Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 5.djvu/263

whether tho previous treatment of the subject by some Greek writer, some survival of the myth which he found still existing during his residence among the "Phrygii Campi, or the growth of various forms of Eastern superstition and fanaticism, at Rome, in the last age of the Republic. Whatever may have been its origin, it is the finest speci men we possess, in either Greek or Latin literature, of that kind of short poem more common in modern than ancient times, in which some situation or passion entirely alien to the writer, and to his own age, is realized with dramatic intensity. But the genius of Catullus is, perhaps, even happier in the direct expression of personal feeling than in artistic creation, or the reproduction of tales and situations from mythology. The warmth, intensity, and sincerity of his own nature are the sources of the inspira tion in these poems. The most elaborate and one of the finest of them is the Epiihalamium in honour of the marriage of a member of the old house of Manlius Torquatus with Junia (or, according to another reading, Vinia) Aurunculeia, written in the glyconic in combination with the pherecratean metre, To this metre Catullus imparts a peculiar lightness and grace by making the trochee, instead of the spondee as ia Horace s glyconics and pherecrateans, the first foot in the line. His elegiac metre is constructed with less smooth- uess and regularity than that of Ovid and Tibullus or even of Propertius, but as employed by hirn it gives a true echo to the serious and plaintive feelings of some of his poems,

e.g., Ixxvi.—

" Si qua recordanti beuefacta priora voluptas,"

xcvi.,

"Si quicquam mutis gratun; icceptumque sepulchris,"

and ci.,

" Multas per gentes et multa per aequora rectus,"

while it adapts itself, as it did later in the hands of Martial, to the epigrammatic terseness of his invective. But the perfection of the art of Catullus is seen in his employment of those metres which he adapted to the Latin tongue from the earlier poets of Greece, the pure . iambic trimeter, as in iv.—

"Phaselus ille quern videtis hospites,"

the Scazon iambic, employed in viii. and xxxi.

" Paminsularum, Sirmio, insularumque,"

and the phalecian hendecasyllabic, a slight modification of the Sapphic line, which is his favourite metre for the expres sion of his more joyful moods, and of his lighter satiric vein. The Latin language never flowed with such ease, freshness, and purity as in these poems. Their perfection consists in the entire absence of all appearance of effort or reflexion, and in the fulness of life and feeling, which gives a lasting interest and charm to the most trivial incident of the passing hour. In reference to these poems Mr Munro has said with truth and force : "A generation had yet to pass before the heroic attained to its perfection ; while he (Oatullus) had already produced glycouics, phalecians, and iambics, each one entire and perfect chrysolite, cun- ningest patterns of excellence, such as Latium never saw before or after, Alcseus, Sappho, and the rest then and only then having met their match " (Journal of Philology, No. iii.)

From expressions in some of the poems (xvi. 12, liv. 7) it is clear that several of them had been published or circulated separately before they were finally collected in the edition which has come down to us. Lines are quoted from Catullus by ancient writers which are not found in any of the poems which we possess. If these passages are correctly attributed to Catullus it follows that he must have omitted some of his earlier poems from the collection which he made before his death. In some of the older editions (as for instance that of Doring, 1834) two poems addressed "adHortorum Deum," and num bered 19 and 20, have been included, of which there is no ground to believe Catullus to have been the author. The lines numbered in Db ring s edition IS are attributed to him by an ancient gram marian, though they are not included in the MSS. of his collected works. The text, as it has reached us, is in many places corrupt, and its restoration still exercises the acuteiiess of English and Ger man scholars. There appears to have been one MS. of Catullus ex tant in France in the 9th century, from which the 62d poem, Vesper adcst, iuvenes, consurgite, &c., was copied at that time into an anthology of Latin poems. Another MS. is known to have existed in Verona in the middle of the following century. This MS. is not again heard of till the beginning of the 14th century, when it was again discovered and read by Petrarch. It was soon after lost again. The two oldest extant MSS. are immediate copies of it. One of these, dated 1375, now belongs to the Paris Library, the other to the Bodleian (cf. Bahrens, Prolegomena}. The editio princeps appeared in 1472, and other editions appeared a few years later at Parma and Venice. "In the 16th century Catullus, like most of the chief Latin classics, was corrected and illustrated with signal zeal and success. The editions of A van cms, Guarinus, Muretus, Statius, and Scaliger do honour to the learning of Italy and France, even in that age of erudition" (Munro, Journal of Philology, iii.) I Nothing more was done of any importance, in the way of emendation or commentary, till Lachmann published his edition of the text in 1829. Since that date editions have appeared by Haupt, Rossbach, Schwabe, Miiller, Bahrens (1876), and other German editors, and by Professor Robinson Ellis the last accompanied by an elaborate apparatus criticus, prolegomena, &c. Most important contributions to the interpretation of the matter and meaning of Catullus have been made by Haupt, Schwabe, and Mr Munro in the Journal oj Philology. Among recent English translations may be mentioned those of Mr Theodore Martin, Dr Cranstoun, and Mr R. Ellis the last being written in the metres of the original poems.

(w. y. s.)

CAUCASIA, a governor-generalship of the Russian empire, which extends from about 38 40 to 46 40 N. lat., and includes the whole range of the Caucasus, the vast steppes that lie to the north of the mountains between the Sea of Azoff and the Caspian, and all the Russian territory to the south. On the south side it is bounded by the Turkish empire and Persia, while on the north it is con terminous with Astrakhan and the province of the Don army. The principal division is into Cis-Caucasia or the European portion, and Trans-Caucasia or the Asiatic, the watershed of the Caucasus having recently been adopted as the line of partition. Cis-Caucasia thus includes the government of Stavropol, the Kuban district, tie Terek- district, and Daghestan; while Trans-Caucasia comprises the governments of Tiflis, Baku, Elisabethpol, Erivan, and Kutai, and the circles of Sukhum, Zakatal, and the Black Sea or Chernomorsk. The total area is 172,837 square miles, and the population is estimated at 4,893,332.

Map of Caucasus and Lieutenancy of Caucasia (95(j miles by 650).

CAUCASUS, a great chain of mountains, extending from

the Black Sea to the Caspian. It has a general direction from W.N.W. to E.S.E., which it preserves with great uniformity for so extensive a chain, having a range of

nearly 700 English miles in length, from its commencement