Metellus was governor of the Province of Gallia Cisalpina in 62 b.c., and he must have returned to Rome early in 61 to stand for the Consulship. Catullus may have become known to Clodia in his absence, and the earliest poem addressed to her, the translation from Sappho, which is expressive of passionate and even distant admiration rather than of secure possession, may belong to the time of her husband's absence. But in the 68th poem, which recalls most vividly the early days of their love, when they met in secret at the house provided by Allius, the lines, in which the poet excuses her faithlessness to himself—
Sed furtiva dedit mira munuscula nocte,
Ipsius ex ipso dempta viri gremio[31]—
clearly imply that these meetings occurred after the return of Metellus to Rome. The earlier love poems to Lesbia—those on her pet sparrow, the 'Vivamus, mea Lesbia, atque amemus,' and the 'Quaeris quot mihi basiationes,'—in all of which the feeling expressed is one at once of passionate admiration and of perfect security,—belong probably to the year 60, or to the latter part of the year 61 b.c. To this period may, in all probability, be assigned some of the poet's brightest and happiest efforts,—the Epithalamium in honour of the marriage of Manlius and Vinia Aurunculeia[32], and the poems ix, xii, xiii, commemorative of his friendship with Veranius and Fabullus. The words in the last of these—
Nam unguentum dabo, quod meae puellae
Donarunt Veneres Cupidinesque—
seem to admit of no other explanation than that they were written in the heyday of his passion. The lines in the poem, welcoming Veranius,—
Visam te incolumem audiamque Hiberum
Narrantem loca, facta, nationes—
seem to speak of some adventures encountered in Spain: and from the fact that three years later the two friends, who are always coupled together as inseparable by Catullus, went together on the staff of Calpurnius Piso, the father-in-law of Caesar, to his Province of Macedonia, it seems a not unwarranted conjecture[33] that they were similarly engaged at this earlier time, and had gone to Spain in the train of Julius Caesar, and had returned with him to Rome in the middle of the year 60 b.c.[34] The twelfth poem, which is interesting as a testimony to the honour and good taste of Asinius Pollio, then a boy of sixteen, was written somewhat earlier, while Veranius and Fabullus were still in Spain.