Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 5.djvu/261

CATULLUS 249 composed at the same time as the 68th, arid addressed to the orator Hortensius, who is there, as in some of Cicero s letters, called Hortalus or Ortalus, and sent to him along with the Coma Berenices (Ixvi.), a translation of a famous elegy of Callimachus. The other poem referring to this event (ci.) must have been composed some years later, probably in 56 B.C., when Catullus visited his brother s tomb in the Troad, on his return from Bithynia. Between 59 and 57 B.C. most of the lampoons on Lesbia and her numerous lovers must have been written (e.g., xxxvii., xxxix., Ixix., Ixxii., Ixxvii., Ixxix., xc., <fcc.) Some, too, of the poems expres sive of his more tender feelings to her, such aa viii. and Ixxvi., "Miser Catullc, desinas ineptire," and " Siqua recordanti benefacta priora voluptus," belong also to these years ; and among the poems written either during this period or perhaps in the early and happier years of his liaison, some of the most charming of his shorter pieces, expressing the affection for his young friends Verannius and Fabullus (ix., xii., xiii.), may be included. In the year 57 the routine of his life was for a short time broken, by his accompanying the Propraetor, C. Memmius, the friend to whom Lucretius dedicates his great poem, as one of his staff, to the province of Bithynia. The desire of seeing foreign lands, which was as strong a passion among cultivated Romans as among cultivated Englishmen of the present day, was probably the chief inducement to this temporary change of life, especially as Catullus had the prospect of gratifying this passion in congenial society ; for the testimony of Cicero as well as of Lucretius shows that Memmius, whatever else he was, was a man of some accomplishment in literature and poetry ; and among his younger companions, in the praetor s train, was his friend and brother-poet Helvius Cinna (cf. x.) Some expressions in x., written shortly after his return, imply that he had some hopes of bettering his fortunes by this absence from Rome, as humorous complaints of poverty and debt (xiii., xxvi.) show that his ordinary means were insufficient for his mode of life. He frankly acknowledges the disappointment of these hopes, and still more frankly his disgust with his chief (x., xxviii.) Some of the most charming and perfect among the shorter poems express the delight with which the poet changed the dulness and sultry climate of the province for the freedom and keen enjoyment of his voyage home in his yacht, built for him at Amastris on the Euxine, and for the beauty and peace of his villa on the shores of Lake Beriacus, which welcomed him home " wearied with foreign travel." To this period and to his first return to Rome after his visit to his native district belong the poems xlvi., ci., iv., xxxi., and x., all showing by their freshness of feeling and vivid truth of expression the gain which the poet s nature derived from his temporary escape from the passions, distractions, and animosities of Roman society. This happier vein is not to be traced in many of the poems which can be assigned to the years intervening between this time and the poet s death. Two poems, written in a very genial and joyous spirit, and addressed to his younger friend Licinius Calvus (xiv. and 1.), who is ranked as second only to himself among the lyrical poets of the age, and whose youthful promise pointed him out as likely to become one of the greatest of Roman orators, may, indeed, with most probability be assigned to these later years (xiv.) From the expression " Odissem te odio Vatiniano," in the third line of xiv., it may be inferred almost with certainty that the poem was written not earlier than December (the " Saturnalia ") of the year 56 B.C., as it was early in that year, as we learn from a letter of Cicero to his brother Quintus (ii. 4, 1), that Calvus first announced his intention of prosecuting Vatinius. The short poem numbered liii. records an incident in connection with the actual prosecu tion which occurred in August 54 B.C. The poems which have left the greatest stain on the fame of Catullus those " referta contumeliis Cfcesart s," the licentious abuse of Mamurra, and probably some of those personal scurrilities addressed to women as well as men, or too frank con fessions, which posterity would willingly have let die were written in the last years of his life, under the influence of the bitterness and recklessness induced by his experience. The complaint expressed in poem xxxviii. "Male est, Cornifici, tuo Catullo," and one or two other short poems such as lii. "Quid est, Catulle ? quid ruoraris emori?" appear to be expressive of his state of mind in his last illness. In the first of them we recognize the tender trust fulness, in the last the " sseva indignatio " of his tempera ment. There is a return of the old graciousness and playfulness of his nature in the dedication to Cornelius Nepos (i.) "Quoi dono lepidum novum libellum," which must have been written immediately before the publication of his volume. Of several of the more interesting among the minor poems, as, for instance, xvii., xxxiv., and xiv., we have no means of determining the date. Nor can it be deter mined with certainty whether the longer and more artistic pieces, which occupy the middle of the volume the Epithalamium in celebration of the marriage of Manlius Torquatus ; the 62d poem, written in imitation of the Epithalamia of Sappho " Vesper adest : iuvenes, con- surgite;" the Attis, and the Epic Idyll representing the marriage festival of Peleus and Thetis belong to the earlier or the later period of the poet s career. If the conjecture of Schwabe and other commentators is correct, that the person addressed in the first part of the 68th is the Manlius of the Epithalamium, and that the lines from 3 to 8 " Xaufragum ut eiectum .... pervigilat," refer to the death of Junia, it would follow that the first Epithalamium was written some time before that poem, and thus belongs to the earlier time. We should be inclined to attach as much weight to the consideration that the ringing, cheerful notes of the poem proclaimed it to be the utterance of the unclouded dawn of his genius, before his nature was saddened and embittered by the two great griefs of his life the faithlessness of his mistress and the death of his brother. The fact that the translation of Sappho, " Ille mi par esse deo videtur," and the translation from Callimachus (Ixvi.), " Omnia qui magni dispexit lumina mundi," belong to the earlier period might afford grounds for con jecturing that the other poems not relating to personal topics, and written after the manner of Sappho or the Alexandrine poets, belonged to the same period. But the Attis and the Peleus and Thetis, although perhaps suggested by the treatment of the same or similar subjects in Greek authors, are executed with such power and originality as declare them to be products of the most vigorous stage in the development of the poet s genius. That his genius came soon to maturity and did not need the ripening process of time and experience through which Horace attained to the perfection of his art, is a reason for hesitation in assigning any particular time between 62 and 54 B.C. for the composition of the Attis and of that part of the Epithalamium (" Peliaco quondam prognatae vertice

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