Inmerentibus, unice imperator,—
that Caesar, while staying at his father's house at Verona, accepted the poet's apology for his libellous verses, and admitted him the same day to his dinner-table. Had he attached the meaning to the imputations contained in them, which Suetonius did two hundred years afterwards, even his magnanimous clemency could not well have tolerated them. But, as Cicero tells us in his defence of Caelius, such charges were in those days regarded as a mere 'façon de parler,' which if made coarsely were regarded as 'rudeness' ('petulantia'), if done wittily, as 'polite banter' ('urbanitas'). Caesar must have looked upon the imputations of the 57th poem as a mere angry ebullition of boyish petulance: and he showed the same disregard for imputations made by Calvus, which, though as unfounded, were not so absolutely incredible and unmeaning. His clemency to Catullus met with a return similar to that which it met with at a later time from other recipients of his generosity. Catullus, though the 'truest friend,' was certainly not the 'noblest foe.' The coarseness of his attack may be partly palliated by the manners of the age: but the spirit in which he returns to the attack in the 54th poem leaves a more serious stain on his character. He was too completely in the wrong to be able frankly to forgive Caesar for his gracious and magnanimous treatment.
Many of his personal satires are directed against the licentiousness of the men and women with whom he quarrelled. Notwithstanding the evidence of his own frequent confessions, he lays a claim to purity of life in the phrase, 'si vitam puriter egi[56],' and in his strange apology for the freedom of his verses,—
Nam castum esse decet pium poetam
Ipsum, versiculos nihil necesse est[57].
He is absolutely unrestrained both in regard to the imputations which he makes, and to the choice of the language in which he conveys them; and in these imputations he spares neither rank nor sex. It is one of the strangest paradoxes to find a poet like Catullus, endowed with the purest sense of beauty, and yet capable of turning all his vigorous force of expression to the vilest uses. He is coarser in his language than any of the older poets, and than any of those of the Augustan age. In the time of the former the traditional severity of the old Roman life,—'tetrica ac tristis disciplina Sabinorum,'—had not altogether lost its influence. In the Augustan age, if there was as much immorality as in the age preceding it, there was more outward decorum. The licentiousness of that age expresses itself in tones of refinement; it associates itself with sentimentalism in literature; it was reduced to system and carried out as the serious business of life. The coarseness of Catullus is symptomatic rather of more recklessness than of greater corruption in society. Impurity is less destructive to human nature when it vents itself in bantering or virulent abuse, than when it clings to the imagination, associates itself with the sense of beauty, and expresses itself in the language of passion. Though, in his nobler poetry, Catullus is ardent and impassioned, he is much more free from this taint than Ovid or Propertius. The errors of his life did not deaden his sensibility, harden his heart, or corrupt his imagination. It is only in his careless moods, when he looks on life in the spirit of a humorist, or in moods of bitterness when his antipathies are roused, or in fits of savage indignation against some violation of natural feeling or some prosperous villainy, that he disregards the restraints imposed by the better instincts of men on the use of language.
Many of his Satires, however, are written in a more genial vein, and are not much disfigured by coarseness or indelicacy of expression. As he especially valued good taste and courtesy, wit, and liveliness of mind in his associates, so he is intolerant of all mean and sordid ways of living, of all stupidity, affectation, and pedantry. The pieces in which these characteristics are exposed are marked by keen observation, a lively sense of absurdity, and sometimes by a boisterous spirit of fun. They are expressed with vigour and directness; but they want the subtle irony which pervades the Satires, Epistles, and Odes of Horace. Among the best of his lighter satires is the poem numbered xvii:—
O Colonia, quae cupis ponte ludere magno,—
which has some touches of graceful poetry as well as of humorous extravagance. It is directed against the dulness and stolid indifference of one of his fellow-townsmen, who, being married to a young and beautiful girl,—
Quoi cum sit viridissimo nupta flore puella