tradita pura'st,
Iucundum cum aetas florida ver ageret,
Multa satis lusi: non est dea nescia nostri,