Page:Catullus, Tibullus and Propertius.djvu/15

herald the advent of a "divine poet." Born at Verona, an important town of Transpadane Gaul on the river Athesis, which became a Latin colony in 89 B.C., and one of the finest cities in that part of Italy, he was by family and antecedents essentially Roman, and in education and tastes must be regarded as emphatically a town-bird. There is nothing to lead to the impression that he had the keen eye of Virgil for the natural and sylvan beaties of his birthplace and its environs, no special mention of its wine, apples, or spelt. He does not indeed utterly ignore the locality, for one of his most graceful pieces is a rapture about Sirmio (C. xxxi.), where he possessed a villa, no great distance from Verona, on the shores of the Lago di Garda. Hither in his manhood he returned for solace after trouble and disappointment; but it was probably rather with a craving for rest than from the love of nature, which is not a key-note of his life or poetry. His removal to Rome at an early age for his education must have begun the weaning process; and though Verona had its "capital in little," its importance, still witnessed by the remains of an amphitheatre more perfect though smaller than the Colosseum, its medley of inhabitants from the east and west, with a fair share of culture and urbanity, in spite of the infusion of barbarism which Cicero complained had reached even Rome with the "breeks" of the peoples from beyond the Alps, it is easy to conceive that Catullus soon contracted a preference for the capital, and was fain to quiz the provincials of his original home, though he seems to have retained