bably for his education; and although he moved a good deal about, Rome was always his favourite residence and head quarters. Romæ vivimus; illa domus, Illa mihi sedes, illic mea carpitur ætas. AD MANLIUM, lxviii. 34. At Rome Alone I live, alone my studies ply, And there my treasures are, my haunts, my home. The poet had all the educated Roman's delight in the country; but his tastes and habits, as indicated in his poems, were such that the pleasures and social excitement of the capital must always have had special attractions for him. In his youth, more particularly, with his brilliant talents and engaging disposition, fine spirits, and probably handsome person, he was sure to be a favourite in the best circles, and to be surrounded by all the fascinations with which beauty, fashion, and intellect could tempt the young Roman of that excitable and dissolute age. It was during this period most probably that such of his poems were written as are most deeply stamped with licentiousness. They have all the marks of youth upon them, and in forming an estimate of his personal character this should always be remembered. Even those who are familiar with the literature and social history of his time are apt to apply to his writings the standard of our own age, to which many of the subjects and expressions in which he deals are altogether abhorrent, forgetting that much which to us appears gross and indelicate not only excited no such feeling among his contemporaries, but was matter of familiar speech among the most cultivated men. Thus it is, that the charge has been repeatedly brought against Catullus, although unsupported by any direct testimony, of having injured his fortune and his health by the licentiousness of his life. This is an easy charge to make, and not difficult to support by a colorable show of proof, with those who judge from the language of a few of his poems, and think that a man who has written so coarsely must necessarily have been a debauchee and a spendthrift; but it disappears the moment the grounds are investigated upon which it has been based. These are taken exclusively from his poems. That he was improvident and embarrassed is argued from some expressions in the Invitation to Fabullus (p. 28, infra), the Visit to Varus' Mistress (p. 24, infra), and the Mortgage (pp. 38, 39, infra). In the first of these poems Catullus simply says, that "his purse is full of cobwebs," or, in modern phrase, that the devil is dancing in it. In the second he alludes, in a strain of humorous exaggeration, to his crazy truckle bed-veteris pedem grabati—and the general leanness of his resources. On the third of the poems in question no conclusion whatever can be founded, for the most probable reading-villula vostra, and not nostra-directs the point of this punning epigram not against himself, but against his friend Furius, who, from the indications given of his character in other poems, seems to have been precisely the sort of man to fall into the hands of the Jews. But every word that Catullus says in these poems may be taken literally without proving more than this—that while a young man, and before he had either made an income for himself or inherited his patrimony, he was a little out at elbows, as young lively fellows of warm passions and costly tastes, even though possessed of fine fortunes, will be upon occasion. So far from his having run himself into pecuniary difficulties, the impression which we gather from the prevailing tone of his poems is, that they are written by a man in easy, if not affluent, circumstances, and moving in the best society. He is proprietor of the peninsula of Sirmio (p. 43, infra), he has a villa and farm in the fashionable suburb of Tibur (p. 50, infra), he has a house and choice library at Rome (see the poem to Manlius, pp. 108, 109, infra), and a good estate besides, thanks to the friend, whoever he might be, to whom the immediately succeeding poem is addressed, and whose bounty was of the most comprehensive kind. Is clausum lato patefecit limine campum, To my domains he set an ampler bound, And unto me a home and mistress gave.-p. III, infra. The man who could boast of these possessions—and of some of them at least he writes at a more advanced period of his life-could not have been badly off. Whether it was by inheritance or by purchase that he came to be possessed of such of them as he did not owe to his friend's bounty, is unknown. If we are to trust the statement of Suetonius in the passage above cited, that the poet's father was alive when he wrote his diatribes against Cæsar and Mamurra, it can scarcely have been by inheritance. If by any other means, then the conjecture as to his having ruined his fortunes by extravagance falls to the ground. That he at one time wanted money is certain, for, in the hope of making a purse out of the plunder of the provincials, he accompanied Caius Memmius, the friend and patron of Lucretius, to his prætorian province of Bithynia. His hopes were disappointed, for, in place of making money, he tells us himself (p. 41, infra) that he did not even clear his expenses. Previous prætors had probably swept the province bare, for Catullus, although he bore Memmius no slight grudge for the bad treatment which he had received, admits (p. 24, infra) that the prætor had not even been able to enrich his own coffers in Bithynia. Nihil neque ipsis Nec prætoribus esse, nec cohorti, Neither I, Nor yet the prætor, nor his suite, Could add one feather to our nest. The poet's visit to Bithynia was not, however, all vanity and vexation. A pleasant circle of friends-dulces comitum cœtus-accompanied him and enlivened the dreariness of the winter. Caius Cinna, the poet, was one of them (p. 25, infra), the same unlucky bard whom Antony's mob wished to tear to pieces "for his bad verses" (Shakspeare's Julius Cæsar, act iii. sc. 3). To what the poet saw and felt during this expedition we probably owe many of the finest passages in his poems. It gave rise directly to his beautiful Farewell to Bithynia (p. 54, infra), the spirited Dedication of his Pinnace (p. 20, infra), and the exquisite lines to Sirmio (p. 43, infra). Wearied with the monotony of a severe winter-cœli furor equinoctialis-the first of these poems shows us the poet kindling at the first breath of spring, and starting off upon a tour among the famous cities of Asia, where, we may be sure, that whatever money he had to spare went in the purchase of works of art and choice copies of his favourite Greek authors. Meanwhile his pinnace is being built for him at Amastris; and the poet's lines enable us to trace him in his yachting voyage from the stormy Euxine till he brings up under the shadows of his beloved Sirmio. We picture him cruising pleasantly along among the Islands of the Archipelago, anchoring off Naxos, it may be, and there meditating the outline of his noble poem of Ariadne; thence skirting by coast and promontory, up the Ionian and Adriatic seas, until he made one of the numerous mouths of the Po, and so gained the smiling waters of the Lago di Garda. Such a voyage as this must have furnished many suggestions for future use, and to it we probably owe the almost Homeric freshness and truth of his sea and land painting. Catullus appears to have made it alone. His comrades, much as they liked his society, had probably some of Horace's disrelish for the sea, and might not have cared to risk so perilous a voyage in a bark so frail. At all events, in his Farewell to Bithynia, Catullus bids them adieu, like a man who expected that when,' if ever, they met again, it would be when they had found their way back to Rome by different routes. He appears to have been fortunate in weather, for his bark, he tells us, was never in danger. Neque ulla vota litoralibus diis Sibi esse facta, cum veniret a mare Novissimo hunc ad usque limpidum lacum. |