Quae dulcem curis miscet amaritiem[25].
One or two of the poems which we still possess may have been written before Catullus settled in Rome, and before his genius was fully awakened by his passion for Lesbia: but the great majority belong to a later date; and if he did write many love poems before leaving Verona, 'in the pleasant spring-time of his life,' nearly all, if not all, of them were omitted from the final collection. Even the 'Aufilena poems,' which are based on an intrigue carried on at Verona, are shown, by the lines in c:—
Cui faveam potius? Caeli, tibi, nam tua nobis
Per facta exhibita'st unica amicitia,
Cum vesana meas torreret flamma medullas,
to be subsequent to the liaison with Clodia. This last line can only refer to the one all-absorbing passion of the poet's life. His own relations to Aufilena, in whose affections he seems to have tried to supplant his friend Quintius, were subsequent to the composition of that poem. It is possible, as Westphal suggests, that the Veronese bride, 'viridissimo nupta flore puella' of the 17th poem, in whom Catullus evidently took a lively interest, may have been this Aufilena, at an earlier stage of her career.
The event which first revealed the full power of his genius, and which brought the greatest happiness and the greatest misery into his life, was his passion for 'Lesbia.' After the elaborate discussions of the question by Schwabe, Munro, Ellis and others, it can no longer be doubted that the lady addressed under that name was the notorious Clodia; the βοῶπις who appears so prominently in the second book of Cicero's Letters to Atticus, and the 'Medea Palatina' whose crimes, fascination, and profligacy stand out so distinctly in the defence of Caelius. We learn first from Ovid that 'Lesbia' was a feigned name; and the application of that name is easily intelligible from the admiration which Catullus felt, and which his mistress probably shared, for the 'Lesbian poetess,' whose passionate words he addressed to his mistress when he was first dazzled by her exceeding charm and beauty. Apuleius tells us further that the real name of 'Lesbia' was Clodia; and the truth of his statement is confirmed by his mention in the same place of other Roman ladies, who were celebrated by their poet-lovers,—Ticidas, Tibullus, and Propertius,—under disguised names. The statement made there that the real name of the Cynthia of Propertius was Hostia, is confirmed by the line in one of his elegies,
Splendidaque a docto fama refulget avo[26].
The fact that this Clodia was the sister of P. Clodius Pulcher is also indicated in the 79th poem of Catullus,
Lesbius est pulcher: quidni? quem Lesbia malit