Quam te cum tota gente, Catulle, tua.
The play on the word pulcher might be illustrated by many parallel allusions in Cicero's Letters to Atticus. The gratitude expressed by Catullus to Allius[27], a man of rank and position, for having made arrangements to enable him to meet his mistress in secret, clearly shows that she could not have belonged to the class of libertinae, in whose case no such precautions could have been necessary: and the language of Catullus in the first period of his liaison—
Ille mi par esse deo videtur;
and again,
Quo mea se molli candida diva pedem
Intulit,
is like the rapture of a lover acknowledging the gracious condescension of a superior, as well as the delight of passion returned. Of the two kinds of lovers, those who 'allow themselves to be loved' and are flattered by this tribute to their superiority, and those who are carried out of themselves by their idealising admiration of the object of their love, Catullus, in his earlier and happier time, unquestionably belonged to the latter. Such a feeling, on the part of a young provincial poet, although primarily inspired by charms of person and manner, would naturally be enhanced by the thought that the lady whom he loved belonged to one of the oldest and highest patrician houses, and was the wife of one of the greatest nobles of Rome, who was either actual Consul, or Consul designate, at the time when she first returned the poet's passion. The subsequent course of their liaison affords further corroboration of her identity with the famous Clodia. The rival against whom the poet's anger is most fierce and bitter, is addressed by him as Rufus[28],—the cognomen of M. Caelius, who became the lover of Clodia in the latter part of the year 59, and was defended by Cicero in a prosecution instigated by her in the early part of 56 b.c. The speech of Cicero amply confirms the charges of Catullus as to the multiplicity of her later lovers. As, therefore, there seems no reason to doubt, and the strongest reason to accept the statement of Apuleius that the real name of Lesbia was Clodia; as the Lesbia of Catullus was, like her, evidently a lady of rank and of great accomplishment[29]; as there was no other Clodia of the family of Clodius Pulcher at Rome, except the wife of Metellus Celer, to whom the statements made in the poems of Catullus could apply; and as these statements closely agree with all that Cicero says of her,—there is no reasonable ground for doubting their identity. If it is urged, on the other side, that a lady of the rank and station of Clodia cannot have sunk so low, as some of the later poems of Catullus imply, it may be said that all that Catullus in his jealous wrath imputed to her need not have been true, and also that other Roman ladies of as high rank and position, both in the last age of the Republic and in the early Empire, did sink as low[30].
That the intrigue was carried on and had even reached its second stage—that of the 'amantium irae'—in the life-time of Metellus, appears from the 83rd poem,
Lesbia mi praesente viro mala plurima dicit, etc.