UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 AT LOS ANGELES
 
 Ancient Classics for English Readers 
 
 EDITED BY THE 
 
 REV. W. LUCAS COLLINS, M.A. 
 {SUPPLEMENTARY SERIES.) 
 
 CATULLUS, TIBULLUS, 
 
 AND 
 
 PKOPEKTIUS 
 
 6438 4
 
 CONTENTS OF THE SERIES. 
 
 HOMER : THE ILIAD BY THE EDITOR. 
 
 HOMER : THE ODYSSEY, ... BY THE SAME. 
 HERODOTUS, ... BY GEORGE C. SWAYNE, M.A. 
 C<ESAR, ...... BY ANTHONY TROLLOPE. 
 
 VIRGIL, BY THE EDITOR. 
 
 HORACE, BY THEODORE MARTIN. 
 
 AESCHYLUS, BY THE RIGHT REV. THE BISHOP OF COLOMBO. 
 XENOPHON, . . BY SIR ALEX. GRANT, BART., LL.D. 
 
 CICERO, BY THE EDITOR. 
 
 SOPHOCLES, ... BY CLIFTON W. COLLINS, M.A. 
 PLINY, BY A. CHURCH, M.A., AND W. J. BRODRIBB, M.A. 
 EURIPIDES, ... BY WILLIAM BODHAM DONNE. 
 JUVENAL, .... BY EDWARD WALFORD, M.A. 
 
 ARISTOPHANES BY THE EDITOR. 
 
 HESIOD AND THEOGNIS, BY THE REV. JAMES DAVIES, M.A. 
 PLAUTUS AND TERENCE, ... BY THE EDITOR. 
 TACITUS, .... BY WILLIAM BODHAM DONNE. 
 
 LUCIAN BY THE EDITOR. 
 
 PLATO .BY CLIFTON W. COLLINS. 
 
 THE GREEK ANTHOLOGY, ... BY LORD NEAVES. 
 
 LIVY BY THE EDITOR. 
 
 OVID, BY THE REV. A. CHURCH, M.A. 
 
 CATULLUS, TIBULLUS, & PROPERTIUS, BvJ. DAVIES, M.A. 
 DEMOSTHENES, . . BY THE REV. W. J. BRODRIBB, M.A. 
 ARISTOTLE, ... BY SIR ALEX. GRANT, BART., LL.D. 
 
 THUCYDIDES, BY THE EDITOR. 
 
 LUCRETIUS, . . . . BY W. H. MALLOCK, M.A. 
 PINDAR, ... BY THE REV. F. D. MORICE, M.A,
 
 STATE NORMAL SCHfflt, 
 s, CaJ. 
 
 CATULLUS, TIBULLUS, 
 
 PBOPEBTIUS 
 
 BY THE 
 
 REV. JAMES DAVIES, M.A. 
 
 PREBENDARY OF HEREFORD CATHEDRAL! 
 . VOKMURLY SCHOLAR OP LINCOLN 
 COLLEGE, OXFORD 
 
 PHILADELPHIA 
 J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO. 
 
 188 I .
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 IN the following chapters special acknowledgment is 
 due to Mr Theodore Martin for numberless extracts 
 from his admirable and now perfected version of 
 Catullus ; and an almost equal debt has been in- 
 curred to Dr James Cranstoun by loans on his Tibul- 
 lus and Propertius, both of them scholarly perform- 
 ances, and at present the most adequate English 
 versions of those poets in a complete form. Through 
 the kindness of friends, and the publicity of reviews, 
 some variety has been imparted to the translations 
 e.g., in poems of Catullus rendered by Mr R. Dodd- 
 ridge Blackmore, the author of ' Lorna Doono ; ' in 
 the "Nuptials of Peleus and Thetis," a portion of 
 which has been given in a free translation by the 
 Rev. A. C. Auchmuty ; and in pieces of Catullus and 
 Propertius, borrowed from Hummel and Brodribb'a 
 ' Lays from Latin Lyres ' (1876 : Longmans) ; and 
 from the late Sir Edmund Head's 'Ballads and
 
 VI PREFACE. 
 
 Poems' (Smith & Elder: 1868), in which the trans- 
 lations of Propertius are sadly too few. In the 
 course of the work the writer has found that it 
 is perfectly vain to expect the reader to take 
 kindly to the versions of Professor Eobinson Ellis; 
 but he may tolerate the few that are given for 
 their exact literality and evident scholarship. Mr 
 Paley's versions, where they have been used, will be 
 found to combine poetic feeling with these merits. 
 It has seemed well to designate all the versions of the 
 three poets for which the author of the volume is him- 
 self responsible with the letter " D. ; " and he desires 
 to plead for these not so much a claim of superiority 
 to other versions, as a scruple to avail himself of the 
 honey of other bees, without samples and contribu- 
 tions from his own hive. There is room for even 
 more workers in this special field of translation ; and 
 the volume will have done good if it inspires a 
 friendly rivalry in rendering three specially delightful 
 poets into congenial English. 
 
 J. D. 
 
 MOOB COUET, September 1, 1876.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CATULLUS. 
 
 IPAOB 
 CHAP. I. THE LIFE OF VALERIUS CATULLUS, . . 1 
 
 it II. CATULLUS AND LESBIA, .... 13 
 
 it III. CATULLUS BEFORE AND AFTER THE MISSION 
 
 TO BITHYNIA 33 
 
 ii IV. CATULLUS AMONG MEN OF LITERATURE, . 49 
 
 n T. HYMEN, O II YM r.N.KK ! .... 62 
 
 n TI. THE ROMAN - ALEXANDKINE AND LONGER 
 
 FOEMS OF CATULLUS, .... 76 
 
 TIBULLUS. 
 
 M I. THE LIFE OF ALBIUS TIBULLUS, ... 93 
 
 n II. TIBULLUS AND HIS LOVES, . 104 
 it III. TIBULLUS IN HIS CIVIL AND RELIGIOUS 
 
 CAPACITY, 121 
 
 PEOPERTIUS. 
 
 n I. LIFE OF SEXTUS PROPERTIUS, . . .131 
 
 n ii. CYNTHIA'S POET, . ... . . 147 
 
 N III. I'ROPEKTIUS AS A SINGER OF NATIONAL 
 
 ANNALS AND BIOGRAPHY, . . . .168
 
 CATULLUS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE LIFE OF VALERIUS CATULLUS. 
 
 VALERIUS CATULLUS about whose praenomen there is 
 no evidence to show whether it was Caius or Quintus, 
 and need be still less concern, as wherever the poet 
 speaks of himself in his poems it is by his surname 
 Catullus was born at Verona B.C. 87, and died, it is 
 probable, in B.C. 54 or 53. Like the two somewhat 
 later elegiac poets usually associated with him, his 
 life and flower were brief ; but there is internal evi- 
 dence to prove that he was alive after B.C. 57, his 
 death-date in the Eusebian Chronicle ; and the silence 
 of his muse as to public events immediately subsequent 
 to 54 B.O., the death of Clodius in 52, and the civil 
 wars in 49-47 amongst the number, forbids the pro- 
 bability that he attained a longer span than some 
 thirty-four years. A colour has been sought to be 
 given to a later date from the supposed mention in 
 A. o.s. s., voL iiL A
 
 2 CATULLUS. 
 
 Poem Hi. of the actual consulship of Vatinius in B.C. 
 47; but it is clear from Cicero that that worthy whilst 
 ascending the ladder of office had a habit of enforcing 
 his affirmations by the oath, " as sure as I shall be 
 consul," * and so that the poet ridiculed a mere pros- 
 pect, and not an accomplished fact 
 
 " Vatinius what that caitiff dares ! 
 By when he shall be consul swears ! n 
 
 Similarly, the argument for a much later date than 
 67 B.C. for Catullus's lampoons on Caesar and Mamurra 
 may as well be used on the other side, as it is obvious 
 that such attacks would be on all accounts subdued 
 after the Dictatorship was established, though policy 
 and statesmanship doubtless counsel ignorance or over- 
 sight of such petty and ephemeral warfare. On the 
 whole, it should seem that there are allusions in the 
 poems of Catullus which must have been written in 
 B.O. 54 and in 53,t but scarcely a shadow of any 
 grounds for believing him to have survived the later 
 of these dates. 
 
 Beyond the birth-date, we have literally no souvenirs 
 of the childhood or early youth of Catullus, for he has 
 recorded scarcely any admonitm locorum, like Horace, 
 and does not deal in playfully-described miracles to 
 
 * Cic. in Vatin. Interrog., 2. 6. 5. 11. 
 
 + Some allusions in C. xii. to Furius and Aurelins, and in C. 
 xxix., are later than Caesar's invasion of Britain in B.C. 55 ; 
 and C. liii. is an epigram based on a speech of Licinius Calvus 
 against Vatinius, whom Cicero at Caesar's instance defended in 
 .c. 54.
 
 THE LIFE OF VALERIUS CATULLUS. 3 
 
 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. lie does not indeed utterly ignore 
 the locality, for one of his most graceful pieces is a 
 rapture about Sirmio (C. xxxL), 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 ago 
 for his education must have begun the weaning pro- 
 cess ; 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 seeuis to have retained
 
 4 CATULLUS. 
 
 not a few acquaintances and family ties amongst them. 
 Such ties, as is seen in the cases of Catullus and 
 Horace, were stronger in the provinces than in Eome ; 
 and we shall see anon that the former was influenced 
 "by the tenderest and most touching fraternal affection ; 
 but the charms of a residence at Eome, from the school- 
 boy period up to his brief life's end, asserted a power 
 which was rarely interrupted by rustication or foreign 
 travel ; and he cannot herein be accused of the vola- 
 tility or changeableness which characterised others of 
 his craft and country. This would be a power certain 
 to grow with years, and the more so as books, society, 
 culture, were accumulated in the capital " At Eome," 
 wrote the poet to Manlius 
 
 " Alone I live, alone my studies ply, 
 And there my treasures are, my haunts, my home." 
 
 It is little more than guess-work to speculate on the 
 rank and calling of Catullus's father. From the life 
 of Julius Caesar by Suetonius we gather that he was 
 on terms of intimacy with, and a frequent host of, that 
 great man ; and it is not improbable that he and the 
 son who died in Asia Minor may have been merchants, 
 though the death in question would consist as well 
 with the surmise that Catullus's brother was on some 
 praetor's staff. Attempts have been made to establish 
 against the poet himself a charge of impecuniousness 
 and wastefulness ; but " the cobwebs in his purse " in 
 the invitation to Fabullus (C. xiii.) are a figure of 
 speech which need not be literally interpreted ; his 
 allusions in C. xi., " Concerning Varus's Mistress," to a
 
 TUE LIFE OF VALERIUS CATULLUS. 5 
 
 scanty exchequer and shabby equipment whilst in the 
 suite of Memmius in Bithynia, cut rather at that ill- 
 conditioned and illiberal praetor than himself; and as 
 to the jeu d? esprit about the " Mortgage," it makes all 
 the difference of meum and tuum whether we read of 
 "your" or "my" country-seat as the snug tenement, 
 as to which the poet tells Furius 
 
 " That there's a mortgage, I've been told, 
 
 About it wound so neatly, 
 That, ere this new moon shall be old, 
 'Twill sweep it off completely." (C. xxvi.) 
 
 Some possible colour for the suspicion is indeed found 
 in the fact that on occasion like other young men 
 about town Catullus sought to improve his finances, 
 and so like other young men joined the suite of the 
 praetor, Caius Memmius, in Bithynia, attracted by the 
 literary prestige of that governor, who was the friend 
 and patron of Lucretius. From him, however, he de- 
 rived nothing but disappointment. Memmius did not 
 enrich his own coffers : his suite, if we may judge by 
 Catullus, did not recoup their outfit; but, on the 
 contrary, might have stood as a warning to other 
 would-be fortune-menders for the nonce, as the poet 
 points the simile 
 
 " Like me, who following about 
 My prastor was in fact, cleaned out" (C. xxviii.) 
 
 But with regard to the poet's general finances we 
 have certainly no reason, from his remains, to suppose 
 that he was habitually out at elbows. On the contrary,
 
 6 CATULLUS. 
 
 we know that he had two country-houses, one at the 
 Lago di Garda (which some have thought is still repre- 
 sented by the ruins of a considerable edifice at the ex- 
 tremity of the promontory on its southern shore, though 
 later discoveries show that these are remains of baths 
 of the date of Constantine, to say nothing of their ex- 
 tent being out of keeping with a poet's villa) ; and the 
 other in the suburb of Tibur, where was his Tiburtine, 
 or, as his ill-wishers called it, to tease him, his Sabine 
 Farm (C. xliv.) Add to these a house and library at 
 Rome, of which he wrote, as we have seen above, to 
 Manlius, and an estate which he owed to the bounty 
 of a friend, and of which little more is known than 
 that it included amongst other goods and chattels u 
 housekeeper ; * and we shall determine that Catullus 
 was probably in nowise amenable to the charge of 
 being a spendthrift or " distrest poet," but rather a man 
 of good average means, in fair circumstances and good 
 society. For the latter it is plain that his education 
 would have fitted him. Though he had not, like 
 Horace, the advantage of a Greek sojourn to give it 
 finish and polish, he had enjoyed what was then at a 
 premium in Latin towns even more than at Rome, a 
 thorough introduction to Greek literature. Herein he 
 laid the foundations of that deep familiarity with the 
 Alexandrian poets, which, in common with his brother 
 elegiast, Propertius, but perhaps with special manipu- 
 lation all his own, characterises his other than erotic 
 poetry. It is possible that the imitations of Alexan- 
 
 * " To my domains he set an ampler bound, 
 And unto me a home and mistress gave."
 
 THE LIFE OF VALERIUS CATULLUS. 7 
 
 drine poetry may have been his earliest poetic efforts, 
 but the more natural supposition is that his earliest 
 verses are inspired rather by the taverns and lounges of 
 Roman or Veronese resort than by the schools; and if 
 so, an early date would be assigned to " Colonia, its 
 Old Bridge, and the Stupid Husband" (C. xvii.), the 
 poem about a "Babbling Door," the "Mortgage," and 
 other like squibs and jeux d 'esprit. The lack of what, 
 to the accomplished Roman of the highest rank, was 
 tantamount to a college education at Athens, Catullus 
 made.up later on by what is also a modern equivalent 
 foreign travel. After his bootless winter in Bithynia, 
 he chartered a yacht and started on a tour amidst the 
 isles of the Archipelago, after having first done the 
 cities of Asia. And so up the Ionian and Adriatic 
 he sailed home to the Lago di Garda and Sirmio, 
 furnished, doubtless, with poetic material and fancy 
 suggested by his voyage, and fitted more than ever for 
 the intercourse of those literary men at Rome whoso 
 friendship he enjoyed in his mature life, if we may 
 use such an expression of one who died at thirty-four. 
 Among these were Pollio, Calvus, Cicero, Cornelius 
 Nepos, with whom to have been on terms of intimacy 
 is a distinct set-off against an acquaintance with some 
 scores of lighter and looser associates. It is only im- 
 perfect acquaintance with the poems of Catullus that 
 sets up his image as that of a mere Anacreontic poet, 
 a light jester and voluptuary, who could not be earnest 
 but when his jealousy was roused by his beauteous 
 bane his Lesbia. The finished grace of his poetic 
 compliments to such historic Romans as those we havo
 
 8 CATULLUS. 
 
 just named may be set beside the touching and pathetic 
 poem to his brother as proofs of his exquisite com- 
 mand of very different veins, although in his hours of 
 youthful gaiety he could throw off light lays on pass- 
 ing tittle-tattle, or chronicle adventures more or less 
 scandalous and licentious. His claim to permanent 
 honour as a poet rests upon the depths of intense 
 feeling which, whether in light love (if his love for 
 Lesbia can ever be so called) or in brotherly affection, 
 as shown in his lament for his brother's death in the 
 Troad, well up to the sound of the plaintive lyre. It 
 is pretty fully settled that this brother's death did not 
 synchronise with the poet's voyage to Bithynia. Had 
 it been so, would he not surely, as Mr Theodore 
 Martin has observed, have linked a fond memory of 
 their joint boyhood with his ode on return to Sirmio ? 
 The times and seasons were distinct, but Catullus 
 made a set pilgrimage to his brother's grave on the 
 Ehaetean headland ; and to this landmark, as it were, 
 of his life, this heartbreaking journey, and the deso- 
 lation of the home to which he returned, must be 
 referred his sad lines to Hortalus, Manlius, and Cor- 
 nificius. If to this we add the late realisation of 
 Lesbia's utter wantonry (a chapter in the poet's his- 
 tory which, as influencing it beyond all others, deserves 
 to be treated separately and at length), it is made clear 
 that his youthful spirits may by this time have been 
 deserting the sensitive and saddened Catullus; and 
 though there is no distinct record of his death, the 
 inference is justifiable that accumulated bereavements 
 and the rupture of tenderest ties, rather than the
 
 THE LIFE OF VALERIUS CATULLUS. 9 
 
 effects of habitual profligacy, brought to a premature 
 death the richly-gifted and learned Veronese songster, 
 whom Ovid in his " Amores " bids meet another early- 
 taken bard Tibullus his youthful temples ivy- 
 crowned, in the Elysian valley. It is surely with his 
 riper years (perhaps about 61 or 60 B.C.), and not with 
 those when he was more fickle and in the heyday of 
 young blood, that we should connect his passion for 
 Lesbia. Tired, perhaps, of light loves, which left only 
 their bitterness behind, he had dreamed though it was 
 an empty and ill-founded dream of a more enduring 
 connection with this most beautiful and graceless of 
 Eoman matrons. This idol shattered, its worshipper 
 undeceived, and the brother whom he loved with a 
 pure affection toni from him by an untimely death, 
 Catullus has little more in the way of a landmark for 
 the biographer. Between these events and his death- 
 date, whether we take that as 57 or 54 B.C., there was 
 time for tender regrets, occasional alternations between 
 palinodes and professions of forgiveness, presentiments 
 of coming fate, and more direct facing of premature 
 death. Time also, as to our good fortune he discov- 
 ered, for collecting the volume of his poems, which ho 
 fitly dedicated to Cornelius Nepos, and forwarded to 
 him in a highly-finished dainty copy, "purfled," as 
 one translator expresses it, " glossily, fresh with ashy 
 pumice." It is a happy sample of his ideal of poetic 
 compliment, and apologetically excuses the boldness 
 of offering so slender an equivalent for the historian's 
 three volumes (which have not survived) of Italian 
 history. The first verso illustrates the binding and
 
 10 CATULLUS. 
 
 preparing of a Eoman presentation copy. The last 
 points the contrast of a sort of Diomede and Glaucus 
 exchange with a lurking esteem for his own professedly 
 inadequate gift : 
 
 " Great Jove, what lore, what labour there ! 
 Then take this little hook, whate'er 
 
 Of good or bad it store ; 
 And grant, oh guardian Muse, that it 
 May keep the flavour of its wit 
 
 A century or more !" M. 
 
 Before proceeding to examine the extant poetry of 
 Catullus upon the principle of division into groups, 
 it is fair to him to say a few words in deprecation 
 of the character for licentiousness of life and poetry 
 under which it has been his misfortune to suffer 
 amongst moderns. It ought to "be taken into account 
 that the standard of morals in his day was extremely 
 low; vice and profligacy walking abroad barefaced, and 
 some fresh scandal in high places amidst the con- 
 sul's suite and the victorious general's retinue being 
 bruited abroad as day succeeded day. A poet who moved 
 in the world and had gained the repute of a smart 
 hitter at the foibles and escapades of his neighbours, 
 whilst himself hot-blooded, impetuous, fearless, and 
 impatient of the restraints of society, was not unlikely 
 to become the object of some such general charges as 
 we find from C. xvi., that Aurelius and Furius circu- 
 lated against Catullus. And to our apprehension the 
 defence of the poet 
 
 " True poets should be chaste, I know, 
 , But wherefore should their lines be so ?"
 
 THE LIFE OF VALERIUS CA'iULLUS. 11 
 
 seems like begging the question, and scarcely a high 
 tone of self-justification. Indeed, his retort is not 
 simply turning the tables, as he might have done, on 
 his maligners, but somewhat unnecessarily defending 
 his life at the expense of his writings. This, it is 
 probable, has acted in his disfavour. Excepting a few 
 extremely personal and scurrilous epigrams and skits, 
 it is not easy to pick out in the poetry of Catullus 
 a greater looseness of language than in that of his 
 Augustan successors ; whilst as compared with his 
 contemporaries in high places and public life, his 
 moral conduct might have passed for fairly decent. 
 What most concerns the modern reader is that after 
 abatements and omissions of what is more or less 
 unpresentable, there remains so much of a more re- 
 fined standard of poetry and manners, so much ten- 
 derness in pure affection and friendship, so much, we 
 might almost say, chivalry and forgivingness in the 
 treatment of more questionable objects of his passion, 
 that we are won to condonation of the evil which is 
 that of the time and society for the charm and ideal 
 refinement of the genius which is specially his own. 
 The standard of purity and morals has, we know, 
 risen and fallen in modern times and nations ; and a 
 severe " index expurgatorius " should ban our Herricks, 
 Moores, and Byrons nay, even Burns ; but unless a 
 sponge is to wipe out for the sake of a few blots a 
 body of true poetry, rare in form and singularly rich 
 in talent and grace, and a hard and fast rule is to 
 condemn bitter and sweet alike, it is to be hoped that 
 a fairer insight into the poetry of Catullus, attainable
 
 12 CATULLUS. 
 
 through the blameless medium of at least one excel- 
 lent translation, will enable English readers to judge 
 how much of the prejudice attaching to the name of 
 Catullus is without foundation, and how rich and 
 original is the freshness and vivacity of his muse. 
 It is no little gain to feel that in this genius we have 
 " not only one of the very few writers who on one or 
 two occasions speaks directly from the heart," but 
 one entitled to the much more comprehensive praise, 
 as has been shown by Professor Sellar, of " a wonder- 
 ful sincerity in all the poems, by means of which the 
 whole nature of the poet, in its better and worse 
 features, is revealed to us as if he were our contem- 
 
 porary." * 
 
 * Roman Poets of the Republic, p. 342.
 
 CHAPTER IL 
 
 CATULLUS AND LESBIA. 
 
 ALTHOUGH chronology would plead for the postpone- 
 ment till much later of the record of Catullus's love- 
 fever, and it might seem more in order to set first the 
 floating epigrams and occasional pieces which treat of 
 town or country jokes, witticisms, petits saupers, and 
 the like, and to make the reader acquainted with 
 the everyday life of the poet at home or abroad; 
 yet the passion for Lesbia was so absorbing when it 
 was lighted, and possessed its victim so thoroughly, 
 that we must needs treat it first in our sketch of 
 his writings. A poet's love has mostly been insepar- 
 able from his after-fame ; and in a higher degree than 
 the Cynthia of Propertius, the Corinna of Ovid, or 
 the Delia, probably, of Tibullus, does the Lesbia of 
 Catullus fasten her spell around him, to the exclusion 
 of other and fresh loves, of which he was apparently 
 cautious and forbearing both before and after the 
 crisis of his master-passion. His erotic verses, save 
 those to Lesbia, are but few. Ipsithilla, Aufilena, 
 and Ametina are mere passing and casual amours, 
 soon forgotten; he is oftener found supping with a
 
 14 CATULLUS. 
 
 friend and his cJiere amie than flirting on his own 
 account ; and there is nothing in Catullus that betrays 
 the almost certainty that his mistress has justification 
 in his infidelity for any number of her own laches and 
 transgressions, such as is always peeping out in the 
 elegies of Propertius. On the contrary, it is fair to be- 
 lieve that in his case " the heart that once truly loved 
 ne'er could forget," however unfortunate and direful its 
 choice and the issue of it. He was true to the ideal 
 and stanch to the championship of Lesbia's resplendent 
 beauty, long after he had proved that it was not for 
 him; and however disastrous to his peace of mind, 
 health, and even life, the results of her coldness and 
 fickleness, the spell clung to his heart, even after his 
 mind was cured ; and so Lesbia asserts foremost men- 
 tion when we call up the surroundings of Catullus. 
 
 Who, then, was this potent enchantress ? The elder 
 sister, it is pretty well agreed, of that notorious P. 
 Clodius who was slain by Milo, and a member of the 
 great Claudian house at Eome. Like brother, like 
 sister ! The former had added a grave sacrilege to 
 unheard-of profligacy, and outraged even the lax 
 standard of Eoman society in his day by the versa- 
 tility of his shamelessness. To the character of an 
 unbridled libertine he added that of an unscrupulous 
 political incendiary, with whom poison and assassina- 
 tion were wonted modes of removing a rival from his 
 path. The Clodia whom we identify by almost common 
 consent with the Lesbia of Catullus was the second of 
 his three sisters, and unequally yoked witli Metellus 
 Celer, who was consul in 60 B.C., and on frequent occa-
 
 CATULLUS AND LESLIA. 15 
 
 sions a correspondent of Cicero. But, like her sisters, 
 she was notorious for her infidelities ; and, like her 
 brother, was not nice as to methods of getting rid of 
 such as slighted her advances or tired of her fickle- 
 ness. Even Cicero was credited with having stirred 
 her passion unwittingly. A gay friend of Catullus, 
 Caelius Rufus, had incurred her persecutions and 
 false accusations of an attempt to poison her, by 
 freeing himself from his liaison with her ; and Cicero 
 had defended him in a speech which furnishes ihe 
 details of her abandoned life of intrigue and profli- 
 gacy. With her husband she was at constant war ; 
 and his death by poison in 59 B.C. was freely laid 
 at his wife's door. So, at least, we gather from 
 Cicero's defence of Cselius, delivered in the follow- 
 ing year, which saddles her with epithets betoken- 
 ing the depths to which she had descended in her 
 career of vice and licence. After her husband's death, 
 and her release from a yoke which she had never 
 seriously respected, she appears to have given herself 
 over to the licentious pleasures of Baiae, kept open 
 house with the young roues of the capital at her 
 mansion on the Palatine, and consorted with them 
 without shame or delicacy by the Tiber's bank, or on 
 the Appian Road. In such company Catullus, as an 
 intimate of Caelius, Gellius, and others whose names 
 were at one time or another in her visitors' book, most 
 probably first met her ; and the woman had precisely 
 the fascinations to entangle one so full of the tender 
 and voluptuous, and withal so cultivated and accom- 
 plished as Catullus must have been. It has been epi-
 
 16 CATULLUS. 
 
 grammatically said of the women of that epoch at 
 Rome that " the harp and books of Simonides and 
 Anacreon had replaced the spindle and distaff; and 
 that with a dearth of Lucretias," or chaste matrons, 
 " there was no lack, unfortunately, of Sempronias " * 
 i.e., unchaste blue-stockings. But had Clodia's or 
 Lesbia's culture and cleverness been the head and 
 front of her offending, the poet might less have rued 
 his introduction to a sorceress who, "insatiable of 
 love, and almost incapable of loving," had ambition, 
 vanity, and woman's pride sufficient to covet a name 
 in connection with the foremost lyric poet of the day. 
 On his part there seems to have been no resistance to 
 the toils; and no wonder if, with the ends of her 
 vanity to achieve, she bent her literary talents, as 
 well as her coquetry and natural graces of mien and 
 person, to his captivation. Cicero has recorded that 
 she was talked of, like Juno, as /Joum-is, in compli- 
 ment to her grand and flashing eyes ; and there is no 
 lack of evidence that her beauty, grace, figure, and 
 wit were rare. It might be asked on what certitude 
 this description of Clodia is transferred so confidently 
 to Lesbia. In the first place, let it be admitted 
 that, after the fashion of the Alexandrian poets, the 
 custom prevailed with such Eoman writers as Varro, 
 Atacinus, Gallus, Tibullus, Propertius, Ovid, to cel- 
 ebrate their mistresses under the feigned names of 
 Leucadia, Lycoris, Delia, Cynthia, Corinna ; and it, 
 
 * Sempronia, wife of D. Junius Brutus, was a woman of 
 personal attractions and li terary acquirements, but of profligate 
 character.
 
 CATULLUS AND LESBIA. 17 
 
 will not seem unlikely that Catullus should choose for 
 the nom de plume of his enslaver a name recalling 
 Sappho the Lesbian, especially as it was probably 
 by a sympathetic translation into Latin sapphics of 
 her famous ode to Phaon that he first announced 
 his suit and evinced his passion. After this is grant- 
 ed, it will remain to decide from internal evidence 
 whether there are grounds of identification between 
 the Lesbia of Catullus's poetry and the famous or 
 infamous sister of Publius Clodius. They need only 
 be summarised to establish a verdict in the affirma- 
 tive, and confirm the statement of Apuleius that 
 she whom Ovid tells us Catullus loved under the 
 feigned name of Lesbia, was the Clodia whose character 
 Cicero painted in such undisguised force of colours. 
 First, both lay under the stigma of guilty relations with 
 a brother. Secondly, both appear to have at one time 
 indulged an amour with Czelius Kufus, and both were 
 unmistakably married women. Thirdly, the characters 
 of both coincide in point of wit, learning, and culti- 
 vation, their persons in exceptional beauty, and their 
 tempers in caprice and occasional violence. Fourthly, 
 the rank of Clodia was distinctly high and patrician ; 
 and though an evil name attached to her on Cicero's 
 showing, there is no reason to suppose that she utterly 
 disregarded appearances. Lesbia's rank, indeed, is 
 not indicated in plain terms by her poet, but it comes 
 out in a probable interpretation of some expressions 
 in an elegiac poem to Allius, that she was certainly 
 no vulgar intriguante, but met her lover at the house 
 of that noble, and so far paid the outward respect to 
 A.C.S.S., vol. iii. B
 
 18 CATULLUS. 
 
 decency, which is wont to be retained later than most 
 other characteristics by the well-born. 
 
 The remains of Catullus would be deprived of three 
 parts of their interest, had the Lesbian odes and 
 ditties been unfortunately lost. Not only, however, 
 is this not the case, inasmuch as, of many extant, she 
 is the distinct burden : but many poems, not pro- 
 fessedly addressed to her, are really referable to her 
 inspiration. Accordingly, it is a part of the role of 
 every critic of Catullus to arrange, according to hia 
 skill in divination or conjecture, the sequence of the 
 poems of the Lesbian series ; and that which it has 
 been thought most convenient to follow in these pages 
 is the plausible and clear arrangement of Theodore 
 Martin, the most congenial and appreciative of 
 the poet's English translators. It is a happy and 
 shrewd instinct which places first in the series 
 that model translation from Sappho's Greek frag- 
 ment, which seems at once a naming-day ode and 
 a declaration of passion, fenced and shielded under the 
 guise of being an imitative song. The poet, in the 
 fervour of his new-kindled devotion, in the flutter of 
 hope and yearning, and not yet in the happiness of even 
 short-lived assurance, pours forth a wonderful repre- 
 sentation of one of the most passionate of Greek love- 
 songs ; and therein (if we strike out an alien stanza, 
 which reads quite out of place, and must have been 
 inserted, in dark days, by some blundering botcher or 
 wrong-headed moralist) transfers from the isles of 
 Gre3ce burning words which have suffered nothing in
 
 , CaL 
 
 CATULLUS AND LESBIA. 19 
 
 the process, and which perhaps served the poet for a 
 confession of his flame : 
 
 ' Peer for the gods he seems to me, 
 And mightier far, if that may be, 
 Who, sitting face to face with thee, 
 
 Can there serenely gaze ; 
 Can hear thee sweetly speak the while, 
 Can see thee, Lesbia, sweetly smile ; 
 Joys that from me my senses wile 
 
 And leave me in a maze. 
 
 For ever, when thy face I view, 
 
 My voice is to its task untrue, 
 
 My tongue is paralysed, and through 
 
 Each limb a subtle flame 
 Runs swiftly ; murmurs dim arise 
 Within my ears, across my eyes 
 A sudden darkness spreads, and sighs 
 
 And tremors shake my frame." * 
 
 Nothing that we could add by way of comment could 
 enhance the truth to nature of the sensations, which 
 the poet renders more vivid as he endorses them, and 
 which Tennyson and Shelley have, consciously or 
 unconsciously, enumerated in kindred sequence in 
 " Eleonore " and the " Lines to Const ant ia singing." 
 There is something in their reality and earnest truth 
 from the heart, for which we look in vain for imitation 
 in the Elizabethan lyrists. Probably to the same 
 season of hope and wooing must be referred the two 
 
 C. li., Rossbach and Laehmann ; Th. Martin, p. 3.
 
 20 CATULLUS. 
 
 pretty ditties on Lesbia's sparrow, in life and in death, 
 which the most casual of readers connects with Cat- 
 ullus, and which have given the key-note to any num- 
 ber of imitations, parodies, and kindred conceits, 
 though, it may be confidently averred, at a marked 
 abatement of ease and grace. In the first, he pictures 
 with vivid touches the coy and witching charmer, 
 inflaming her jealous and impatient lover, and haply 
 disguising her own passion, by playful toying with her 
 pet birdie, to which she surrenders her finger-tip in 
 mock provocation. He has plainly no sympathy with 
 misplaced favours, as he regards the privileges vouch- 
 safed the favourite, whilst he hungers in the very 
 reach of enjoyment. And his moral from what he 
 witnesses is the simple suggestion of a less trifling and 
 more worthy object himself though there is a little 
 obscurity in the connection with Atalanta and the 
 apples. We give it, in this instance, from a stray 
 version by the author of ' Lorna Doone ' 
 
 " Oh that I could play with thee 
 Like herself, and we could find 
 For sad harassings of mind 
 Something gay to set them free ! 
 
 This would charm me, as'they tell 
 That the nimble demoiselle, 
 Charmed by golden fruit, betrayed 
 
 All her vows to die a maid." R. D. B. 
 
 I^rchance the poet did not take into account that the 
 fruit, once grasped, was scarce worth the effort to 
 secure it; that all was not gold that glittered; that
 
 CATULLUS AND LESBIA. 21 
 
 Lesbia was incapable of deeper feeling than wantoning 
 with a bird-pet. But the birdie's elegy is a yet more 
 memorable poem, one, too, that elicits the poet's 
 element of pathos. Written to ingratiate himself with 
 Lesbia, its burden is a loyal commemoration of his 
 quondam rival ; but a line or two, even if suggested 
 by an Alexandrian idyllist, on the greed of Orcus 
 and the brief life of all that is lovely and lovable, 
 touch a chord which was never far from the vein of 
 Catullus, though he is soon recalled to the sensible 
 detriment which his lady's eyes are likely to suffer 
 from her tears : 
 
 " Loves and Graces mourn with me 
 
 Mourn, fair youths, where'er ye be ! 
 
 Dead my Le.sbia's sparrow is 
 
 Sparrow that was all her bliss ; 
 
 Than her very eyes more dear ; 
 
 For he made her dainty cheer, 
 
 Knew her well, as any maid 
 
 Knows her mother ; never strayed 
 
 From her bosom, but would go 
 
 Hopping round her, to and fro ; 
 
 And to her, and her alone, 
 
 Chirruped with such pretty tone. 
 
 Now he treads that gloomy track 
 
 Whence none ever may come back. 
 
 Out upon you, and your power, 
 
 Which all fairest things devour, 
 
 Orcus' gloomy shades, that e'er 
 
 Ye took my bird that was so fair ! 
 
 Ah, the pity of it ! Thou 
 
 Poor bird, thy doing 'tis, that now 
 
 My loved one's eyes are swollen and red 
 
 With weeping for her darling dead."
 
 22 CATULLUS. 
 
 It only needs to compare this delicate and musical 
 piece, and the subtle infusion of its (in the original) 
 tender diminutives, with Ovid's " On the Death of a 
 Parrot," in which the parrot is very secondary to its 
 mistress, and we shall discern the elements of popu- 
 larity which made it a household word up to the time 
 of Juvenal, and still preserve it as a trial-ground for 
 neatness and finish in translators. 
 
 But soon we find a song that gives a note of pro- 
 gress in Lesbia's good graces. A sense of enjoyment 
 and abandon animates the strain in which Catullus 
 pleads for licence to love his fill, on the ground that 
 to-morrow death may terminate the brief reign of 
 fruition. In sharp contrast with the heyday of 
 present joy he sets the drear prospect which had 
 made itself felt in the poem last quoted ; but now it 
 is as an incentive to " living while we may : " 
 
 " Suns go down, but 'tis to rise 
 Brighter in the morning skies ; 
 But when sets our little light, 
 We must sleep in endless night." 
 
 The moral, or conclusion, is not that which commends 
 itself to faith or hope; but the pagan mind of the 
 erotic poets delighted, as we may see in Ovid, Tibul- 
 lus, and Propertius, also in the contrast of now and 
 then the gay brightness of the passing hour with the 
 dark shadow looming in the background and drew 
 from it no profounder suggestion than love and 
 kisses ! In the rationale or arithmetic of these, Catul- 
 lus shows himself an adept. In the piece just quoted
 
 CATULLUS AND LESBIA. 23 
 
 he piles up an addition sum that takes away the 
 breath, and eventually gives a reason for 
 
 " Kiss after kiss without cessation, 
 Until we lose all calculation ; 
 So envy sJiall not mar our blisses 
 By numbering up our tale of kisses" 
 
 The ancients had a motive for letting their kisses pass 
 counting, which does not appear in the love-ditties of 
 our Herricks and Drummonds, though both betray 
 the influence of Catullus the deprecation, to wit, of 
 magic, mischance, ill-luck, or an evil-eye, which their 
 superstition considered unascertained numbers to se- 
 cure. Exemption from such, then, was a stimulus to the 
 lover's appetite for kisses, as is pleaded again by the 
 poet "To Lesbia Kind" in C. vii., where he exhausts 
 the round of similes for numbers numberless the sea- 
 sands, the stars of night, and so forth and doubts 
 whether the very largest definite number 
 
 " Which a curious fool might count, 
 Or with tongue malignant blast," 
 
 could satisfy his thirst and fever. One could wish 
 that to the Lesbian series might be linked a short 
 poem in kindred vein (C. xlviii.) which may well sut 
 up the poet's dicta upon the subject, inscribed " To a 
 Beauty " 
 
 u Oh, if I thine eyes might kiss, 
 
 And my kisses were not crimes, 
 I would snatch that honeyed bliss 
 Full three hundred thousand times !
 
 2-i CATULLUS. 
 
 Nor should these a surfeit bring, 
 Not though that sweet crop should yield 
 
 Kisses far outnumbering 
 Corn-ears in the harvest-field." 
 
 But whilst as yet Catullus enjoys a dream of success- 
 ful love, and the fancied happiness of possession, with 
 no misgivings arising from awakened jealousy or fears 
 of fickleness, has he left any hint whereby we may 
 reach the secret of Lesbia's witchery ? There is one 
 which does pre-eminently supply tnis his comparison 
 of her with a contemporary beauty generally admired, 
 by name Quinctia. The latter, he admits, has several 
 feminine charms ; but Lesbia's attraction is the con- 
 centration in herself of all the perfections of the most 
 peerless women. Hers is a gathering of "every 
 creature's best" into one ineffable grace, "so perfect 
 and so peerless " is she ! * But let Catullus speak 
 through his eloquent interpreter : 
 
 " Most beautiful in many eyes 
 
 Is Quinctia, and in mine 
 Her shape is tall, and straight withal, 
 And her complexion fine. 
 
 These single charms of form and face 
 
 I grant that she can show ; 
 But all the concentrated grace 
 
 Of ' beautiful,' oh no ! 
 
 For nowhere in her can you find 
 That subtle voiceless art 
 
 * Ferdinand to Miranda " The Tempest," act iii. sc. 1.
 
 CATULLUS AND LESBIA. 25 
 
 That something which delights the mind, 
 And satisfies the heart. 
 
 But Lesbia's beautiful, I swear ; 
 
 And for herself she stole 
 The charms most rare of every fair, 
 
 To frame a perfect whole." 
 
 But anon comes a change over the poet's complacent 
 satisfaction. This perfect creature is only outwardly 
 and bodily perfect; or, if her mental endowments 
 enhance the attractions of her form and beauty, ho 
 soon finds that the heart is wanting. It was her 
 pride in the homage of a brilliant and popular poet 
 that had bidden her win him to her feet : the effort 
 to retain him there was too great for her fickle tem- 
 perament, if indeed she did not trust her fascinations 
 to keep him attached to her train at fast or loose, as 
 it suited her purpose. It would hardly seem that ho 
 could have counted upon much more, if we are to 
 connect with Lesbia, as there is every reason to do, 
 the poem to Manius Acilius Glabrio, in which he pro- 
 fesses toleration of rivals, and goes so far as to say 
 that 
 
 " Therefore so that I, and I alone, 
 Possess her on the days she culls for me, 
 And signalises with a whiter stone, 
 I care not how inconstant she may be." 
 
 (C. Ixviii. ad Jin.) 
 
 Perhaps for a while it sufficed him to act as his own 
 detective, and warn off such fops as Gellius, AltVnu-,
 
 26 CATULLUS 
 
 Egnatius, and Eavidus with sarcasms, innuendos, and 
 threats of biting iambics, if they forestalled his privi- 
 leged visits. He may have trusted also somewhat to 
 the gratitude he might quicken in Lesbia's bosom by 
 such compliments by contrast as the skit he wrote 
 on the mistress of Mamurra of Formiae, a creature of 
 Julius Caesar, who had raised him in Gaul from a low 
 station, and put him in the way of acquiring wealth 
 for the simple purpose of squandering it. Its tenor is 
 a mock compliment to a provincial belle of features 
 nowise so perfect and well matched as they might be. 
 And the suggestion that this is she about whom the 
 province raves, leads up to what Catullus deems the 
 ne plus ultra of absurdity : 
 
 " But then they say your shape, your grace, 
 
 My Lesbia's, mine, surpasses ! 
 Oh woe, to live with such a race 
 
 Of buzzards, owls, and asses ! " (C. xliii.) 
 
 Lesbia, however, most probably felt her hold on her 
 poet to be sufficiently tenable for her taste or purpose, 
 and, wanton-like, shrank not from trespassing on a 
 love which, however sensual, might have been counted 
 as stanch for the period. And so she doubtless 
 trespassed upon it, and outraged him by some more 
 than common heartlessness ; for such must have been 
 the provocation for his touching verses to "Lesbia 
 False," which open a new phase in the history of this 
 attachment, and discover a depth of pathos and ten- 
 derness in the contemplation of eternal separation, 
 which in the brief sunshine of her favour he had had
 
 CATULLUS AND LESBIA. 27 
 
 no scope for developing. The feeling which is aroused is 
 not one of pique or retaliation, or any like selfish resort 
 of vengeance : he steels himself, theoretically, against 
 the weakness of further dalliance with one so faith- 
 less ; but his concern is for the most part about her 
 fall from a pedestal whereon his love had set her : 
 
 " A woman loved, as loved shall be 
 No woman e'er by thee again ! " 
 
 Some lingering glances are indeed thrown in the 
 direction of past delights, and of " love for love ; " 
 but the burden of his song is the change it will be to 
 her when she realises that 
 
 " Her love for every one 
 Has made her to be loved by none." 
 
 There is no consolation to be drawn from a bitter smile 
 at this. Catullus sees the course which self-respect 
 dictates to him, but cannot keep from the thought as 
 to Lesbia 
 
 " How drear thy life will be ! 
 Who'll woo thee now ? who praise thy charms ? 
 Who now be all in all to thee, 
 And live but in thy loving arms ? 
 
 Ay, who will give thee kiss for kiss ? 
 
 Whose lip wilt thou in rapture bite f 
 But thou, Catullus, think of this, 
 
 And spurn her in thine own despite." (C. via.) 
 
 Fine resolves " to let the wanton go," which she, on
 
 28 CATULLUS. 
 
 her part, appears to have faintly opppsed by offhand 
 professions and general assurances, which Catullus, 
 for the matter of that, was quite sharp enough to see 
 through. " My mistress," he writes in C. Ixx. 
 
 u My mistress says, there s not a man 
 Of all the many that she knows, 
 She'd rather wed than me, not one, 
 Though Jove himself were to propoae. 
 
 She says so ; but what woman says 
 To him who fancies he has caught her, 
 
 'Tis only fit it should be writ 
 In air or in the running water." 
 
 The last line of the first stanza is a commonplace foi 
 a Roman fair one's assurance of stanchness which, il 
 analysed, will prove to be a very safe averment. Jove 
 the resistless was never likely to put her constancy to 
 the test, though Ovid and his brother poets fabled 
 otherwise. In their view, as Theodore Martin remarks, 
 " the purity was too sublime for belief which could 
 withstand the advances of the sire of gods and men." 
 It is something, then, to find our lovelorn poet retain- 
 ing enough strength of mind to meet the lady's oath 
 by a counter-commonplace ; though it must be owned 
 that his good resolutions and steeled heart do not 
 count for much, when the next poem in Martin's 
 arrangement exhibits him not only declining, as gener- 
 osity might prompt him, to abuse the frail one him- 
 self, but also disposed to turn a sceptical ear to certain 
 scandals which had been brought to his notice :
 
 CATULLUS AND LESBIA. 29 
 
 u Could I so madly love, and yet 
 
 Profane her name I hold so dear 1 
 Pshaw ! you with any libels let 
 Your pot-house gossips cram your ear ! " 
 
 Perhaps to this state of suspense and partial estrange- 
 ment may be referable the verses about Lesbia's vow 
 to bum the ' Annals ' of Yolusius, a Avretched poet 
 whom she had professed to favour, if Catullus would 
 only return to her arms, and cease brandishing his 
 iambic thunderbolts. The crisis at last has come 
 when the idol has been shattered ; but the votary 
 cannot yet shake off the blind servitude which his 
 better judgment repudiates. As yet he can comfort 
 himself with those fallacious tokens of mutual love 
 which appear in his ninety-second piece, and which 
 may be given, for a change, from Swift's transla- 
 tion : 
 
 " Lesbia for ever on me rails ; 
 To talk of me she never fails. 
 Now, hang me, but for all her art 
 I find that I have gained her heart. 
 My proof is this, I plainly see 
 The case is just the same with me ; 
 I curse her every hour sincerely, 
 Yet hang me but I love her dearly ! " 
 
 Unfortunately, the lovo has vitality and elements of 
 steadfastness only on the one side. Repeated sins 
 against it open wide the eyes of Catullus, till he is 
 forced to own to himself that the sole link that is left 
 between them is rather a passion of wild desire than 
 the purer and tenderer flame, which burned for hor
 
 30 CATULLUS. 
 
 whilst he believed her true. Here is his confession of 
 the new phase of his love, the love that's merely a 
 madness : 
 
 u So loved has woman never been 
 
 As thou hast been by me, 
 Nor lover yet was ever seen 
 So true as I to thee. 
 
 But cruel, cruel Lesbia, thou / 
 
 Hast by thy falsehood wrought . 
 Such havoc in my soul, and now 
 
 So madly 'tis distraught, 
 
 'Twould prize thee not, though thou shouldst grow 
 
 All pure and chaste as ice ; 
 Nor could it cease to love thee, though 
 
 Besmirched with every vice." (C. Ixxv.) 
 
 He can now condone the past for the mere bribe of a 
 passing favour. He is one moment lifted to ecstasies 
 by the "agreeable surprise" of Lesbia's unexpected 
 kindness, and pours out his soul in transports breath- 
 ing passionate prayers for a reunion which his secret 
 heart seems to whisper has no elements of continuance. 
 When he sings in C. cix. 
 
 " So may each year that hurries o'er us find, 
 
 While others change with life's still changing hue 
 The ties that bind us now more firmly twined, 
 Our hearts as fond, our love as warm and true "- 
 
 the petition is rendered of none effect by the misgiving 
 implied in his fond hope that Lesbia's professions 
 may be sincere. Full soon must the truth have un-
 
 CATULLUS AND LESBIA. , 31 
 
 deceived him, for it must have been after, but not 
 long after, this revival of his transient bliss, that, on 
 the eve of foreign travel with a view to placing the sea 
 between himself and his fickle mistress, he commis- 
 sioned Furius and Aurelius, friends and comrades for 
 whom he elsewhere shows his regard, to carry her a 
 message of plaintive adieu, which reads like a threnody 
 of buried love : 
 
 " Enjoy thy paramours, false girl ! 
 Sweep gaily on in passion's whirl ! 
 By scores caressed, but loving none 
 Of all the fools by thee undone ; 
 Nor give that love a thought, which I 
 So nursed for thee in days gone by, 
 Now by thy guile slain in an hour, 
 Even as some little wilding flower, 
 Tliat on the meadou^s border blushed, 
 Is by the passing ploughshare crushed." (C. xii.) 
 
 The crushed hope, which is likened to the frail flower 
 on the meadow's edge next the furrow (or, as we call 
 it, the " adland "), is one of the most graceful images 
 in the whole of Catullus, and speaks volumes for his 
 freshness of fancy, whilst asserting the depth of his 
 passion. After this, there seems to have remained for 
 the poet little save pathetic retrospects, which he can 
 scarce have hoped would wake remorse. Perhaps it 
 was not the way to quicken this, to plead in formd 
 pauperis his own deserts and good deeds of happier 
 days, nor yet the fell disease which is wasting him 
 away, in the form of a broken heart. In the 7Gth 
 poem, such, however, was one of his last references to
 
 32 CATULLUS. 
 
 the subject, a burden of passionate regrets, which are 
 mingled with distinct admissions that he knows Les- 
 bia to be wholly past reclaiming. The whole tone of 
 it bespeaks emancipation and return to a free mind, 
 purchased, however, at the cost of an abiding heartache. 
 But was it not time ? Would the poet have deserved 
 a niche in the temple of fame, could he have still 
 dallied with one of whom he could write to Cselius 
 Eufus, an old admirer, who had found her out much 
 earlier, in terms we can only approach by free trans- 
 lation, as follows ? 
 
 " Our Lesbia, Ca?lius Lesbia once so bright 
 Lesbia I loved past self, and home, and light, 
 And all my friends, has sunk i' th' mire so low 
 That in its lanes and alleys Rome doth know 
 No name so cheap, no fame so held at naught 
 By coarse-grained striplings of the basest sort." 
 
 (C. Iviii.) D.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 CATULLUS BEFORE AND AFTER THE MISSION TO BITHYNIA. 
 
 THE fever of Catullus for Lesbia asserts for itself a 
 tirst place in the biography of Catullus ; but the most 
 distinct chronological landmark is his mission in the 
 suite of Memmius to Bithynia. Yet, before the date 
 of that expedition, and at a very early point of his 
 career, the period of which, in C. Ixviii. 15-19, he 
 says, according to Mr Ellis's " Longs and Shorts " 
 
 " Once, what time white robes of manhood first did array 
 me, 
 
 Whiles in jollity life sported a spring holiday, 
 
 Youth ran riot enow ; right well she knows me, the God- 
 dess 
 
 She, whose honey delights blend with a bitter annoy," 
 
 he probably wrote those poems of a more or less scur- 
 rilous and unproduciblo character which betray some 
 sort of connection with his earlier and more ephemeral 
 loves. Of these, it would seem as if some were written 
 at Verona and in his native district, as they lack, morn 
 than other poems distinctly later in date, the urbanity 
 which Catullus could assume upon occasion. Somn 
 of them are simply reproductions of local gossip and 
 A.C.8.S., vol. iii.
 
 34 VATULLUS. 
 
 scandal, the piquancy of which belonged to the hour. 
 One (C. Ixxxii.) is a poetic appeal to a friend, if he 
 values his friendship, to abstain from rivalling him 
 in his love a style of appeal to which the poet has 
 recourse again and again at an after-date; and the two 
 most considerable are a dialogue between Catullus and 
 a door, which has no good to tell of its mistress ; and 
 a more presentable though still ambiguous skit on a 
 stupid husband, who was clearly a fellow-townsman of 
 the poet's, and had made himself a butt by wedding a 
 young wife. The point of this poem consists in the 
 colony addressed (which we take to be Verona) having 
 had a rickety old bridge, of which the citizens were 
 ashamed. The poet takes occasion to make poetical 
 capital at the same time out of the popular longing 
 for a better structure, and the ridicule attaching to 
 an ill-assorted union. He bargains for a new bridge 
 being inaugurated, by the precipitation of the "old 
 log" from the creaky arches of a structure like him- 
 self. It appears that this bridge had been the scene 
 of all the country town's fetes and galas ; and its in- 
 adequacy for such work is amusingly compared with 
 the ill-matching of December and May, which is illus- 
 trated hard by it. A stave of the version by Pro- 
 fessor Badham of Sydney will furnish so much of a 
 taste of this poem as the reader will care to read : 
 
 " I should like from your bridge just to cant off the log, 
 For the chance that his rapid descent to the bog 
 Might his lethargy jog ; 
 And the sloth of his mind, 
 Being left there behind,
 
 THE MISSION TO BITUYNIA. 35 
 
 In the quagmire should stay, 
 As the mule leaves his shoe in the glutinous clay." 
 
 (C. xvii.) 
 
 But it is to a period between this and the journey to 
 Bithynia that we refer at least some of his livelier 
 trifles, written to friends, or against foes and rivals ; 
 such as the banter of Flavius, whose bachelor lodgings 
 he suspects could tell a tale to explain the rich-dis- 
 tilled perfumes tilling the room ; the invitation to 
 Tibullus to come and dine, and bring with him not 
 only his chere amie, but also the dinner and wine 
 in fact, all but the unguents. The excuse for this 
 quaint mode of entertaining is one which gives what 
 colour there is to the theory that the poet's tour 
 abroad was to recruit his fortune. He writes 
 
 " But bring all these you must, I vow, 
 If you're to find yourself in clover, 
 For your Catullus' purse just now 
 With spiders' webs is running over.** 
 
 This apportionment of a picnic entertainment was 
 just the reverse, it seems, of one to which Horace 
 (Odes, B. iv. 12) invited a certain Virgil, who was to 
 bring the unguent, whilst his host found the wine ; 
 but Catullus tells us in this case it was such super- 
 lative unguent 
 
 " Unguent, that the Queen 
 Of beauty gave my lady-love, I ween ; 
 So, when in its sweet perfume you repose, 
 You'll wish that your whole body were a nose." 
 
 (C. xiii.)
 
 36 CATULLUS. 
 
 To realise this, we should bear in mind the ancient 
 esteem for chaplets, rose-leaves, and perfumes of all 
 kinds at the banquet, and the expense to which Roman 
 hosts would go to gratify this taste. To judge by 
 Martial (whom Theodore Martin quotes on this pas- 
 sage), it sometimes went to the length of the banquet 
 striking the guests as much more a concern of the 
 nose than of the mouth or palate. Perhaps it is no 
 bad thing that we have gone back to a more natural 
 arrangement. Another glimpse at a dinner or supper 
 at which the poet assisted may have belonged to this 
 period, and at any rate is amusing and characteristic. It 
 is in a squib upon one Marrucinus Asinius, apparently 
 a brother of Horace's and Virgil's friend, the poet- 
 statesman Asinius Pollio, imputing to him a petty 
 larceny of which we have heard in modern boarding- 
 houses, and which many know, to their sorrow, is at 
 least matched by the modern disregard of meum and 
 tuum in the matter of umbrellas and wraps. It was 
 in jest, of course but sorry, ill-understood jest, ac- 
 cording to Catullus that this worthy had a knack of 
 purloining his brother guests' napkins whilst at meat ; 
 and what made matters worse was, that the convives 
 of old brought these napkins with them, and if they 
 missed them during the meal, were reduced to an in- 
 convenience which we who don't eat with our fingers 
 cannot realise. Catullus begins by telling this low 
 joker that his fun is not such as gentlemen under- 
 stand fun which he is sure his refined and witty 
 brother, Pollio, would pay a talent rather than have 
 tacked to the name of any of his kin. But ho adds
 
 THE MISSION TO BITHYNIA. 37 
 
 that the reason why he insists on the napkin's restitu- 
 tion, on pain of a thorough lampooning, is this : 
 
 " 'Tis not for its value I prize it don't sneer ! 
 But as a memento of friends who are dear. 
 'Tis one of a set that Fabullus from Spain 
 And Verannius sent me, a gift from the twain ; 
 So the napkins, of course, are as dear to Catullus 
 As the givers, Verannius himself and Fahullus." 
 
 <C. xii.) 
 
 The names of these two boon companions of our poet, 
 "by the way, are a slight support to the theory of 
 " cobwebs in the pocket or purse " before alluded to. 
 Their easy lives and pleasant manners and dinners-out 
 at Rome had no doubt rendered it a necessity on their 
 parts to get upon Rome praetor's staff; and so they 
 had been to Spain with Cnaeus Calpurnius Piso, a com- 
 missariat officer with praetorian powers, whom collateral 
 evidence shows to have been a selfish and needy volup- 
 tuary, whose menage was mean and shabby, and who 
 fleeced his suite as well as his province. It is to the 
 first of this pair that Catullus addresses a poem, which 
 represents him favourably in the r&le of friend, and 
 from which one gathers an idea of a literary lounger'* 
 interest in travellers' tales (C. ix.) 
 
 " Dearest of all, Veranniua ! O my friend ! 
 
 Hast thou come back from thy long pilgrimage, 
 With brothers twain in soul thy days to spend, 
 And by thy hearth-fire cheer thy mother's age ? 
 
 And art thou truly come ? Oh, welcome news ! 
 
 And I shall see thee safe, and hear once more 
 Thy tales of Spain, its tribes, its feats, its views, 
 
 Flow as of old from thy exhaustless store.
 
 38 CATULLUS. 
 
 And I shall gaze into thine eyes again ! 
 
 And I again shall fold thee to my breast ! 
 Oh, you who deem yourselves most blest of men, 
 
 Which of you all like unto me is blest ? " 
 
 It is hard to conceive a truer or heartier welcome 
 home ; but, as a sample of our poet's lighter and 
 more satiric vein, should be read alongside of it his 
 lines to the two adventurers on their joint return, 
 replete with kind inquiries for their pocket-linings. 
 Catullus has a suspicion how things have gone : 
 
 " Your looks are lean, your luggage light ! 
 What cheer ? what cheer i Has all gone right ? " 
 
 He goes on to surmise that they have disbursed con- 
 siderably more than they netted; and branches off 
 into some not unnatural radicalism about the folly of 
 " courting noble friends," and the desirability of put- 
 ting no trust in patrons. By this time, he had him- 
 self made trial of Memmius for he does not scruple to 
 classify that self-seeking prsetor with the broken reed 
 on whom his friends had depended ; and, in the close 
 of the poem we quote, he speaks plainly : 
 
 " Memmius, by your scurvy spite, 
 You placed me in an evil plight ! 
 And you, my friends, for aught I see, 
 Have suffered very much like me ; 
 For knave as Memmius was, I fear 
 That he in Piso had his peer." (C. xxviii.) 
 
 There are several unattached pieces of Catullus, 
 which we might assign to a date prior to his Bithynian
 
 THE MISSION TO BITHYNIA. 39 
 
 expedition to wit, the lines to his Cup-bearer, memor- 
 able as his sole express drinking-song (C. xxvii.), and 
 the Mortgage (C. xxvi.); the one distinct in its rather 
 youthful advocacy of neat potations the other a pos- 
 sible reiteration of temporary impecuniosity, though, as 
 has been said above, this theory must not be pressed too 
 far. Anyhow, he was minded to join the propraetor 
 Memmius's train, and swell as his poet for the nonce 
 the " little Rome " which he gathered round him in 
 the province. He may easily have been light of purse 
 after so long a bondage to Lesbia ; he may well have 
 hoped to dissipate his chagrins by the variety oi' 
 foreign travel : so to Bithynia went Catullus, with his 
 friends, Helvius China, Furius, and Aurelius, in the 
 spring of 57 B.C. It has been told already how he 
 despatched his parting words to Lesbia by the last- 
 named pair. To Bithynia he sped ; and his journey, 
 sojourn, and return, supply a landmark, around which 
 a tolerable amount of his extant poems may be clus- 
 tered. It is not indeed directly that we discover what 
 a N failure it was in a commercial point of view. By 
 putting two and two together, we collect that he spent 
 a year in the propraetor's suite, and then visited, on 
 the home route, Pontus, the Propontis, Thrace, 
 Rhodes, the Cyclades, and the cities of Greece, arriv- 
 ing in due course, by way of the Adriatic, and by the 
 canal which connected the Adigo with the Mincio, at 
 his own estate and villa of Sirmio. In cne of his 
 best-known and sweetest poems he commemorates the 
 pinnace wherein he performed the voyage; and in 
 another, as sweet, his feelings at reaching " homo,
 
 40 CATULLUS. 
 
 s^weet home," rendered dearer by so many months of 
 absence. The piece which lets us into the history of 
 the stay-abroad is a lively picture of Roman gay life, 
 and of a matter-of-fact gay lady, the chkre amie of 
 the poet's friend Varus, in whose company Catullus 
 found it difficult to maintain a wise reserve as to 
 the extent of his shifts and ill-luck in the Bithynian 
 venture. She, like every one else, was agog to know 
 how it had succeeded : 
 
 " Is gold so rife there as they say ; 
 And how much did you pocket, eh ?" 
 
 The poet at first was pretty explicit : 
 
 " Neither I, 
 
 Nor yet the praetor, nor his suite, 
 Had in that province luck to meet 
 With anything that, do our best, 
 Could add one feather to our nest. 
 Our chances, too, were much decreased, 
 The praetor being such a beast, 
 And caring not one doit, not he, 
 For any of his company." 
 
 Thinking this admission enough, Catullus would fain 
 have turned the subject before the lady discovered the 
 utter barrenness of his return. But this was not her 
 idea. Had he not brought home " a litter and bearers " ] 
 Every one knew they grew in Bithynia. The poor 
 poet tried to make believe that he had ; and her next 
 move was to ask the loan of them to go to the shrine 
 of Serapis. "What was he to do, when he had not the 
 ghost of even one brawny knave to carry his truckle-
 
 THE MISSION TO EITHYN1A. ' 41 
 
 Led ? He backs out of it with the lame excuse that 
 the bearers are scarcely his to lend, being Caius Cinna's 
 purchase, though what was Cinna's was his friend's 
 also ; but, ends the poet, driven into a corner 
 
 " But, madam, suffer me to state, 
 You're plaguily importunate, 
 To press one so extremely hard, 
 He cannot speak but by the card." (C. xi.) 
 
 Not much evidence, it may be said, of the fruits, or want 
 of fruit, of a year in the provinces. At any rate, there . 
 is proof that a second spring found the poet on the 
 wing, rejoicing to be homeward bound. He is going 
 to see all he can of famous cities by the way ; and it 
 does not seem as if he had persuaded any of his com- 
 rades to bear him company, though it has been sur- 
 mised without much proof that his brother was of the 
 number. Perhaps they had fared even worse, and 
 could ill afford to pay their share of the expenses of 
 the home route. The "Farewell toBithynia " is so fresh 
 and tender, and its last lines breathe a misgiving so 
 soon to be realised, if the theory to which we alluded 
 about his brother be true, that they deserve quota- 
 tion : 
 
 " A balmy warmth comes wafted o'er the seas ; 
 
 The savage howl of wintry tempests drear 
 
 In the sweet whispers of the western breeze 
 
 Has died away ; the spring, the spring is here ! 
 
 Now quit, Catullus, quit the Phrygian plain, 
 Where days of sweltering sunshine soon shall crown 
 
 Nicaea's fields with wealth of golden grain, 
 And fly to Asia's cities of renown.
 
 42 CATULLUS. 
 
 Already through each nerve a flutter runs 
 
 Of eager hope, that longs to be away ; 
 Already, 'neath the light of other suns, 
 My feet, new-winged for travel, yearn to stray. 
 
 And you, ye band of comrades tried and true, 
 Who side by side went forth from home, farewell ! 
 
 How far apart the paths shall carry you 
 
 Back to your native shore ah, who can tell ? " 
 
 (C. xlvi.) 
 
 "What a suggestive thought for the breaking-up of a 
 year's daily familiar intercourse, with the jests, con- 
 fabulations, lounges, tiffs, confidences, to which it has 
 given rise ! Once interrupted, will this conclave ever 
 reassemble in its integrity ? Of those that meet, how 
 many will retain their like-minded ness 1 how few will 
 not have " suffered a sea change " that has made them 
 other than they were in heart, tone, and affections ? To 
 two, we know, of this company, Furius and Aurelius, 
 our poet wrote a rather savage retort in later years for 
 a strong expression upon the freedom and licence 
 of his life and verses ; and whilst he attempted the 
 lame defence of an unchaste Muse on the score of 
 a decent life (as to which he had much better, we 
 suspect, have said little or nothing), indignantly 
 objected to the criticism of his moral character by a 
 couple of roues sunk as low in profligate living as he 
 hints they are. To tell the truth, the poet's mode of 
 life at all times must have been such as to render it 
 the only feasible course for him to fall back upon a 
 lame and impotent tu quoque. But he may have been 
 in no mood for their old jokes and inntiendos, however
 
 THE MISSION TO BITHYNIA. 43 
 
 familiar as edge-tools to his earlier nature, when this 
 same change of scene had brought him face to face 
 with personal ill-health and with a beloved brother's 
 death. We cannot exactly time this last event, which 
 took place in the Troad ; or it might seem as though, 
 in the last passage quoted, our poet had been endowed 
 with a spirit of prophecy. Certain it is that the 
 premature loss of him ^ 
 
 " Whom now, far, far away, not laid to rest 
 Amid familiar tombs with kindred dust, 
 Fell Troy detains, Troy impious and unblest, 
 'Neath its unhallowed plain ignobly thrust " 
 
 (C. Ixviii. 97-100) 
 
 wrought a distinct change of tone in the effusions of 
 Catullus, thenceforth more directed towards the at- 
 traction of friendly sympathy than the youthful and 
 hot-headed concoction of scurrilous and offensive lam- 
 poons. With a vaguely-ascertained chronology, it is 
 not easy to prove this by examples ; but it is con- 
 sistent with a tender and affectionate nature that such 
 a change should have supervened, though it cannot 
 be maintained that there were no recurrences to the 
 earlier and more pungent vein. One or two glimpses 
 of Catullus as a master, and in his simpler and more 
 domestic relations, will fitly end the present chapter, 
 and give a meet conclusion to the Bithynian voyage. 
 What pleasanter pride of ownership ever found its 
 vent in song than our poet's dedication of his pinnace 
 after it had done its work, and conveyed him home 
 into the Lago di Garda?
 
 U CATULLUS. 
 
 " Yon pinnace, friends, now hauled ashore, 
 Boasts that for speed none ever more 
 Excelled, or 'gainst her could avail 
 In race of oars, or eke with sail. 
 This, she avers, nor Adria's bay 
 Nor Cyclad isles will dare gainsay 
 Fierce Thrace, or Rhodes of ample fame, 
 Or Pontus with ill-omened name ; 
 Where whilom it, a pinnace now, 
 Was a maned tree on mountain-brow : 
 Yea, from its mane on tall Cytorus 
 Soft music sighed in breeze sonorous. 
 Whose box-clad heights, Amastris too, 
 Avouch this origin as true ; 
 And witness what my pinnace vows, 
 It first saw light on yonder brows 
 First dipt its oars in neighbouring sea, 
 And then through wild waves carried me, 
 Its master, in its stanch, smart craft, 
 Breeze foul or fair, or wind right aft. 
 No calls to gods of sea or shore 
 She lifted ; and, the voyage o'er, 
 From farthest tracts of brine, to rest, 
 Came to our smooth lake's placid breast. 
 'Tis over now. Her mission done, 
 Here she enjoys a rest well won, 
 And dedicates her timbers here 
 To Castor and to Castor's peer." (D.) 
 
 The fascination of the piece, of which this is a tran- 
 script, has been so widely felt, that it has yielded 
 itself to dozens of clever and graceful parodies and 
 imitations at various times. One of the most recent 
 is in a little volume of 'Lays from Latin Lyres,' 
 recently published at Oxford, where the pinnace re-
 
 THE MISSION TO LITHYSIA. 45 
 
 appears as an Oxford racing-boat, dear to its own 
 college for victories innumerable over such rivals as 
 
 " Brasenose of boating fame, 
 Or Exeter with crimson oar, 
 Or Balliol men from Scotia's shore." 
 
 But the intrinsic charm of the original consists in the 
 fond ownership which breathes in it ; and the same is 
 the case with the poet's address to Sirmio, his marine 
 estate, on his return from his voyage in it, which we 
 give in the version of Professor Eobinson Ellis : 
 
 " thou of islands jewel, and of half-islands, 
 Fair Sirmio, whatever o'er the lake's clear rim 
 Or waste of ocean Neptune holds, a twofold power : 
 
 What joy have I to see thee ! and to gaze, what glee ! 
 
 Scarce yet believing Thynia past, the fair champaign 
 Bithynian, yet in safety thee to greet once more. 
 From cares no more to part us where is any joy like 
 this? 
 
 When drops the soul her fardel, as the travel-tired, 
 
 World - weary wand'rer touches home, returns, sinks 
 
 down 
 In joy to slumber on the bed desired so long 
 
 This meed, this only, counts for e'en an age of toil. 
 
 O take a welcome, lovely Sirmio, thy lord's, 
 
 And greet him happy; greet him all the Lydian 
 
 lake: 
 
 Laugh out whatever laughter at the hearth rings 
 clear." 
 
 Mi Ellis's expression for the last line of the Latin sets
 
 46 CATULLUS. 
 
 at rest a claim of various competitors, and realises the 
 gist of the verse, though the metre is very hard to ac- 
 custom one's self to. Without adopting Landor's emen- 
 dations, we may quote his illustration of the concluding 
 verses of this piece : "Catullus here calls on Sirmio to 
 rejoice in liis return, and invites the waves of the lake 
 to laugh. "Whoever has seen this beautiful expanse of 
 water, under its bright sun and gentle breezes, will 
 understand the poet's expression he will have seen 
 the winds dance and laugh." The critic, however, 
 based an emendation of " Ludise " for " Lydiae," " dan- 
 cing " for " Lydian," on his bit of criticism. In another 
 poem (C. xliv.) of a humorous character, we see the 
 same kindlier side of the poet's nature, in his affection 
 for his Sabine and Tiburtine farm. The lucale of 
 this was one appreciated by Horace, and a retreat 
 which Catullus must have thought himself lucky in 
 having at command. He playfully hints that his 
 friends will best please him if they dub it Tiburtine, 
 though there was no doubt that its precise site, the 
 banks of the Anio, made it an open question to which 
 district it should be tacked ; and he pays it a tribute 
 of gratitude for enabling him to shake off a pestilential 
 catarrh, which appears to have had its beginning in 
 that seat of all evils, the stomach. A desire of epicu- 
 rean experiences and of a dinner with a certain Sestius, 
 who united the reputation of a brilliant host with that 
 of a dull orator, had led the evil genius of Catullus to 
 a banquet, where he was bored to death by the recital 
 of his entertainer's oration against one Caius Antius ; 
 and this proved a penance so grievous that the poet
 
 THE MISSIOS TO BITHYNIA. 47 
 
 humorously declares it gave him an ague. He fell 
 a-coughing incontinently, and there was nothing for 
 it, he adds 
 
 "Until I fled, 
 
 And cured within thy easy breast 
 Myself with nettle-juice and rest." 
 
 In the same playful vein, Catullus records his thanks 
 to the nurse who has brought him round again his 
 farm pel-sonified for letting him off so lightly for a 
 temporary fickleness ; and makes a facetious promise 
 that if ever again he lets the love of good living entice 
 him into such a purgatory, he'll invoke these shivers 
 and this hacking cough not on himself, oh dear no ! 
 but on the ill-advised host who only invites his friends 
 when he wants to air his lungs and speeches. 
 
 Here, it will be said, crops out, amidst strong home 
 instincts, the old and strong leaven of satire and lam- 
 pooning. But if we turn to the crowning grief of the 
 life of Catullus, it will be seen how severe and absorb- 
 ing is his tender grief. Here is the outpouring of his 
 heart at the grave in the Troad : 
 
 " In pious duty, over lands and seas, 
 Come I, deaf brother, to thine exsequies ; 
 Bent on such gifts as love in death doth pay, 
 Fraught with last words to cheer thee on thy way ; 
 In vain. For fate hath torn thee from my side, 
 Brother, unmeet so early to have died. 
 Yet, oh ! such offerings as ancestral use 
 Assigns the tomb, may haply find excuse : 
 Yea, take these gifts fraternal tears bedew, 
 And take, oh take, my loving, last adieu ! " 
 
 (C. ci.) D.
 
 48 CATULLUS. 
 
 I3ut with affectionate natures like that of Catullus, the 
 memory is not silenced by the barrier which divides 
 the yearning spirit from its kind. The last adieu is a 
 figure of speech which a thousand reminiscences falsify. 
 The forlorn brother tries to solace himself with tender 
 allusions to his bereavement whenever he is sending a 
 missive to some congenial spirit, or inditing epistles 
 of sympathy to a patron in kindred sorrow. What 
 can be sweeter than his lines to Hortalus which 
 accompanied the translation of his Alexandrian model, 
 Calliniachus's poem on " Berenice's Hair," to which we 
 shall have to refer again ; or his allusion to the same 
 loss in the elegiacs to Manlius, when he undertook the 
 difficult task of consoling with an elegy one whom he 
 gifted erewhile with the most glowing of epithalamia ? 
 There is one allusion also to the same topic in the 
 verses to M. Acilius Glabrio, breathing the same acute 
 sense of desolation, and deploring the destiny that 
 ordains their ashes to lie beneath the soils of different 
 continents. It may suffice to cite Theodore Martin's 
 version of the allusion, in the lines to Hortalus, to 
 the brother so soundly sleeping by the Ehsetean shore 
 in Trojan earth : 
 
 " Oh ! is thy voice for ever hushed and still ? 
 
 O brother, dearer far than life, shall I 
 Uehold thee never ? But in sooth I will 
 
 For ever love thee, as in clays gone by ; 
 
 And ever through my songs shall ring a cry 
 Sad with thy death sad as in thickest shade 
 
 Of intertariglccl boughs the melody, 
 Which by the woful Daulian bird is made, 
 Sobbing for Itvs dead her wail through all the glade." 
 
 (C. Ixv.)
 
 THE MISSION TO B1THYNIA. 49 
 
 In the like allusion of the poem to Manlius we are 
 told further that the brother's death has had the effect 
 of turning mirth to gloom, taking light and sun from 
 the dwelling, and robbing home of the charm of mu- 
 tual studies and fraternal unity. Even in modern 
 times, a recent poet of the second rank is perhaps best 
 remembered by his touching lyrics on " My Brother's 
 Grave," and may have got the first breath of inspira- 
 tion from the Roman poet, who, as he tells us in the 
 67th poem, retired for self-converse and the society of 
 his despair to the rural retreats of Verona. Perhaps 
 in such isolation it is well to be broken in upon ; 
 perhaps it is the sense that comes upon one, after a 
 course of enforced loneliness, that one's books, treasures, 
 haunts (as with Catullus) are in town, that makes the 
 mourner see the folly of unavailing sorrow, and strive 
 to shake it off, though, in his case, with too little 
 health for achieving his task successfully. 
 
 A.C.S.S., vol. iii.
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 CATULLUS AMONG MEN OF LITERATURE. 
 
 THOUGH we have just seen Catullus bidding fair to 
 sink into despondency, there is no reason to suppose 
 that this state of spirits at once, or ever entirely, shut 
 out gayer moods upon occasion, much less that it put 
 an end to social intercourse with those literary com- 
 peers of whom in his brief life the poet had no lack. 
 When at Rome he contrived to amuse himself by no 
 means tristely, if we may accept the witness of one or 
 two lively pieces that seem to belong to the period 
 after the Bithynian campaign, and to the closing years 
 of his career. One stray piece "To Camerius" (C. liv.) 
 gives a little hint of the company he kept, and the 
 manner in which his days were frittered away, even 
 when a cloud had overshadowed his life. It is a * 
 playful rallying of an associate of lighter vein upon 
 the nature of his engagements and rendezvous, and 
 affords a glimpse of Roman topography not so 
 common in Catullus as could have been wished. 
 Wishing to "track his friend to his haunts, the poet 
 says he sought him in the Campus Minor, which 
 would seem to have been a distinct division of the
 
 CATULLUS AMONG MEN OF LITERATURE. 51 
 
 Campus Martins, in the bend of the Tiber to the 
 north of the Circus Flamiuius, and to have repre- 
 sented a familiar portion of the great Eoman park 
 and race -course. In the Circus, also, and in the 
 book-shops, in the hallowed Temple of Capitoline 
 Jupiter at no great distance from the same public 
 resort, as well as in the Promenade and Portico of 
 Pompey the Great, lying to the south of the Campus 
 Martius, and attached to the Theatre of Pompey built 
 by him in his second consulship B.C. 55 (and so now 
 in the height of fashion and novelty), Catullus has 
 sought his friend, but can nowhere get an inkling of 
 him. But for the mention of the book-stalls, we might 
 have passed by the whereabouts of Camerius, as the 
 nature of the poet's inquiries implies that the truant 
 was pleasantly engaged in a congenial flirtation, which 
 he had the good sense to keep to himself. The sequel, 
 however, of the verses of Catullus goes to prove that 
 he was himself alive to the same amusements as his 
 friend, and would have been well pleased to have been 
 of his company. The grievance was that the search 
 proved fruitless. His Alexandrian myth -lore fur- 
 nishes him half-a-dozen standards of fleetness to 
 which he professes to have attained Talus, Ladas, 
 Perseus, Pegasus, and the steeds of Rhesus and yet 
 he has not overtaken Camerius, but had to chew the 
 cud of his disappointment, besides being tired and 
 footsore. 
 
 But it would be a mistake to argue systematic 
 frivolity from casual glimpses of days wasted, upon a 
 lively poet's own showing. On the other side of tho
 
 52 CATULLUS. 
 
 scale may be counted the names of learned and witty 
 contemporaries known like himself to fame with 
 whom Catullus was in familiar intercourse. Fore- 
 most perhaps we should' set Cornelius Nepos and 
 Cicero : the former, because to him Catullus dedicates 
 his collected volume ; the latter, for the very compli- 
 mentary terms in which he rates the chief of orators, 
 albeit the sorriest of poets. Lest there should be any 
 doubt in the face of internal evidence as to the iden- 
 tity of Cornelius with him of the surname familiar to 
 schoolboys, it may be noted that this is set at rest by 
 a later poet, Ausonius ; but the verses of dedication 
 evince a lively interest in the historian -and biographer, 
 whose ' Epitome of Universal History ' has not sur- 
 vived the wreck of ages, whilst the lives which we 
 read, with the exception of that of Atticus, are simply 
 an epitome of the work of KVpos. The gracefully- 
 turned compliment of the poet, however, will show 
 the store he sets by his friend's literary labours and 
 erudition and it is best represented by Theodore 
 Martin : 
 
 " My little volume is complete, 
 Fresh pumice-polislied, and as neat 
 
 As book need wish to be ; 
 And now, what patron shall I choose 
 For these gay sallies of my Muse ? 
 
 Cornelius, whom but thee ? 
 
 For though they are but trifles, thou 
 Some value didst to them allow, 
 And that from thee is fame,
 
 CATULLUS AMONG MEN OF LITERATURE. 53 
 
 Who daredst in thy three volumes' space, 
 Alone of all Italians, trace 
 Our history and name. 
 
 Great Jove ! what lore, what labour there ! 
 Then take this little book, whate'er 
 
 Of good or bad it store ; 
 And grant, oh guardian Muse, that it 
 May keep the flavour of its wit 
 
 A century or more ! " 
 
 The reference to the polish of the pumice-stone in 
 the first verse may lie simply metaphorical, and de- 
 signed to express the general neatness of the work as 
 poetry; but this sense must not be pressed too far, 
 when we remember the enhancement of an author's 
 affection for his own productions, which consists in 
 their neat turning out and getting up. The ancient 
 parchments underwent no small amount of pumice- 
 polishing on the inside for the purpose of taking the 
 ink, and on the outside, with the addition of colour, 
 for a finish. Our poet might indulge in a reasonable 
 complacency when he sent a presentation copy to Cor- 
 nelius Nepos, which externally and internally laid 
 equal claim to neatness. It was not so always, as wo 
 find him telling his friend Varus, in reference to the 
 poetaster Suffenus, who had a knack of rattling off 
 any number of verses, and then, without laying them 
 by for correction and revision, launching them upon 
 the public in the smartest and gayest of covers. Of 
 this scribbler's mania he writes 
 
 " Ten thousand lines and more, I wot, 
 He keeps fair-copied scribbled not
 
 54 CATULLUS. 
 
 On palimpsest but ripe for view ; 
 Red strings, spruce covers, paper new 
 And superfine, with parchment lined, 
 And by the pumice-stone refined." 
 
 (C. xxii.) D. 
 
 "Whatever may have been Catullus's weakness, he at 
 least would have turned out verses that did not de- 
 pend for acceptance on their cover. To his intimacy 
 with Marcus Tullius Cicero, despite the hindrances 
 which it might have been supposed to risk on the 
 supposition that Lesbia was Clodia, Catullus has left 
 distinct witness in the brief but pointed epigram : 
 
 " Most eloquent of all the Roman race 
 
 That is, hath been, or shall be afterward, 
 To thee Catullus tenders highest grace, 
 Sorriest of poets in his own regard ; 
 Yea, sorriest of poets, aye, and worst, 
 As Tully is of all our pleaders first." 
 
 <C. xlix.) D. 
 
 But among the intimates of our poet was another 
 pleader, who, if second to Cicero in the forum, was 
 more than his match in the field which Catullus 
 adorned Licinius Calvus Macer. That he held high 
 rank as an orator is beyond a doubt : he has some 
 claims to be the annalist of that name much quoted 
 and referred to by Livy: he has the credit with Ovid 
 and contemporary poets of a neck-and-neck place in 
 poetry with Catullus, though nothing remains to test 
 the soundness of the critical comparison. Both wrote 
 epigrams ; of both Ovid sings in his dirge over Tibul- 
 lus that if there is any after-world, learned Catullus,
 
 CATULLUS AMOSG MEN OF LITERATURE. 55 
 
 with his youthful temples wreathed in ivy, will meet 
 him there, in the company of Calvus. All that we 
 read of the latter is in his favour, with the exception, 
 perhaps, of the scurrilous lampoons on Caesar and his 
 satellites, in which, as elsewhere, he emulated his 
 brother poet. Like him, his career was brief, for he 
 died of over-training and discipline in his thirty-fifth 
 year, his famous speech against Vatinius having been 
 delivered in his twenty-seventh, and having been his 
 first forensic effort. It was apropos of that speech 
 that Catullus made the following jeu d' esprit, with an 
 allusion to his friend's union of vehement action with 
 a person and stature small almost to dwarfishness : 
 
 " When in that wondrous speech of his, 
 
 My Calvus had denounced 
 Vatinius, and his infamies 
 Most mercilessly trounced 
 
 A voice the buzz of plaudits clove 
 
 My sides I nearly split 
 With laughter, as it cried, ' By Jove I 
 
 An eloquent torn-tit ! ' " (C. liii.) 
 
 As is not uncommon with men of like stature, vehe- 
 mence of gesticulation made up for insignificance of 
 height and physique; and that Vatinius had reason to 
 feel this, is gleaned from Seneca's tradition, that when 
 he found how telling was its impression on his tribunal, 
 he exclaimed, "Am I, then, judges, to be condemned 
 simply because yon pleader is eloquent?" We have, 
 however, more concern with him as a poet The first 
 piece of Catullus in which we are introduced to him
 
 56 CATULLUS. 
 
 might meetly be headed " Eetaliation ; " for in it our 
 poet bitterly upbraids Calvus for inflicting upon him 
 a morning's work that, but for their ancient love, 
 might provoke more lasting hatred than his speech 
 drew from Vatinius. He had sent him, it seems, a 
 "horrible and deadly volume" of sorry poetry, a 
 " rascally rabble of malignants " the latest novelty 
 from the school of Sulla the grammarian ; for no other 
 object than to kill him at the convenient season of 
 the Saturnalia with a grim playfulness, which the poet 
 vows shall not go unrequited : 
 
 " Come but to-morrow's dawn, I'll surely hie 
 To stall and book-shop, and the trash I buy, 
 With sums on Caesius and Suffenus spent, 
 Mischievous wag, shall work thy punishment." 
 
 D. 
 
 At other times the intercourse between the friends was 
 not so disappointing. Seemingly at Calvus's house 
 the two friends met one evening to enjoy the feast of 
 reason and the flow of soul, and the effects of such 
 unmixt enjoyment overset the poet's fine-wrought 
 brain-tissues : 
 
 " How pleasantly, Licinius, went 
 The hours which yesterday we spent, 
 Engaged as men like us befits 
 In keen encounter of our wits ! 
 My tablets still the records bear 
 Of all the good things jotted there: 
 The wit, the repartee that flew 
 From you to me, from me to you : 
 The gay bright verse that seemed to shine 
 More sparkling than the sparkling wine."
 
 CATULLUS AMONG MEN Of LITERATURE. 57 
 
 The end of it was, however, that Catullus could not 
 " sleep for thinking on't " Avhen he reached home, and 
 was all agog to be up at dawn, and to challenge a re- 
 newal of the pleasant word-fence ; but misused nature 
 resented the liberties our poet thought to take with it. 
 His limbs were so tired with a sleepless night, that he 
 was fain, at dawn of day, to stick to his couch ; and 
 from thence to fire off a lively poem of remembrance 
 to his comrade of the night before, the burden of 
 which is to warn him against offering any impediment 
 to a speedy and equally pleasant reunion, lest haply 
 Nemesis should exact the like penalties from him who 
 has hitherto come off scot-free. One other notice of 
 Calvus is demanded by a sense of our poet's higher 
 and tenderer vein of poesy. It seems that at the 
 age of twenty-eight Calvus lost his beloved mistress 
 Quinctilia a theme for tearful elegies, of the beauty 
 of which neither Propertius nor Ovid were insensible, 
 whilst it secured a tender echo in Catullus, whoso 
 heart was prepared for reciprocity by a community 
 of suffering: 
 
 " If, Calvus, feeling lingers in the tomb, 
 
 And shades are touched by sense of mortal tears, 
 Mourning in fresh regrets love's vanished bloom, 
 Weeping the dear delights of vanished years 
 
 Then might her early fate witli lighter grief 
 Thy lost Quinctilia's gentle spirit fill, 
 
 To cherish, where she bides, the assured belief 
 That she is nearest, dearest to thee still." 
 
 (C. xcvi.) D.
 
 58 CATULLUS. 
 
 Besides these distinguished names, others almost as 
 well known might he enumerated among the more 
 worthy associates of Catullus ; for instance, Asinius 
 Pollio, the friend of Virgil and Horace, the scholar, 
 poet, and public man, to whose refinement and taste 
 he testifies in Poem xii. (" To Marrucinus Asinius ") ; 
 Varus, whose other name was more probably Quin- 
 tilius than Alphenus, and who will then be the ac- 
 complished scholar and soldier from Catullus's own 
 neighbourhood, Cremona, to whose memory Horace 
 pays such a touching tribute ;* and Helvidius Cinna, 
 the poet who at Csesar's funeral was killed by the 
 rabble in mistake for his namesake Cornelius Cinna, 
 and of whom we get a notice in Shakespeare's 
 " Julius Ciesar," and in Plutarch. His famous 
 work was a probably epic poem named "Smyrna," 
 of which only a couple of verses are extant ; but 
 if we may accept Catullus's friendly judgment, the 
 example of Cinna in taking nine years to elaborate 
 his epic, was one that other poets might with advan- 
 tage follow ; and a favourable tradition of him has 
 clung to the grammarian. He is mentioned above 
 in the poem about a visit to Varus's mistress, apropos 
 of the sedan from Bithynia ; and in- Poem xcv. there 
 is some light afforded to the elaborate character 
 of his great work. It is given in Mr Robinson 
 Ellis's elegiacs, more for their exactness than their 
 elegance : 
 
 * Ode I. xxiv., Ad Virgilium.
 
 CATULLUS AMONG MEN OF LITERATURE. 59 
 
 " Nine times winter had end, nine times flushed summer 
 
 in harvest, 
 
 Ere to the world gave forth Cinna the labour of years 
 ' Smyrna ; ' but in one month Hortensius hundred on 
 
 hundred 
 Verses, an unripe birth feeble, of hurry begot." 
 
 Our poet goes on, in verses somewhat defective and 
 corrupt, to say that Cinna's masterpiece will be 
 studied by ages yet unborn, whereas the annals of 
 Volusius the scribbler of whom the 36th poem 
 written for Lesbia records Catullus's opinion may 
 expect one inevitable destiny to be used as wrappers 
 for mackerel and other cheap fish. It is but fair to 
 add that Virgil passingly alludes to the poetry of 
 Cinna as meritorious.* 
 
 There remain one or two other contemporaries of 
 kindred vein of whom we know only the names, and 
 what Catullus has written on them. Such are Caecilius 
 and Cornificius, to whom are addressed his 35th and 
 38th poems. The former, as is gathered from the 
 first of these, dwelt, or had a villa, near the town and 
 lake of Como 
 
 " Whose fair pellucid waters break 
 In many a dimpling smile * 
 
 and this Catullus exhorted him to quit upon a visit 
 to himself at Verona, not, however, without shrewd 
 misgivings that there was a charming cause for his 
 
 * Virgil, Eel. ix. 85.
 
 60 CATULLUS. 
 
 rustication and retirement. Csecilius is engaged on 
 a poem " To the Mighty Mother, Cybele," and has 
 excited his mistress's curiosity and interest by re- 
 cital of the completed half of it. She will not let 
 him go till she has heard the rest. Catullus's 
 opinion of her good taste is expressed in the conclud- 
 ing stanza : 
 
 " Thy passion I can well excuse, 
 Fair maid, in whom the Sapphic Muse 
 
 Speaks with a richer tongue ; 
 For no unworthy strains are his, 
 And nobly by Csecilius is 
 
 The Mighty Mother sung." 
 
 Of Cornificius as little is known as of Csecilius. He 
 would seem to have been one of the fair-weather 
 friends who hang aloof when sickness and failing 
 health yearn for the kindly attention and affectionate 
 souvenir. The little poem addressed to him bears 
 evidence of the poet's decline. He is succumbing to 
 the loss of his brother supervening on the laceration 
 of his heart by the unfeeling Lesbia, This may well 
 have been the last of his many strains certainly one 
 of the most touching and plaintive ; and of the trans- 
 lations, we know none that does it justice but Theo- 
 dore Martin's : 
 
 ' Ah, Cornificius ! ill at ease 
 
 Is thy Catullus' breast ; 
 Each day, each hour that passes, sees 
 Him more and more depressed.
 
 CATULLUS AMONG MEX OF LITERATURE. 61 
 
 And yet no word of comfort, no 
 
 Kind thought, however slight, 
 Comes from thy hand. Ah ! is it so 
 
 That you my love requite ? 
 
 One little lay to lull my fears, 
 
 To give my spirit ease 
 Ay, though 'twere sadder than the tears 
 
 Of sad Simonides."
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 HYMEN, o HYMEN.EE! 
 
 CATULLUS has been presented up to this point rather 
 as the writer of passionate love-verses to Lesbia, or 
 vers de societe to his friends, literary or light, as the 
 case might be. There are yet two other and distinct 
 aspects of his Muse. That which he borrowed from 
 the Alexandrian school of poetry will demand the 
 full consideration of another chapter; but in the 
 present it will suffice to give some account of his 
 famous epithalamia, the models of like composition 
 for all time, and the loci classici of the ceremonial of 
 Roman marriages, as well as exquisite pictures of the 
 realisation of mutual affection. It has been seen how 
 fully, notwithstanding his own blighted hopes, Catul- 
 lus was able to conceive the life-bond between his 
 friend Calvus and his helpmeet Quinctilia. A longer 
 and more lively picture presents the ecstasy of Acme 
 and Septimius in lines and words that seem to burn. 
 The two doting lovers plight vows, and compare 
 omens, and interchange embraces and kisses that in- 
 spire with passion the poet's hendecasyllables. The 
 conclusion of the piece is all we can quote, and is
 
 HYMEN, RYMENJEEI . 63 
 
 given from a translation by the author of 'Lorna 
 Doone,' but it may serve to show that Catullus was 
 capable of picturing and conceiving the amount of 
 devotion which his nuptial songs connect with happy 
 and like-minded unions : 
 
 Starting from such omen's cheer, 
 Hand in hand on love's career, 
 Heart to heart is true and dear. 
 Dotingly Septimius fond 
 Prizes Acme far beyond 
 
 All the realms of east and west 
 Acme to Septimius true, 
 Keeps for him his only due, 
 
 Pet delights and loving jest. 
 Who hath known a happier pair, 
 Or a honeymoon so fair ? " 
 
 One image from the rest of the poem cannot pass un- 
 noticed that of Acme bending back her head in 
 Septimius's embrace, to kiss with rosy mouth what 
 Mr lilackmore translates "eyes with passion's wine 
 opprest ; " but the whole piece deserves to the full 
 the unstinted praise it has met with from critics and 
 copyists. 
 
 The Epithalamium of Julia and Manlius, however, 
 is a poem of more considerable proportions ; and at 
 the same time that it teems with poetic beauties, 
 handles its subject with such skill and ritual know- 
 ledge as to supply a correct programme of the marriage 
 ceremonial among the Romans. Strictly speaking, it 
 is not so much a nuptial ode or hymn in the sense 
 in which the playmates of Helen serenade her in
 
 64 CATULLUS. 
 
 Theocritus, as a series of pictures of the bridal pro- 
 cession and rites, from end to end. The subjects of 
 this poem were a scion of the ancient patrician house 
 of the Torquati, Lucius Manlius Torquatus, a great 
 friend and patron of our poet, and Yinia, or Julia 
 Aurunculeia, one of whose two names seems to have 
 been adoptive, and as to whom the poet's silence seems 
 to imply that her bridegroom's rank was enough to 
 dignify both. It was not so long afterwards that 
 Manlius sought our poet's assistance or solace in the 
 shape of an elegy (see Poem Ixviii.) on her untimely 
 death; but in the present instance his services are taxed 
 to do honour to her wedding : and it may be interesting 
 to accompany him through the dioramic description 
 which his stanzas illustrate. The poem opens with an 
 invocation to Hymen, child of Urania, dwelling in his 
 mother's Helicon, bidding him wreathe his brows with 
 sweet marjoram or amaracus, fling round him a flame- 
 coloured scarf, and bind saffron sandals to his feet, in 
 token of going forth upon his proper function and 
 errand. Other accompaniments of his progress are 
 to be song, and dance, and pine-torch, each of them 
 appropriate in the evening fetching-home of the bride 
 from her father's house ; and his interest is bespoken 
 in one who is fair, favoured, and fascinating as Ida's 
 queen, when she condescended to the judgment of 
 Paris : 
 
 " As the fragrant myrtle, found 
 Flourishing on Asian ground, 
 Thick with blossoms overspread, 
 By the Hamadryads fed,
 
 HYMEN, HYMEX^EEI 65 
 
 For their sport, with honey-dew 
 All so sweet is she to view." 
 
 It is this paragon, proceeds the ode, for whose sweet 
 sake the god is besought to leave awhile his native 
 grottos and pools, and lend his aid in binding soul 
 to soul to her husband yea, closer than clasping ivy 
 twines meshy tendrils round its naked elm. To wel- 
 come her too, as well as to invite Hymenseus to his 
 wonted office with the readier alacrity, are bidden the 
 blameless maidens of the bride's train, with a series of 
 inducements adapted to bespeak their sympathy his 
 interest in happy nuptials, his blessing so essential to 
 the transfer of the maiden from one home and name 
 to another, his influence on the prospects of an 
 honoured progeny ; and strong language is used, in vv. 
 71-75, of such nations as ignore the rites and ordinances 
 of marriage. 
 
 And now the bride is bidden to come forth. The 
 day is waning ; the torch-flakes flicker bright in the 
 gloaming; there is no time for tears of maidenly 
 reluctance j the hour is at hand : 
 
 " Dry up thy tears ! For well I trow, 
 No woman lovelier than thou, 
 Aurunculeia, shall behold 
 The day all panoplied in gold, 
 And rosy light uplift his head 
 Above the shimmering ocean's bed I 
 
 As in some rich man's garden-plot, 
 With flowers of every hue inwrought, 
 Stands peerless forth, with drooping brow, 
 The hyacinth, so standest thou ! 
 A.C.S.S., vol. iii. K
 
 66 CATULLUS. 
 
 Come, bride, come forth ! No more delay ! 
 The day is hurrying fast away ! " 
 
 Then follow encouragements to the bride to taice 
 the decisive step over the threshold, in the shape 
 of substantial guarantees of her bridegroom's loyalty; 
 and of course the elm and the ivy are pressed, for 
 not the first time, into such service. More novel, 
 save that the text of Catullus is here so corrupt 
 that commentators have been left to patch it as they 
 best may for coherence, is the stanza to the bridal 
 couch. All that Catullus has been allowed by the 
 manuscripts to tell us is that its feet were of ivory, 
 ' Avhich is very appropriate ; but if the reader's mind 
 is enlisted in the question of upholstery, it may be 
 interested to know that collateral information enables 
 one critic to surmise that the hangings were of sil- 
 ver-purple, and the timbers of the bedstead from 
 Indian forests. But anon come the boys with the 
 torches. Here is the veil or scarf of flame-colour, 
 or deop brilliant yellow, capacious enough, as we 
 learn, to shroud the bride from head to foot, worn 
 over the head during the ceremony, and retained so 
 till she was unveiled by her husband. Coincidently 
 the link-bearers are chanting the hymenaeal song, and 
 at intervals, especially near the bridegroom's door, the 
 rude Fescennine banter is repeated ; whilst the bride- 
 groom, according to custom, flings nuts to the lads in 
 attendance, much as at a Greek marriage it was custo- 
 mary to fling showers of sweetmeats. The so-called 
 Fescennine jests were doubtless as broad as the occa- 
 sion would suggest to a lively and joke-loving nation - }
 
 HYMEN, HYMEN^EE! 67 
 
 and another part of the ceremonial at this point, as it 
 would seem from Catullus, though some have argued 
 that it belonged rather to the marriage-feast, was the 
 popular song " Talassius " or " Talassio," said to have 
 had its origin in an incident of the " Rape of the 
 Sahine Women." Catullus represents the choruses at 
 this point as instilling into the bride by the way all 
 manner of good advice as to wifely duty and obedience, 
 and auguring for her, if she takes their advice, a sure 
 rile in the home which she goes to share. If she has 
 t ict, it will own her sway 
 
 u Till hoary age shall steal on thee, 
 With loitering step and trembling knee, 
 And palsied head, that, ever bent, 
 To all, in all things, nods assent." 
 
 In other words, a hint is given her that, though the 
 bridegroom be the head of the house, she will be her- 
 self to blame if she be not the neck. 
 
 As the poem proceeds, another interesting cere- 
 monial, which is attested by collateral information, is 
 set graphically before the reader. Traditionally con- 
 nected with the same legend of the carrying off of 
 the Sabine women, but most probably arising out of 
 a cautious avoidance of evil omens through a chance 
 stumble on the threshold, was a custom that on reach- 
 ing the bridegroom's door, the posts of which were 
 wreathed in flowers and anointed with oil for her 
 reception, the bride should be carried over the step by 
 the pronubi attendants or friends of the groom, who 
 must be " husbands of one wife." This is expressed as
 
 68 CATULLUS. 
 
 follows in Theodore Martin's happy transcript of the 
 passage of Catullus: 
 
 " Thy golden-sandalled feet do thou 
 Lift lightly o'er the threshold now ! 
 Fair omen this ! And pass between 
 The lintel-post of polished sheen ! 
 Hail, Hymen ! Hymenseus, hail ! 
 Hail, Hymen, Hymenseus ! 
 
 See where, within, thy lord is set 
 On Tyrian-tinctured coverlet 
 His eyes upon the threshold bent, 
 And all his soul on thee intent ! 
 Hail, Hymen ! Hymenaeus, hail ! 
 Hail, Hymen, Hymenseus ! " 
 
 By-and-by, one of the three prsetexta-clad boys, 
 who had escorted the bride from her father's home to 
 her husband's, is bidden to let go the round arm he 
 has been supporting ; the blameless matrons (pro- 
 nubce), of like qualification as their male counterparts, 
 conduct the bride to the nuptial-couch in the atrium, 
 and now there is no let or hindrance to the bride- 
 groom's coming. Catullus has so wrought his bridal 
 ode, that it culminates in stanzas of singular beauty 
 and spirit. The bride, in her nuptial-chamber, is re- 
 presented, with a countenance like white parthenice 
 (which one critic * suggests may be the camomile 
 blossom) or yellow poppy for beauty. And the bride- 
 groom, of course, is worthy of her ; and both worthy 
 
 * It may interest some to know that this was an MS. sug- 
 gestion of poor Mortimer Collins, a dear lover of Catullus.
 
 HYMEN, HYMENJBE! 69 
 
 of his noble race, as well as meet to hand it on. The 
 natural wishes follow : 
 
 " "Tis not meet so old a stem 
 Should be left ungraced by them, 
 To transmit its fame unshorn 
 Down through ages yet unborn."" 
 
 The next lines of the original are so prettily turned 
 by Mr Cranstoun, that we forbear for the nonce to tax 
 the charming version of Martin : 
 
 u May a young Torquatus soon 
 
 From his mother's bosom slip 
 Forth his tender hands, and smile 
 Sweetly on his sire the while 
 
 With tiny half-oped lip. 
 
 May each one a Manlius 
 
 In his infant features see, 
 And may every stranger trace, 
 Clearly graven on his face, 
 
 His mother's chastity." 
 
 Of parallels and imitations of this happy thought 
 and aspiration, there is abundant choice. Theodore 
 Martin's taste selects a graceful and expanded fancy of 
 Herrick from his " Hesperides j" while Dunlop, in his 
 ' History of Koman Literature,' quotes the following 
 almost literal reproduction out of an epithalamium on 
 the marriage of Lord Spencer by Sir William Jones, 
 who pronounced Catullus's picture worthy the pencil 
 of Domenichino : 
 
 " And soon to be completely blest, 
 Soon may a young Torquatus rise,
 
 70 CATULLUS. 
 
 Who, hanging on his mother's breast, 
 To his known sire shall turn his eyes, 
 
 Outstretch his infant arms awhile, 
 Half-ope his little lips and smile." * 
 
 The poem concludes with a prayer that mother and 
 child may realise the fame and virtues of Penelope 
 and Telemachus, and well deserves the credit it has 
 ever enjoyed as a model in its kind. 
 
 Of the second of Catullus's Nuptial Songs an 
 hexameter poem in amoabsean or responsive strophes 
 and antistrophes, supposed to be sung by the choirs 
 of youths and maidens who attended the nuptials, 
 and whom, in the former hymn, the poet had been ex- 
 horting to their duties, whereas here they come in turn 
 to their proper function no really trustworthy his- 
 tory is to be given, though one or two commentators 
 propound that it was a sort of brief for the choruses, 
 written to order on the same occasion for which the 
 poet had written, on his own account, the former nup- 
 tial hymn. But the totally different style and struc- 
 ture forbid the probability of this, although both are 
 remarkable poems of their kind. This one, certainly, 
 has a ringing freshness about it, and seems to cleave 
 the shades of nightfall with a reveille singularly re- 
 memberable. The youths of the bridegroom's company 
 have left him at the rise of the evening star, and gone 
 forth for the hymenaeal chant from the tables at 
 which they have been feasting. They recognise the 
 bride's approach as a signal to strike up the hymen- 
 seal. Hereupon the maidens who have accompanied 
 
 * Dimlop's Roman Literature, i. 497.
 
 HYMEN, HYMEN ME I 71 
 
 the bride, espying the male chorus, enter on a rivalry 
 in argument and song as to the merits of Hesperus, 
 whom they note as he shows his evening fires over 
 (Eta a sight which seems to have a connection with 
 some myth as to the love of Hesper for a youth 
 named Hymenseus localised at (Eta, as the story of 
 Diana and Endymion was at Latmos, to which Virgil 
 alludes in his eighth eclogue. Both bevies gird them- 
 selves for a lively encounter of words, from their 
 diverse points of view. First sing the virgins : 
 
 " Hesper, hath heaven more ruthless star than thine, 
 That canst from mother's arms her child untwine ? 
 From mother's arms a clinging daughter part, 
 To dower a headstrong bridegroom's eager heart ? 
 Wrong like to this do captured cities know ? 
 Ho ! Hymen, Hymen ! Hymenaeus, ho ! " D. 
 
 The band of youths reply in an antistrophe which 
 negatives the averment of the maidens : 
 
 " Hesper, hath heaven more jocund star than thee, 
 Whose flame still crowns true lovers' unity ; 
 The troth that parents first, then lovers plight, 
 Nor deem complete till thou illum'st the night ? 
 What hour more blissful do the gods bestow ? 
 Hail ! Hymen, Hymen ! Hymenoeus, ho ! " D. 
 
 To judge of the next plea of the chorus of maidens by 
 the fragmentary lines which remain of the original, it 
 took the grave form of a charge of abduction against 
 the incriminated evening star. If he were not a prin- 
 cipal in the felonious act, at least he winked at it, 
 when it was the express vocation of his rising to pre-
 
 72 CATULLUS. 
 
 vent, by publicity, all such irregular proceedings. 
 But now the youths wax bold in their retort, and 
 wickedly insinuate that the fair combatants are not 
 really so very wroth with Hesper for his slackness. 
 After a couplet which seems to imply, though its 
 sense is obscure and ambiguous, that the sort of 
 thieves whom these maidens revile, and whose ill 
 name is not confined to Roman literature (for in the 
 Eussian songs, as we learn from Mr Ealston's enter- 
 taining volumes, the bridegroom is familiarly regarded 
 as the "enemy," "that evil-thief," and "the Tartar"), 
 speedily find their offences condoned, and are received 
 into favour, they add a pretty plain charge against 
 the complainants that 
 
 " Chide as they list in song's pretended ire, 
 Yet what they chide they in their souls desire." 
 
 This is such a home-thrust _that the virgins change 
 their tactics, and adduce an argument ad miseri- 
 cordiam, which is one of the most admired passages 
 of Catullus, on the score of a simile often imitated 
 from it. The following version will be found tolei 
 ably literal : 
 
 " As grows hid floweret in some garden closed, 
 Crushed by no ploughshare, to no beast exposed, 
 By zephyrs fondled, nursed up by the rain, 
 With kindly sun to strengthen and sustain : 
 To win its sweetness lads and lasses vie : 
 But let that floweret wither by-and-by, 
 Nipped by too light a hand, it dies alone 
 Its lover lads and lasses all are flown !
 
 BYJUEH, HYMENS El 73 
 
 E'en as that flower is lovely maiden's pride, 
 In her pure virgin home content to bide ; 
 A husband wins her, and her bloom is sere, 
 No more to lads a charm, or lasses dear ! " D. 
 
 The last line is undoubtedly borrowed from a frag- 
 ment of the Greek erotic poet, Mimmermus ; and the 
 whole passage, as Theodore Martin shows, has had its 
 influence upon an admired canto of Spenser's ' Faery 
 Queen' (B. ii. c. xii.) 
 
 Will the boys melt and give in, or will they show 
 cause why they should not accept this sad showing of 
 the mischief, for which Hymen and Hcsper have the 
 credit f Let us hear their antistrophe : 
 
 " As a lone vine on barren, naked field 
 "Lifts ne'er a shoot, nor mellow grape can yield, 
 But bends top-heavy with its slender frame, ' 
 Till root and branch in level are the same : 
 Such vine, such field, in their forlorn estate 
 No peasants till, nor oxen cultivate. 
 Yet if the same vine with tall elm-tree wed, 
 Peasants will tend, and oxen till its bed. 
 So with the maid no lovers' arts engage, 
 She sinks unprized, unnoticed, into age ; 
 But once let hour and man be duly found, 
 Her father's pride, her husband's love redound." * 
 D. 
 
 * Compare tho sentiment of Waller's "Go, Lovely Row," 
 particularly in the third stanza : 
 
 " Small is the worth 
 Of beauty from the light retired ; 
 Bid her come forth, 
 Suffer herself to be desired, 
 Aud not blush so to be admired."
 
 74 CATULLUS. 
 
 The epithalamium ends with an arithmetical calcula- 
 tion of the same special pleaders, which the maidens 
 apparently find unanswerable, and whith is of this 
 nature namely, that they are not their own property, 
 except as regards a third share. As the other two shares 
 belong to their parents respectively, and these have 
 coalesced in transferring their votes to a son-in-law, it 
 is obviously as futile as it is unmannerly to demur to 
 the nuptial rites. And so the poem ends with the 
 refrain of " Hymen, Hymenaee ! " It has with 
 much plausibility been conjectured by Professor Sellar 
 to be an adaptation of Sappho or some other Greek 
 poet to an occasion within Catullus's own experience. 
 Certainly it does not exhibit like originality with the 
 poem preceding it. It might be satisfactory, were it 
 possible, to give, by way of sequel to the epithalamium 
 of Julia and Manlius, trustwoithy data of the young 
 wife's speedy removal ; but this is based upon sheer 
 conjecture, and so much as we know has been already 
 stated. If we might transfer to the elegiacs addressed 
 to Manlius before noticed a portion of the story of 
 Laodamia, which has sometimes been printed with 
 them, but is now arranged with the verses to Manius 
 Acilius Glabrio, we should be glad to conceive of 
 Julia's wedded life as matching that of Laodamia, and 
 offering a model for its portrayal. 
 
 " Nor e'er was dove more loyal to her mate 
 
 That bird which, more than all, with clinging beak, 
 Kiss after kiss will pluck insatiate 
 Though prone thy sex its joys in change to seek,
 
 HYMEN, HYMEN ME I 75 
 
 Than thou, Laodamia ! Tame and cold 
 Was all their passion, all their love to thine : 
 
 When thou to thy enamoured breast didst fold 
 Thy blooming lord in ecstasy divine. 
 
 As fond, as fair, as thou, so came the maid, 
 Who is my life, and to my bosom clung ; 
 
 While Cupid ivmndher fluttering, arrayed 
 In saffron vest, a radiance o'er her flung." 
 
 (C. Ixviii.) M.
 
 CHAPTER VL 
 
 THE ROMAN-ALEXANDRINE AND LONGER POEMS 
 OF CATULLUS. 
 
 THAT portion of the poetry of Catullus which has been 
 considered hitherto is doubtless the most genuine and 
 original ; but, with the exception of the two epitba- 
 lamia, the poems now to be examined, as moulded on 
 the Alexandrine form and subjects, are perhaps the 
 more curious in a literary point of view. Contrasting 
 with the rest of his poetry in their lack of " naturalism 
 essentially Eoman and republican," they savour undis- 
 guisedly of that Roman - Alexandrinism in poetry 
 which first sprang up in earnest among the contem- 
 poraries of Cicero and Caesar, and grew with all the 
 more rapidity owing to the frequent visits of the 
 Romans to the Greek provinces, and the increasing 
 influx of the Greek literati into Rome. Of the Alex- 
 andrine literature at its fountain-head it must be remem- 
 bered that it was the substitute and successor on the 
 ruin of the Hellenic nation, and the decline of its 
 nationality, language, literature, and art of the for- 
 mer national and popular literature of Greece. But it 
 was confined to a limited range. " It was," says Pro-
 
 TUB LONGER POEMS. 77 
 
 fessor Mommsen, "only in a comparatively narrow 
 circle, not of men of culture for such, strictly speak- 
 ing, did not exist but of men of erudition, that the 
 Greek literature was cherished even when dead ; that 
 the rich inheritance which it had left was inventoried 
 with melancholy pleasure or arid refinement of re- 
 search ; and that the living sense of sympathy or the 
 dead erudition was elevated into a semblance of pro- 
 ductiveness. This posthumous productiveness consti- 
 tutes the so-called Alexandrinism." Originality found 
 a substitute in learned research. Multifarious learning, 
 the result of deep draughts at the wells of criticism, 
 grammar, mythology, and antiquit : es, gave an often 
 cumbrous and pedantic character to laboured and vol- 
 uminous epics, elegies, and hymnology (a point and 
 smartness in epigram being the one exception in favour 
 of this school), whilst the full genial spirit of Greek 
 thought, coeval with Greek freedom, was exchanged for 
 courtly compliment, more consistent with elaboration 
 than freshness. Among the best of the Alexandrian 
 poets proper indeed, the best of all, if we except the 
 original and genial Idyllist, Theocritus was the learned 
 Callimachus; and it is upon Callimachus especially 
 that Catullus has drawn for his Roman-Alexanfirine 
 poems, one of them being in fact a translation of that 
 poet's elegy " On the Hair of Queen Berenice;" whilst 
 another, his " Nuptials of Peleus and Thetis," has been 
 supposed by more than one critic to be a translation 
 of Callimachus also. This is, indeed, problematical ; 
 but there is no doubt that for his mythologic details, 
 scholarship, and other features savouring of ultra erudi-
 
 78 CATULLUS. 
 
 tion, he owes to Callimachus characteristics which his 
 intrinsic poetic gifts enabled him to dress out accept- 
 ably for the critics of his day. The singular and 
 powerful poem of " Atys " belongs to the same class, 
 by reason of its mythological subject. A recent 
 .French critic of Catullus, in a learned chapter on 
 Alexandrinism, defines it as the absence of sincerity 
 in poetry, and the exclusive preoccupation of form. 
 " He," writes M. Couat, " who, instead of looking 
 around him, or, better, within himself, parades over 
 all countries and languages his adventurous curiosity, 
 and prefers I'esprit to Tame the new, the pretty, the 
 fine, to the natural and simple such an one, to 
 whatever literature he belongs, is an Alexandrinist 
 Alexandrinism in excess is what in this writer's view 
 is objectionable ; and whilst we are disposed to think 
 that few will demur to this moderate dogma, it is 
 equally certain that none of the Eoman cultivators of 
 the Alexandrine school have handled it with more 
 taste and less detriment to their natural gifts than 
 Catullus. "With him the elaborateness which, in 
 its home, Alexandrinism exhibits as to metre and 
 prosody, is exchanged for a natural and unforced 
 power, quite consistent with simplicity. As is 
 well observed by Professor Sellar, "His adaptation 
 of the music of language to embody the feeling or 
 passion by which he is possessed, is most vividly felt in 
 the skylark ring of his great nuptial ode, in the wild 
 hurrying agitation of the Atys, in the stately calm of 
 the Epithalamium of Peleus and Thetis." Herein, as 
 indeed in the tact and art evinced generally in these
 
 THE LONGER POEMS. 79 
 
 larger poems, we seem to find ground for dissent from 
 the opinion of several otherwise weighty critics of 
 Catullus, that they were the earlier exercises of his 
 poetic career a subject upon which, as there is the 
 scantiest inkling in either direction, it is admissible to 
 take the negative view. As a work of art, no doubt 
 the " Nuptials of Peleus and Thetis " are damaged by 
 the introduction of the episode of Ariadne's desertion 
 within the main poem an offence obviously against 
 strict epic unity. But it is not by any means sure 
 that this is so much a sign of youthful work as of an 
 independence consistent with poetic fancy, and cer- 
 tainly not amenable to the stigma of Alexandrinism, 
 which must be en regie, if anything. It is with this 
 largest, and in many respects finest, sample of Catullus's 
 epic capacity, that we propose to deal at greatest length, 
 reserving space for a glance or two at the " Atys " and 
 the " Hair of Berenice." " The whole poem " (Peleus 
 anil Thetis), to quote Mr Sellar once more, " is per- 
 vaded with that calm light of strange loveliness which 
 spreads over the unawakened world in the early sunrise 
 of a summer day." If here and there a suspicion of 
 over -wrought imagery and description carries back 
 the mind to a remembrance of the poet's model, it 
 must be allowed that, for the most part, this poem 
 excels in variety, in pictorial effects, in force of fancy, 
 and clever sustentation of the interest. It begins 
 with the day on which, in the hoar distance of mythic 
 ages, the Pelion-born Argo was first launched and 
 manned, and the first sailor of all ever burst on the 
 realm of Amphitritc a statement which we must not
 
 80 CATULLUS. 
 
 criticise too closely, as the poet elsewhere in the poem 
 tells of a fleet of Theseus prior to the Argonautic 
 expedition : 
 
 " Soon as its prow the wind-vexed surface clave, ^ 
 Soon as to oarsmen's harrow frothed the wave, 
 Forth from the eddying whiteness Nereids shone, 
 With faces set strange sight to look upon. 
 Then, only then, might mortal vision rest 
 On naked sea-nymph, lifting rosy hreast 
 High o'er the billows' foam. 'Twas then the flame 
 Of love for Thetis Peleus first o'ercame : 
 Then Thetis deigned a mortal spouse to wed ! 
 Then Jove approved, and their high union sped." 
 
 D. 
 
 The poet having thus introduced the betrothal, aa 
 it were, of the goddess and the hero, pauses, ere he 
 plunges into his subject, to apostrophise heroes and 
 heroines in general, and more especially the twain 
 immediately concerned : Peleus, for whom the very 
 susceptible father of the gods had waived his own 
 penchant for Thetis ; Peleus, the stay and champion 
 of Thessaly ; and Thetis, most beautiful of ocean's 
 daughters, and grandchild of earth-girding Tethys and 
 her lord Oceanus a fitting proem to the action of 
 the poem, which commences with no further delay. 
 "VVe see all Thessaly come forth to do honour and 
 guest-service to the nuptials, gifts in their hands, and 
 joy and gladness in their countenances. Scyros and 
 Phthia's Tempe, Cranon, and Larissa's towers are all 
 deserted on that day, for the Pharsalian home where 
 high festival and a goodly solemnity is kept. A lively
 
 TIIE LONGER POEMS. 81 
 
 description follows of the country and its occupations 
 given over to complete rest and keeping holiday ; and 
 this is seemingly introduced by way of contrast to the 
 stir and splendour and gorgeous preparations within 
 the halls of Peleus. But the poet without delay 
 presses on to one of his grand effects of description 
 the rich bridal couch, with frame of ivory and cover- 
 let of sea- purples, on which was wrought the tale of 
 Ariadne's desertion by Theseus. She has just awak- 
 ened to her loss, and the picture is one of passionate 
 fancy and force. To give a transcript of this is 
 impossible ; and though Mr Martin's handling of the 
 whole passage is admirably finished, yet where the 
 best comes far short of the original, it seems justifi- 
 able to introduce a distillation of its spirit, without 
 attempting metrical likeness. The following version 
 is by the Rev. A. C. Auchmuty* (see Catull. Ixiv. 
 w. 52-75) : 
 
 " There, upon Dia's ever-echoing shore, 
 
 Sweet Ariadne stood, in fond dismay, 
 With wild eyes watching the swift fleet, that bore 
 
 Her loved one far away. 
 And still she gazed incredulous ; and still, 
 Like one awaking from beguiling sleep, 
 Found herself standing on the bea'chy hill, 
 
 Left there alone to weep. 
 But the quick oars upon the waters flashed, 
 And Theseus fled, and not a thought behind 
 
 * Verses, Original and Translated, by A. C. Auchmuty. 
 Exeter, 1869. 
 
 A.C.8.8., vol. iiL *
 
 82 CATULLUS. 
 
 He left ; but all his promises were dashed 
 
 Into the wandering wind. 
 Far off she strains her melancholy eyes ; 
 
 And like a Mwnad sculptured there in stone 
 Stands as in act to shout, for she espies 
 
 Him she once called her ow 
 Dark waves of care swayed o'er her tender soul ; 
 
 The fine-wove turban from her golden hair 
 Had fallen ; the light robe no longer stole 
 
 Over her bosom bare. 
 Loose dropped the well-wrought girdle from her breast, 
 
 That wildly struggled to be free : they lay 
 About her feet, and many a briny crest 
 
 Kissed them in careless play. 
 But nought she recked of turban then, and nought 
 
 Of silken garments flowing gracefully. 
 O Theseus ! far away in heart and thought 
 
 And soul, she hung on thee ! 
 Ay me ! that hour did cruel love prepare 
 
 A never-ending thread of wildering woe ; 
 And twining round that heart rude briars of care, 
 
 Bade them take root and grow ; 
 What time, from old Piraeus' curved strand 
 
 A ship put forth towards the south, to bring 
 Chivalrous-hearted Theseus to the land 
 Of the unrighteous king." 
 
 A comparison of the above with the Latin text will 
 show that, as in the italicised passages, the translator 
 has been careful to preserve, as much as might be, the 
 expressions, metaphors, and similes of the author. 
 That author proceeds from this point to explain the 
 causes of Theseus's visit to the home of Minos, and to 
 unfold the legend of the monster, the labyrinth, the 
 clue to it supplied by Ariadne, and the treachery of
 
 THE LONGER POEMS. 83 
 
 Theseus, who, when he had vanquished the monster, 
 and led the princess to give up all for him, forsook 
 her as she lay asleep in Dia's sea-girt isle. The lament 
 of Ariadne on discovering her desolation is a triumph 
 of true poetic art in its accommodation of the measure 
 to the matter in hand ; the change from calm descrip- 
 tion to rapid movement and utterance, as, climbing 
 mountain-top, or rushing forth to face the surges up- 
 plashing over the beach to meet her, she utters out- 
 bursts of agony and passion intended to form a con- 
 summate contrast to the ideal happiness of them on 
 whose coverlet this pathetic story was broidered. Two 
 stanzas from Martin's beautiful and ballad-like version 
 must represent the touching character of this lament, 
 in which, by the way, are several turns of thought 
 and expression which Virgil seems to have had in 
 mind for the 4th Book of the ' ./Eneis : ' 
 
 "Lost, lost ! where shall I turn me ? Oh, ye pleasant hills 
 
 of home, 
 
 How shall I fly to thee across this gulf of angry foam ? 
 How meet my father's gaze, a thing so doubly steeped in 
 
 guilt, 
 The leman of a lover, who a brother's blood had spilt ? 
 
 A lover ! gods ! a lover ! And alone lie cleaves the deep, 
 
 And leaves me here to perish on this savage ocean steep. 
 
 No hope, no succour, no escape ! None, none to hear my 
 prayer ! 
 
 All dark, and drear, and desolate ; and death, death every- 
 where !" <C. Ixiv. vv. 177-187.) 
 
 The lines in which she declares that, had ^Egrua ob- 
 jected to her for a daughter-in-law, she would havo
 
 84 CATULLUS. 
 
 been his handmaid, to spread his couch and lave his 
 feet, have more than one echo in English poetry ; and 
 the climax of the lament, in a deep and sweeping 
 curse on her betrayer, is a passage of terribly realistic 
 earnestness : 
 
 "Yet ere these sad and streaming eyes on earth have 
 
 looked their last, 
 
 Or ere this heart has ceased to beat, I to the gods will cast 
 One burning prayer for vengeance on the man who foully 
 
 broke 
 The vows which, pledged in their dread names, in my fond 
 
 ear he spoke. 
 
 Come, ye that wreak on man his guilt with retribution dire, 
 Ye maids,* whose snake - wreathed brows bespeak your 
 
 bosom's vengeful ire ! 
 
 Come ye, and hearken to the curse which I, of sense forlorn, 
 Hurl from the ruins of a heart with mighty anguish torn ! 
 
 Though there be fury in my words, and madness in my 
 brain, 
 
 Let not my cry of woe and wrong assail your ears in vain ! 
 
 Urge the false heart that left me here still on with head- 
 long chase, 
 
 From ill to worse, till Theseus curse himself and all his 
 race ! " M. 
 
 It is not to be denied that it would have been 
 more artistic had the poet here dismissed the legend 
 of Theseus and his misdemeanours, or, if not this, 
 had he at least omitted the lesson of divine retribution 
 conveyed in his sire's death as he crossed tbe home- 
 threshold, and contented himself with the spirited pre- 
 sentment of Bacchus and his attendant Satyrs and
 
 THE LONGER POEMS. 85 
 
 Sileni in quest of Ariadne, on another compartment 
 of the coverlet. So far, the reader of the poem has 
 represented one of the crowd gazing at the triumphs 
 of needlework and tapestry in the bridal chambers. 
 Now, place must be made for the divine and heroic 
 guests, and their wedding-presents : Chiron, with the 
 choicest meadow, alpine, and aquatic flowers of his land 
 of meadows, rocks, and rivers ; Peneius, with beech, 
 bay, plane, and cypress to plant for shade and verdure 
 in front of the palace ; Prometheus, still scarred with 
 the jutting crags of his rocky prison; and all the gods 
 and goddesses, save only Phoebus and his twin-sister, 
 absent from some cause of grudge which we know not, 
 but which the researches of Alexandrine mythologists 
 no doubt supplied to the poet. Anon, when the 
 divine guests are seated at the groaning tables, the 
 weird and age-withered Parcse, as they spin the threads 
 of destiny, in shrill strong voices pour forth an alter- 
 nating song with apt and mystic refrain, prophetic of 
 the bliss that shall follow this union, and the glory 
 to be achieved in its offspring. Here are two quatrains 
 for a sample, relating to Achilles the offspring of the 
 union : 
 
 u His peerless valour and his glorious deeds 
 
 Shall mothers o'er their stricken sons confess, 
 As smit with feeble hand each bosom Meeds, 
 And dust distains each grey dishevelled tress. 
 
 Run, spindles, run, and trail the fateful threads. 
 
 For as the reaper mows the thickset ears, 
 In golden corn-lands 'neath a burning sun,
 
 86 CATULLUS. 
 
 E'en so, behold, Pelides' falchion shears 
 The life of Troy, and swift its course is run. 
 
 Kun, spindles, run, and trail the fateful threads." 
 
 D. 
 
 At the close of this chant of the fatal sisters, Catullus 
 draws a happy picture, such as Hesiod had drawn 
 before him, of the blissful and innocent age when the 
 gods walked on earth, and mixed with men as friend 
 with friend, before the advent of the iron age, when 
 sin and death broke up family ties, and so disgusted 
 the minds of the just Immortals that thenceforth there 
 was no longer any " open vision " 
 
 " Hence from earth's daylight gods their forms refrain, 
 Nor longer men's abodes to visit deign." 
 
 It is by no means so easy to give any adequate idea of 
 the " Atys," which is incomparably the most remark- 
 able poem of Catullus in point of metrical effects, of 
 flow and ebb of passion, and of intensely real and 
 heart-studied pathos. The subject, however, is one 
 which, despite the praises Gibbon and others have 
 bestowed on Catullus's handling of it, is unmeet for 
 presentment in extenso before English readers. The 
 sensible and correctly -judging Dunlop did not err in 
 his remark that a fable, unexampled except in the 
 various poems on the fate of Abelard, was somewhat 
 unpromising and peculiar as a subject for poetry. In 
 a metre named, from the priests of Cybele, Galliam- 
 bic, Catullus represents it may be from his experi- 
 ence and research in Asia Minor the contrasts of 
 enthusiasm and repentant dejection of one who, for
 
 THE LONGER POEMS. 87 
 
 the great goddess's sake, has become a victim of his 
 own frenzy. A Greek youth, leaving home and 
 parents for Phrygia, vows himself to the service and 
 grove of Cybele, and, after terrible initiation, snatches 
 up the musical instruments of the guild, and incites 
 his fellow-votaries to the fanatical orgies. Wildly 
 traversing woodlands and mountains, he falls asleep 
 with exhaustion at the temple of his mistress, and 
 awakes, after a night's repose, to a sense of his rash 
 deed and marred life. The complaint which ensues 
 is unique in originality and pathos. "No other 
 writer" thus remarks Professor Sellar "has pre- 
 sented so real an image of the frantic exultation and 
 fierce self-sacrificing spirit of an inhuman fanaticism ; 
 and again, of the horror and sense of desolation which 
 a natural man, and more especially a Greek or Roman, 
 would feel in the midst of the wild and strange scenes 
 described in the poem, and when restored to the con- 
 sciousness of his .voluntary bondage, and of the for- 
 feiture of his country and parents and the free social 
 life of former days." The same writer acutely notes 
 the contrast betwixt " the false excitement and noisy 
 tumult of the evening and the terrible reality and 
 blank despair of the morning," which, with " the pic- 
 torial environments," are the characteristic effects of 
 this poem. In the original, no doubt these effects are 
 enhanced by the singular impetuosity of the metre, 
 which, it is well known, Mr Tennyson, amongst others, 
 has attempted to reproduce in his experiments upon 
 classical metres. Such attempts can achieve only a 
 fitful and limited success. English Galliambics can
 
 88 CATULLUS. 
 
 never, in the nature of things or measures, be popular. 
 And even supposing the metre were more promising, 
 it is undeniably against the dictates of good taste to 
 make the revolting legend of Atys a familiar story to 
 English readers of the ancient classics. 
 
 Curiosity, however, would dictate more acquaint- 
 ance with " Berenice's Lock of Hair," a poem sent, as 
 has been already stated, by Catullus to Hortalus, and 
 purporting to be the poet's translation of a court poem 
 of his favourite model, the Alexandrian poet Calli- 
 machus. The metre of both is elegiac; but of the 
 original only two brief fragments remain so brief, 
 indeed, that they fail to test the faithfulness of the 
 translator. The subject, it should seem, was the fate 
 of a tress which Berenice, according to Egyptian tables 
 of affinity the lawful wife and queen of Ptolemy Euer- 
 getes, king of Egypt, although she was his sister, 
 dedicated to Venus Zephyritis as an offering for the 
 safety of her liege lord upon an expedition to which 
 he was summoned against the Assyrians, and which 
 sadly interfered with his honeymoon. On his return 
 the vow was paid in due course : the lock, however, 
 shortly disappeared from the temple : and thereupon 
 Conon, the court astronomer (of whom Virgil speaks 
 in his third eclogue as one of the two most famous 
 mathematicians of his time), invented the flattering 
 account that it had been changed into a constellation. 
 So extravagant a compliment would naturally kindle 
 the rivalry of the courtly $nd erudite Alexandrian 
 poet; and the result was soon forthcoming in an 
 elegiac poem, supposed to be addressed to her mis-
 
 THE LOGGER POEMS. 89 
 
 cress by the new constellation itself, in explanation of 
 ner abduction. To judge by the fragments which are 
 extant, Catullus appears to have paraphrased rather 
 than closely translated the original of Callimachus, 
 though how far he has improved upon or embellished 
 his model it is of course impossible to say. In some 
 degree this detracts from the interest of the poem at 
 any rate, when viewed in connection with the genius 
 of Catullus. Still, it deserves a passing notice for its 
 art and ingenuity, as employed after Catullus's man- 
 ner, in blending beauty and passion with truth and 
 constancy. It is curious, too, for its suggestive hints 
 for Pope's " liape of the Lock." The strain of compli- 
 ment is obviously more Alexandrian than Eoman; 
 and readers of Theocritus will be prepared for a good 
 deal in the shape of excessive compliment to the 
 Ptolemys. But even in the compliment and its ex- 
 travagance there is a considerable charm ; and it is 
 by no means uninteresting to possess, through the 
 medium of an accomplished Latin poet, our only 
 traces of a court poem much admired in its day. If, 
 after all, the reception of Berenice's ha'ir among the 
 constellations forming the group of seven stars in 
 Leo's tail, by the Alexandrian astronomers, is a 
 matter of some doubt, it is at least clear that Calli- 
 machus did his best to back up Conon's averment of 
 it, and that it suited Catullus to second his assertion 
 so effectually, that it has befallen his muse to trans- 
 mit the poetic tradition. The argument of the poem 
 may bo summarised. The Lock tells how, after its 
 dedication by Berenice, if she received her lord from
 
 90 CATULLUS. 
 
 the wars safe and sound, Conon discovered it a con- 
 stellation in the firmament. He had returned vic- 
 torious ; the lock had been reft from its mistress's 
 head with that resistless steel to which ere then far 
 sturdier powers had succumbed 
 
 " But what can stand against the might of steel? 
 'Twas that which made the proudest mountain reel, 
 Of all by Thia's radiant son surveyed, 
 What time the Mede a new ^Egean made, 
 And hosts barbaric steered their galleys tall 
 Through rifted Athos' adamantine wall. 
 When things like these the power of steel confess, 
 What help or refuge for a woman's tress?" (42-47.) M; 
 
 Need we suggest the parallel from Pope 1 
 
 " What tune could spare from steel receives its date, 
 And monuments, like men, submit to fate. 
 Steel could the labours of the gods destroy, 
 And strike to dust the imperial towers of Troy ; 
 Steel could the works of mortal pride confound, 
 And hew triumphal arches to the ground. 
 What wonder then, fair nymph, thine hairs should feel 
 The conquering force of unresisted steel?" 
 
 The tress proceeds to describe her passage through 
 the air, and her eventual accession to the breast of 
 Venus, thence to be transferred to an assigned posi- 
 tion among the stars. A high destination, as the 
 poem makes Berenice's hair admit, yet one (and here 
 adulation takes its finest flight) which it would cheer- 
 fully forego to be once more lying on its mistress's 
 head :
 
 THE LONGER POEMS. 91 
 
 " My state so glads me not, but I deplore 
 I ne'er may grace my mistress' forehead more, 
 With whom consorting in her virgin bloom, 
 I bathed in sweets, and quaffed the rich perfume." 
 
 In conclusion, the personified and constellated lock, 
 with a happy thought, claims a toll on all maids and 
 matrons happy in their love and nuptials, of an onyx 
 box of perfume on the attainment of each heart's de- 
 sire ; and this claim it extends, foremost and first, to 
 its mistress. Yet even this is a poor compensation 
 for the loss of its once far prouder position, to recover 
 which, and play again on Berenice's queenly brow, it 
 would be well content if all the stars in the firmament 
 should clash in a blind and chaotic collision : 
 
 " Grant this, and then Aquarius may 
 Next to Orion blaze, and all the world 
 Of starry orbs be into chaos whirled." M. 
 
 After a survey of the larger poems in the foregoing 
 chapter, and that next before it, it would be especially 
 out of place to attempt the barest notice of all that 
 remains a few very scurrilous and indelicate epi- 
 grams, having for their object the violent attacking of 
 Caesar, Mamurra, Gellius, and other less notable names 
 obnoxious to our poet. By far the most part of these 
 are so coarse, that, from their very nature, they are best 
 left in their native language ; and in this opinion we 
 suspect we are supported by the best translators of 
 Catullus, who deal with them sparingly and gingerly. 
 Here and there, as in Epigram or Poem 84, Catullus
 
 92 CATULLUS. 
 
 quits this uninviting vein for one of purer satire in 
 every sense, the sting of it being of philological in- 
 terest. Arrius, its subject, like some of our own 
 countrymen, seems to have sought to atone for clip- 
 ping his h's by an equally ill-judged principle of com- 
 pensation. He used the aspirate where it was wrong 
 as well as where it was right. The authors of a recent 
 volume already alluded to ' Lays from Latin Lyres' 
 have so expressed the spirit and flavour of Catul- 
 lus's six couplets on this Arrius, that their version 
 may well stand for a sample of one of the most amus- 
 ing and least offensive of his skits of this nature. It 
 is, of course, something in the nature of a parody : 
 
 " Whenever 'Arry tried to sound 
 
 An H, his care was unavailing ; 
 He always spoke of 'orse and 'ound, 
 And all his kinsfolk had that failing. 
 
 Peace to our ears. He went from home ; 
 
 But tidings came that grieved us bitterly 
 That 'Arry, while he stayed at Home, 
 
 Enjoyed his 'oliday in Hitaly." 
 
 
 And so we bid adieu to a poet who, with all his faults, 
 has the highest claims upon us as a bard of nature 
 and passion, and who was beyond question, the first 
 and greatest lyric poet of Italy.
 
 TIBULLUS. 
 
 CHAPTER L 
 
 THE LIFE OF ALBIU8 TIBULLUS. 
 
 ALTHOUGH Catullus, as we have seen, lays some claim 
 to the credit of acclimatising the elegy as well as other 
 Greek types of poetry at Rome, the neatness and finish 
 of that form of verse may be attributed to Albius 
 Tibullus, a Roman of equestrian family, whose birth- 
 place was Pedum, perhaps the modern village of Gal- 
 licano, and in his day so ruined and insignificant that 
 it survived rather as the name of a district than as an 
 ancient and once famous Latin city. Tradition has 
 not preserved the poet's prajnomen; but his birth- 
 date was probably B.O. 54 : and, like the two other 
 tuneful brethren with whom we associate him, his life 
 and career were brief. He is supposed to have died 
 B.C. 18, according to an epigram of Pomitius Mai-sus 
 only a few months later than Virgil. As is the case 
 with Catullus and Propertius, the data for a life of
 
 94: TIBULLUS. . . ___ 
 
 Tibullus are scant and shadowy, and consist chiefly 
 of an elegy of Ovid, an epistle of Horace, and a less 
 authoritative life by an old grammarian, with the 
 internal evidence to be extracted from the poet's ac- 
 knowledged remains. As he nowhere names his sire, 
 it is inferred that he died whilst he was yet a youth ; 
 but there are frequent and loving notices of his mother 
 and sister. Apparently his family estates had been 
 confiscated at the time of Ctesar's death, and his for- 
 tunes had undergone the same partial collapse which 
 befell his poetic contemporaries, Horace and Virgil; 
 but, like them, he clearly succeeded in recovering at 
 least a portion of his patrimony, and this apparently 
 by the good offices of his great patron, M. Valerius 
 Messala, a chief of the ancient aristocracy, who, after 
 the fashion of Maacenas and Agrippa, kept up a 
 retinue and mimic court of versifiers, and, it must be 
 allowed, exacted no more of them than was his honest 
 due. It was at Pedum, on his patrimonial estate 
 between Tibur and -Prameste, some nineteen miles 
 from Rome, that he passed the best portion of his 
 brief but mainly placid life, amidst such scenes and 
 employments as best fitted his rural tastes, indif- 
 ferent health, and simple, contemplative, affectionate 
 nature. In his very first elegy, he describes himself 
 in strict keeping with his eminently religious spirit 
 which, it has been well remarked, bade him fold his 
 hands in resignation rather than open them in hope 
 wreathing the god Terminus at the cross-roads, paying 
 first-fruits to Ceres, setting up a Priapus to scare bird- 
 Dirates from his orchards, and honouring the Lares
 
 THE LIFE OF ALBIUS TIBULLUS. 95 
 
 with the offering of a lambkin, the substitution of 
 which for the fatted calf of earlier days betrays the 
 diminution of his fortunes. As Mr Cranstoun tran- 
 slates, the poet's admission runs thus : 
 
 " Guards of a wealthy once, now poor, domain 
 
 Ye Lares ! still my gift your wardship cheers : 
 A fatted calf did then your altars stain, 
 To purify innumerable steers. 
 
 A lambkin now a meagre offering 
 
 From the few fields that still I reckon mine, 
 
 Shall fall for you while rustic voices sing : 
 ' Oh grant the harvests, grant the generous wine ! ' " 
 
 (C. i. 1. 45, &c.) 
 
 The probable dates of his allusions to changed for- 
 tunes, in the first book of elegies, forbid the conjecture 
 of some of his biographers that these arose from his 
 lavish expenditure on his mistresses ; and it is cer- 
 tainly not so much of a dilapidated roue as of one who 
 lived simply and within his income and means, that 
 the shrewd-judging Horace wrote in Epistle iv. (Book 
 I-)- 
 
 " No brainless trunk is yours : a form to please, 
 Wealth, wit to use it, Heaven vouchsafes you these. 
 What could fond nurse wish more for her sweet pet, 
 Than friends, good looks, and health without a let, 
 A shrewd clear head, a tongue to speak his mind, 
 A seemly household, and a purse well lined ? " 
 
 Conington. 
 
 Judging of him by his writings, and those of hia 
 friends, Tibullus, then, would strike us as a genial,
 
 96 TIBULLUS. 
 
 cheery, refined, but not foppish Roman knight ; not 
 overbearing, from having been very early his own 
 master, but, for a Roman in his condition, of a singu- 
 larly domestic character. It is clear that the court 
 and livery of Augustus had no charms for him in com- 
 parison with the independence of his Pedan country- 
 life, although an introduction to the former might 
 have been had for the asking. His tone is that of 
 an old-fashioned Conservative, disinclined to violent 
 changes, holding the persuasion that "the old is 
 better," and prepared to do battle for the good Satur- 
 nian times, before there were roads or ships, imple- 
 ments of husbandry or weapons of war. Nothing 
 in his poems justifies the impression that his own 
 meddling in politics had to do with whatever amount 
 of confiscation befell him : indeed it may reasonably 
 be assumed that, in pleading for restitution or com- 
 pensation, his patron may have found his manifest 
 aversion to politics as well as war very much in his 
 favour. With Messala, who had fought against the 
 Triumvirs tinder Cassius at Philippi, but had dis- 
 tinguished himself eminently at Actium on the side 
 of Augustus, Tibullus had been early intimate, though 
 he declined to accompany him to this decisive war in 
 B.C. 31. Less than a year later, however, he did 
 accompany him as aide-de-camp, or perhaps more 
 probably as the bard of his prospective exploits, on 
 a campaign to Aquitania, and was present at the 
 battle of Atax (Ande in Languedoc), in which the 
 rebel tribes were effectually quelled. In the seventh 
 elegy of his first book, on the subject of Messala's
 
 THE LIFE OF ALBIUS TIBULLUb. 97 
 
 birthday, the poet gives, partly from eyewitness and 
 partly from report (for he did not get further than 
 Corcyra in B.C. 30, on his voyage with his patron on 
 his Asiatic expedition), a sketch of the localities of 
 Messala's victories, which may thus be represented in 
 English : 
 
 " Share in thy fame I boast ; be witness ye, 
 Pyrene's heights, and shore of Santon sea : 
 Arar, swift Rhone, Garumna's mighty stream, 
 Yellow Camutes, and Loire of azure gleam : 
 Or shall calm Cydnus rather claim my song, 
 Transparent shallows smoothly borne along 1 
 How peaks of Taurus into cloiidland peer, 
 Nor yet its snow the rough Cilicians fear ? 
 Why need I tell how scatheless through the sky 
 O'er Syrian towns the sacred white doves fly ? 
 How Tyre, with barks the first to trust the breeze, 
 Keeps from her towers an outlook o'er the seas ? 
 Or in what sort, when Sirius cracks the fields, 
 The plenteous Nile its summer moisture yields." 
 
 (Book I. C. vii'. 9-22.) D. 
 
 It was ill-health of a serious kind, if we may judge 
 from his misgivings in the opening of the third elegy 
 of the first book, which cut short his second campaign 
 at Corcyra; and there may probably have been as 
 much justification for his step in a natural delicacy of 
 constitution, as predisposition to it in his singularly 
 unwarlike tendencies. At any rate, when he turned 
 his back upon Corcyra, it was to say adieu for ever to 
 the profession of arms ; and thenceforth, though men- 
 tally following his patron's fortunes with affectionate 
 interest, which often finds vent in song, he seems to have 
 A.C.S.S., vol. iii. o
 
 98 TIB ULL US. 
 
 given up all campaigns, except in the congenial fields 
 of love and literature. No doubt, he had no objection 
 on occasion to fight his few battles over again ; and, as 
 the broken soldier in Goldsmith's ' Deserted Village,' 
 
 " Shouldered his crutch and showed how fields were 
 won," 
 
 so our poet was quite at home in telling as well as hear- 
 ing the soldier's tale, with the aid of the wine-flask to 
 map out the battle-fields with miost finger on the 
 table. But Peace approved herself so much more to 
 his mind that we find him constantly attributing to it 
 the whole cycle of blessings ; amongst others 
 
 " Peace nursed the vine, and housed the juice in store, 
 That the sire's jar his offspring's soul should cheer ; " 
 
 and it is with perhaps more heartfelt enthusiasm than 
 that which he bestowed on the Gallic or Asiatic cam- 
 paigns that he commemorates on Messala's birthday, 
 already referred to, the peaceful services of that general 
 to his country in reconstructing a portion of the Fla- 
 minian way out of the spoils Avhich he had captured 
 from the enemy. The lines in the original indicate 
 that this great work was in course of construction 
 when the seventh elegy was written ; and it is not an 
 uninteresting note that, as in our day, so of old, the 
 road-maker was esteemed a public benefactor and the 
 pioneer of civilisation. " Be thine," ends the poet 
 
 " Be thine a race to crown each honoured deed, 
 And, gathering round thine age, swell honour's meed. 
 Frascati's youth and glistening Alba's son 
 Tell out the civil work thine hand hath done.
 
 THE LIFE OF ALBIUS TIBULLUS. 99 
 
 Thy wealth it is the gritty rock conveys, 
 The gravel strews, the jointed stones o'erlays : 
 Hence, since no more he stumbles home from town, 
 Hence, of thy road oft brags belated clown. 
 Come then for many a year, blest birthday, come, 
 And brighten each year more Messala's home !" D. 
 
 In truth, the lot of Tibullus was fitter to be cast in 
 such peaceful surroundings than in the wars and battle- 
 lields of Eome, for empire far renowned. And there- 
 lore, with the exception of the sole warlike episode we 
 have noticed, his subjects are mostly peaceful, and 
 the poems, which are the chronicle of his life, pretty 
 equally divided between praise of the country and 
 commemoration of rustic festivals and holidays, and 
 the praises or reproaches which he . pours forth to 
 his mistresses ; for it does not seem that he exactly 
 parallels his co-mates Catullus and Propertius in ex- 
 alting his Delia to the same unapproached throne 
 as Lesbia or Cynthia. Still the history of his loves 
 demands quite as distinct a commemoration and illus- 
 tration as that of those of his fellows; and it will there- 
 fore be convenient to reserve it to another chapter, 
 gathering up into this present sketch what little 
 remains to tell of the poet's biography distinct from 
 these. If we may take Ovid's contributions to the 
 record, it will be found in his "Tristia" that the fates 
 allowed them no time for intimacy, but that Tibullus 
 was read and known and popular in the reign of 
 Augustus, not, however, through any special culti- 
 vation of an imperial patron, whom ho invariably 
 ignores, though not because ho had had no overtures
 
 ICO TIBULLUS. 
 
 to become a bard of the empire. Enough for him to 
 be stanch to an independent Eoman noble, the most 
 virtuous of his class, and to watch his opportunities of 
 a well-timed poetical compliment to him or his. Thus 
 when a rural feast is kept, and all are drinking healths 
 and making merry, the health of the absent hero, Mes 
 sala, is the toast he passes as an excuse for the glass 
 (El. lib. ii. 1). Another special and appropriate poem 
 (ii. 5) is written in honour of the eldest son of Mes- 
 sala, Marcus Valerius Messalinus, and of bis election 
 into the College of Fifteen to guard and inspect 
 the Sibylline books in the Capitol, of which books 
 he maintains the credit by pointing to the predicted 
 eruption of Mount ^Etna and eclipse of the sun in the 
 fated year of J.ulius Caesar's assassination. We hear 
 very little indeed of our poet from his contemporaries, 
 and next to nothing from him of them, out of the 
 range of the Messaline family, a proof of that addic- 
 tion to rural pursuits and privacy, which, along with 
 his loves, formed the staple of his muse. Even his 
 death, as pictured by Ovid, looks exceedingly like a 
 cento made up out of his own elegies ; for that poet 
 (Amor., iii. 9) makes his mother close his eyes, his 
 sister hang over his couch and watch his pyre with 
 dishevelled hair, and his mistresses lay claim to his 
 preference at that sad last ceremony, in language that 
 may well have been framed upon a study of the lan- 
 guage of Tibullus, when, in El. i. Ill, he anticipates 
 death afar from these last tributes at Corcyra. In 
 the absence of testimony we may infer that he died 
 peacefully at home peacefully, though somewhat
 
 THE LIFE OF ALBIUS TIBULLUS. 101 
 
 immaturely. Domitius Marsus reappears in Mr Crans- 
 toun's quatrain 
 
 " Thee, young Tibullua, Death too early sent 
 
 To roam with Virgil o'er Elysium's plains, 
 That none might longer breathe soft love's lament, 
 Or sing of royal wars in martial strains ; " 
 
 and it is but fair to add, from Professor Nichol's ad- 
 mirable version of the " Mors Tibulli," Ovid's graceful 
 asseveration that " Albius is not dead ; " but that, if 
 aught remains beyond the Stygian flood 
 
 " Kenned Tibullus ! thou art joined to those 
 
 Living in calm communion with the blest ; 
 In peaceful urn thy quiet bones repose : 
 
 May earth lie lightly where thine ashes rest ! " 
 
 (Am. iii. 9.) 
 
 The present may be a convenient place for stating 
 briefly that that portion of the Elegies attributed to 
 Tibullus which is unquestionably authentic is limited 
 to the first and second books; and that the first alone, 
 in all probability, had the advantage of his own revi- 
 sion and preparation for the press. Amongst the argu- 
 ments against the authenticity of the third and fourth 
 books, there are some which can hardly bo met by 
 the cleverest special pleading, though wo confess that 
 Mr Cranstoun has shown considerable ingenuity in 
 his conservative view of the question. It is, however, 
 more probable that the elegies of the third book, 
 which treat of the loves of Lygdamus and Nesera for 
 the most part, and which perceptibly lack the spirit 
 of Tibullus, whilst they evince quite a different talent,
 
 102 TIBULLUS. 
 
 where they exhibit any, were the work of some other 
 poet in Messala's circle, whose name, or else nom de 
 2)lume, may have been Lygdamus. As to the elegies 
 of the fourth book (apart from the first poem, which is 
 epic or heroic, and is panegyrical of Messala, though, 
 for the most part, a raw and juvenile production, not 
 worthy of Tibullus's genius), the general view is that 
 they are worthier of Tibullus than the third book, but 
 more probably the work of a female hand ; and with 
 one or two exceptions, that of the Sulpicia, a woman 
 of noble birth, and of Messala's circle, whose love for 
 Cerinthus or Cornutus is their chief feature. One 
 thing is certain, that the range of the two earlier 
 books will furnish abundant samples of each charac- 
 teristic vein of the genuine Tibullus, who, though Dr 
 Arnold coupled him as a bad poet with Propertius, 
 and Niebuhr charged him with sentimentality, is 
 nevertheless a poet of singular sweetness of versifica- 
 tion, though unequal to his later elegiac brother in 
 force and strength. Perhaps the adverse criticisms 
 made upon him are due to the narrow range of his 
 themes ; but he is worth a study, no less for the in- 
 dependence of his mind and muse, than for the almost 
 utter absence of any Alexandrine influence on his 
 style, syntax, and language. Of pure taste and great 
 finish, his genius is Italian to the core ; and whilst he 
 may lack the various graces of other poets of the em- 
 pire before and after him, he is second to none in a 
 tender simplicity and a transparent terseness, which are 
 peculiarly his own. It may not be amiss to close this 
 chapter with the just eulogium of this poet by Mr Grans-
 
 THE LIFE OF ALBIUS TIBULLUS. 103 
 
 toun, the most appreciative, and, on the whole, the 
 most successful of Tibullus's translators. " His love 
 of home and friends, his enjoyment of the country, of 
 hills and dales, of shepherds and sheepfolds, of smil- 
 ing meadows and murmuring rivulets, of purple vine- 
 yards and yellow corn-fields, and of the innocence and 
 simplicity of earlier days, comoineu with that tender 
 melancholy which ever, cloud-like, threw a shadow 
 o'er his brow, gives him an almost romantic interest 
 in the eyes of modern readers ; and will always secure 
 for him, with lovers of rural scenes, one of the most 
 enviable positions among the sons of ancient song."
 
 CHAPTEE H. 
 
 TIBULLUS AND HIS LOVES. 
 
 WITH his domestic qualities, his plaintive tone, and 
 predisposition to contented enjoyment of rural happi- 
 ness, Tibullus, under other conditions and another 
 creed, might have found the ideal which he sought; hut 
 subjected to the caprices and inconstancy of one mis- 
 tress after another, his life was alloyed by a series of 
 unprosperous loves. If the third hook, as has been 
 stated, is in all probability the work of another hand, 
 the sole attachment that promised a consummation 
 in marriage, that with the compatible but uncertain 
 Nesera, did not come upon the list of his loves. It 
 was Delia, or, as her true name appears to have been, 
 Plania (which the poet altered to affect the Greek), 
 who first seriously engaged Tibullus's affections, and 
 secured the tribute of his most perfect elegies. In 
 condition, she appears to have been, like the Cynthia 
 of Propertius, a hetaera, but of respectable parentage ; 
 and in some passages she is spoken of as if a married 
 woman. The poet, at any rate, found a bar to mar- 
 riage with her of some kind ; and probably the in- 
 ducement of a richer as well as a more permanent
 
 TIBULLUS AND HIS LOVES. 105 
 
 connection, induced her to transfer herself to the 
 wealthy spouse whom Tibullus pictures in his sixth 
 elegy (Book i.) as deceived and outraged by her infidel- 
 ities. But we ought to take Delia's self as painted in 
 our poet's first and happiest colours. The first six 
 elegies of the first book (with the exception of the 
 fourth) tell 'more or less of his love for her, and are 
 amongst the highest developments of his poetic power. 
 His allusion in the fifth elegy to the beginning of her 
 influence affords, at the same time, some clue to her 
 personal charms. In declaring that her spell is so 
 potent that, though they have quarrelled, he cannot 
 forget Delia amidst other charmers, he analyses the 
 nature of her ascendancy. Was it 
 
 " By spells ? No, by fair shoulders, queenly charms, 
 
 And golden locks, she lit this witching flame ; 
 Lovely as to Haemonian Peleus' arms, 
 On bridled fish the Nereid Thetis came." 
 
 There are indications, too, that she could be kindly 
 and affectionate, and possessed such influence over him 
 through her tenderness, albeit short-lived and incon- 
 stant, as to make him sit light on hopes of advancement 
 from a patron, and rather disposed to spend his days 
 with her in silken dalliance and in rural quietude. 
 Ecce sifjnum : 
 
 " How sweet to lie and hear the wild winds roar, 
 
 While to our breast the one beloved we strain ; 
 Or, when the cold South's sleety torrent* pour, 
 To sleep secure, lulled by the plashing rain !
 
 106 TIBULLUS. 
 
 This lot be mine : let him be rich, 'tis fair, 
 
 Who braves the wrathful sea and tempests drear ; 
 
 Oh, rather perish gold and gems, than e'er 
 One fair one for my absence shed a tear ! 
 
 Dauntless, Messala, scour the earth and main 
 
 To deck thy home with warfare's spoils 'tis well ; 
 
 Me here a lovely maiden's charms enchain, 
 At her hard door a sleepless sentinel. 
 
 Delia, I court not praise, if mine thoti be ; 
 
 Let men cry lout and clown I'll bear the brand : 
 In my last moments let me gaze on thee, 
 
 And dying, clasp thee with my faltering hand." 
 
 (i. 45-60.) C. 
 
 It is a characteristic of Tibullus, beyond almost any 
 other of his elegiac brotherhood, that a tender melan- 
 choly breathes constantly through his poetry, and that 
 the most pleasing pictures of serene content are anon 
 overclouded by a tinge of sad forecast. Indeed, he 
 makes the uncertain but lowering future an argument 
 for using the present opportunities of enjoyment. 
 Thus, in the close of the elegy from which we have 
 just quoted, he mingles gay and grave : 
 
 " Join we our loves while yet the fates allow : 
 
 Gloom-shrouded Death will soon draw nigh our door. 
 Dull age creeps on. 'Love's honeyed flatteries grow 
 Out of all season, where the locks are hoar " D. 
 
 but seemingly in the end allows the gay spirit to 
 predominate. Next apparently in order to the above 
 elegy comes one composed by Tibullus on his sickbed 
 in Corcyra (El. iii., bk. 1), and nominally addressed 
 to Messala, though the burden of it first and last is
 
 TIBULLUS AND HIS LOVES. 107 
 
 Delia, and Delia only. Out of it we glm not a few- 
 notices of Roman customs e.g., the resort of Delia to 
 the luck of the dice-box to ascertain, before he started, 
 the prospects her lover had of safe return, in spite of 
 the favourable nature of which she had wept oft and 
 ominously ; the misgivings of the poet himself, based 
 on ill omens; and the procrastination of his voyage, of 
 which he laid the fault on the Jew's Sabbath being 
 ill-starred for beginning a journey. Delia too con- 
 sulted, we find, the fashionable goddess of Roman 
 ladies of her period, Egyptian Isis, and clanged the 
 brazen istra, wherewith she was worshipped, with as 
 much devout enthusiasm as the best of them. The 
 poet assures himself that if her vows are heard, and 
 the goddess answers her prayers, homage, and offer- 
 ings, he shall rise from this bed of sickness, and, 
 better than all, eschew war and its fatigues and alarms 
 for the rest of his life-span. These, he suggests, are 
 the indirect cause of his present serious illness ; and 
 some fine couplets contrast, in Tibullus's own view, 
 the reigns of peaceful Saturn and his war-and-death- 
 loving son. In a strain of mild depression he goes on 
 to write his own epitaph as prefatory to an unfavour- 
 able termination to his malady ; but it is amusing to 
 note that he counts upon Elysium in the after-world 
 on the score of his true love and stanchuess in the 
 present life : 
 
 " But me, the facile child of tender Love, 
 
 Will Venus waft to blest Elysium's plains, 
 Where dance and song resound, and every grove 
 Rings with clear-throated warblers' dulcet strains.
 
 108 TIBULLUS. 
 
 Here lands untilled their richest treasures yield 
 Here sweetest cassia all untended grows 
 
 With lavish lap the earth, in every field, 
 Outpours the blossom of the fragrant rose. 
 
 Here bands of youths and tender maidens chime 
 In love's sweet lures, and pay the untiring vow ; 
 
 Here reigns the lover, slain in youthhood's prime, 
 With myrtle garland round his honoured brow." 
 
 (El. iii.) C. 
 
 It does not become directly obvious why after this 
 happy prospect the poet goes off at a tangent to an- 
 other and less inviting portion of the after- world, the 
 abode of the guilty in Tartarus, where Tisiphone 
 shakes her snaky tresses, and Ixion, Tityos, Tantalus, 
 and the daughters of Danaus atone their treasons 
 against Juno, Jove, and Venus. But the clue to the 
 riddle is a little jealousy on the poet's part. He un- 
 disguisedly suggests that with these " convicts under- 
 going sentence " is the best place for a certain lover 
 of Delia's, who took an undue interest in Tibullus's 
 foreign service, and wished in his heart that it might 
 be of long duration (iii. 21, .22). Too polite and too 
 affectionate to hint that such ought to be her desti- 
 nation also, if untrue to her vows to himself, the poet 
 adroitly bids her fence about her chastity with the 
 company of her trusty duenna or nurse, to tell her 
 stories, and beguile the hours of lamplight with the 
 distaff and the thread. Taking heart from this pretty 
 picture, which his fancy has wrought upon a pattern 
 of Lucretian precedent, not out of date it would seem 
 in good Roman houses, though it might be ima,';ina-
 
 Tl BULL US AND HIS LOVES. 109 
 
 tive to connect it with Delia's, Tibullus seems to change 
 his mind about leaving his bones in Corcyra, or wing- 
 ing his spirit's flight to Elysium, and to prepare his 
 mistress for his unexpected return : 
 
 " So may I, when thy maids, with working spent, 
 And prone to sleep, their task by turns remit, 
 Upon thee, as by Heaven's commission sent, 
 Come suddenly, with none to herald it. 
 
 And thou, in dishabille, thy locks astray, 
 Barefoot to meet thy lover, Delia, run ! 
 
 Goddess of morn, with rosy steeds, I pray, 
 Bring on betimes that all-aiispicious sun." D. 
 
 Whether thus unheralded or not, Tibullus certainly 
 realised his desire of a safe return to home and Delia. 
 The second elegy in the printed order appears to suit 
 the date of the year after this return B.C. 29, and 
 discovers our poet in anything but the happiest rela- 
 tions with his mistress. Shut out, as was too often 
 the lover's portion in the experience of the writers of 
 Latin elegy, from his mistress's doors, and forestalled, 
 it should seem, by a lover more favoured for the 
 moment, he describes himself as solacing his chagrin 
 in cups, and in prayers to Delia to have recourse to 
 Venus for coxirage to elude her keepers. The goddess 
 of good fortune is Venus, and "Venus helps the brave." 
 Under her auspices, and in her service, the poet makes 
 light of his dangerous and unseasonable vigils : 
 
 " A fig for troubles ; so my Delia's door 
 
 Ope, and her fingers snapt my entrance bid. 
 Twere well, though, that each sex to pry forbore; 
 For Venus wills her laches to be hid." D.
 
 110 TILULLUS. 
 
 But lest such encouragements should not suffice to 
 influence his coy inamorata, or her fears of offending 
 the so-called " husband," who withholds her from him, 
 should become confirmed, Tibullus adduces the assur- 
 ances of a witch whom he has lately consulted to show 
 that a way may be smoothed for their interviews as 
 heretofore. Of this witch Tibullus gives a highly 
 poetic description : 
 
 " Her have I known the stars of heaven to charm, 
 
 The rapid river's course by spells to turn, 
 Cleave graves, bid bones descend from pyres still warm, 
 
 Or coax the Manes forth from silent urn. 
 Hell's rabble now she calls with magic scream, 
 
 Now bids them milk-sprent to their homes below : 
 At will lights cloudy skies with sunshine's gleam, 
 
 At will 'neath summer orbs collects the snow. 
 Alone she holds Medea's magic lore : 
 
 None else, 'tis said, hath power Hell's dogs to tame : 
 She taught me chaunts, that wondrous glamour pour, 
 
 If, spitting thrice, we thrice rehearse the same." 
 
 (El. ii. 43-55) D. 
 
 The services of this functionary Tibullus professes 
 to have secured to throw dust in his rival's eyes, 
 though for the matter of that he lets fall a hint that, 
 had he preferred it, she could have given him a spell 
 that would enable him to forget her. But that was 
 not his wish, the earnest desire rather of a lasting and 
 mutual love. It would seem to be with a covert 
 reference to his rival, a soldier probably, enriched with 
 spoils and loot, and divided as occasion suited betwixt 
 the fields of Venus and of Mars, that Tibullus drew 
 the counterpart pictures of peace and war that follow,
 
 TIBULLUS AND HIS LOVES. Ill 
 
 and wondered why, as his desires were so simple, 
 some adverse god denied him their fruition. He can- 
 not tax his memory with sacrilege or slight to Venus, 
 and protests that if he can have done any wrong 
 unwittingly, he is ready to make full atonement. 
 Possessed, however, of a conviction at whose door 
 the estrangement of Delia is to be laid, he ends his 
 elegy with a warning to the successful lover that his 
 turn is to follow. This warning illustrates the fate 
 of the trifler with affection and mocker of love, who 
 in his old age succumbs to its chains himself, and 
 whom his neighbours see 
 
 " With quivering voice his tender flatteries frame, 
 
 And trim with trembling hands his hoary hair ; 
 Lounge at the dear one's threshold, blind to shame, 
 And stop her handmaids in the thoroughfare. 
 
 While boys and youths thronged round with faces grave, 
 Each spitting on his own soft breast in turn 
 
 But spare me, Venus, spare thy bounden slave ! 
 Why dost thou ruthlessly thy harvests burn ? " 
 
 This spitfing into the bosom, a coarse and superstitious 
 deprecation of evil or distasteful objects and conse- 
 quences, common to the ancients, and still common 
 among the Greeks, means in this case contempt for 
 the old lover caught in his own toils, and may pos- 
 sibly be meant to convey a sly hint to Delia that 
 
 " Perchance her love to every one 
 May make her to be loved by none." 
 
 By the next year apparently, the date of the fifth 
 elegy, matters are worse between Tibullus and Delia ;
 
 112 TIBULLUS. 
 
 but the poet has abandoned his professed unconcern, 
 and, in his distraction at lengthened separation, de- 
 scribes himself in a bad way : 
 
 " Driven like a top which boys, with ready art, 
 Keep spinning round upon a level floor." 
 
 (El. v. A 3, 4.) 
 
 He descends from his vantage-ground of complaint 
 and makes a plenary recantation, enumerating at the 
 same time arguments of services rendered, such as 
 nursing her through a long and serious illness, and 
 consulting enchantresses and approaching altars with 
 a view to her recovery. Fondly, he adds, he had 
 dreamed that the first-fruits of this would be the 
 return of her attachment, a reconciliation which would 
 enable him to carry out a scheme of rural happiness 
 for the rest of their lives on his estate at Pedum, in 
 which each should perform their appropriate household 
 duties, and Delia's province should be undisputed rule 
 over all the slaves born in the house, himself included 
 as the merest cipher. She was to discharge votive 
 offerings to the rural god, to pay tithe and first-fruit 
 for the folds and crops, and, when the conquering 
 hero Messala deigned to visit their retreat, to pluck 
 him the sweetest apples from the choicest trees, and 
 herself to wait upon him with a befitting banquet. 
 The pretty domestic picture includes a vision of teem- 
 ing baskets of grapes, and the same vats of pressed 
 must which we read of in the ballad of Horatius as 
 foaming " round the white feet of laughing girls." 
 But, sighs Tibullus, this fancv sketch has come to
 
 TIBULLUS AND HIS LOVES. 113 
 
 nought. East and south winds even now are bearing 
 the fond dream away. Another is blest, and reaps the 
 fruit of his own vows and solicitude. In a companion 
 elegy, which recent editors have seen fit to distinguish 
 from that on which we have just touched, the failure 
 of his endeavours to console himself with some other 
 fair one, or drown care in the wine-cup, is vividly de- 
 scribed ; and Delia's infatuation with her wealthier 
 admirer attributed to the hired services of a witch, 
 against whom Tibullus pours out a highly poetical 
 volley of imprecations. Such a character, described 
 as heralded by the screech-owl's hoot, and hungrily 
 gnawing the bones which the wolves have discarded 
 in the cemeteries, reminds one of the ' Pharmaceutria ' 
 in the Idylls of Theocritus, and Eclogues of Virgil, 
 or, more familiarly, of the Ghoules in the Arabian 
 Nights. Still, however, there are harder words for all 
 others than Delia, whose accessibility to the " golden 
 key " is lightly noticed, while upon the successful 
 rival is lavished a highly-drawn picture of the pros- 
 pect awaiting him in the wheel of chance : 
 
 " E'en now before her threshold not in vain 
 
 An anxious lover stops and prowls ; nay, more, 
 Looks round, pretends to pass, returns again, 
 And stands and coughs before her very door. 
 
 I cannot tell what Love may have in store 
 He works by stealth : but now enjoy thy dream, 
 
 While Fate permits to worship and adore ; 
 Thy boat is gliding on a glassy stream." 
 
 <V. 71-76.) C. 
 
 Still less satisfactory are the relations of Delia and 
 A.C.S.S., vol. iii. H
 
 114 TIBULLUS. 
 
 Tibullus when next we meet them in the sixth elegy; 
 for now a year more has flown, and the poet is chang- 
 ing his tactics, and twitting the present possessor of 
 Delia's affections with her inconsistency, of which no 
 one has had more experience. She is now apparently 
 married to her rich admirer ; but Tibullus has no idea 
 of letting him have an easy pillow if, indeed, the elegy 
 is meant for his perusal, and not rather as banter for the 
 fickle mistress who has given the poet up. The tone, 
 in either case, is not such as to present the poet in a 
 pleasant or natural light, when he mockingly, and in a 
 style reminding us of Ovid in his ' Art of Love,' enu- 
 merates his own past devices to gain access to Delia, 
 and to foil her guards and duennas, and quotes his 
 experience as worth buying, on the principle of setting 
 a thief to catch a thief. As, however, in such loves, 
 it would be quite out of course to know one's own 
 mind, it is not a surprise to find the poet, in another 
 poem of the same year, evidently clinging to. the hope 
 of a reconciliation, even after what should have seemed 
 an unpardonable affront and insult ; and striving to 
 ingratiate himself with Delia by favourable mention 
 of her mother "a golden old woman," because she 
 has always looked kindly on his addresses who, he 
 hopes, may live many years, and with whom he would 
 be quite content to go halves in the residue of years 
 yet in store for him though not, we conclude, in the 
 sense of spending them with her. At any rate, he 
 goes the length of saying that he shall always love her, 
 and her daughter for her sake, though he would be 
 glad if she could teach that daughter to behave herself.
 
 T1BULLUS AND HIS LOVES. 115 
 
 The mention of the ribbon (vitta), which confined the 
 hair of freeborn ladies before and after marriage to 
 distinguish them from frailer sisters, and of the stole, 
 which was a distinctive part of the Eoman matron'n 
 dress, as forming no part of Delia's attire, seems to 
 cast a doubt upon her having even up to this time 
 formed any legal or permanent connection ; and though 
 lie hopes the contrary, it is plain that Tibullus fore- 
 casts for his Delia the fate of a fickle flirt, whose latter 
 end is sketched at the close of the sixth elegy : 
 
 " For the false girl, in want when youth has fled, 
 Draws out with trembling hand the twisted thread, 
 And forms of warp and woof her weary piece, 
 Biting the tufts from off the snowy fleece, 
 While bands of youth behold her, overjoyed, 
 And swear she's marvellously well employed ; 
 Venus on high disdains er every tear, 
 And warns the faithless she can be severe." C. 
 
 So far as Tibullus was concerned, it would seem that 
 his patience finally failed not very long after this was 
 written, and biographers fill Delia's place, after the last 
 rupture, with one who is unnamed in his poetry, and 
 unnoticed by Ovid in his references to Tibullus's loves. 
 The heartless Glycera's connection with him rests, in 
 fact, on a well-known ode of Horace; nor does the 
 allusion to her in it (Ode i. 33) amount to much more 
 than a philosophic counsel not to take on so, because 
 tha perjured fair one has made a younger choice. Our 
 poet seems to have met with his usual luck, perhaps 
 because too sentimental and in earnest for the merce- 
 nary charmers with whom he came in contact It has
 
 116 T1BULLUS. 
 
 been supposed that the thirteenth elegy of the fourth 
 book may be a sample of the " miserable or dolorous 
 elegies " which he wrote to her, and to Avhich Horace 
 alludes ; but if so, it " protests too much," exhibits 
 too little independence, and rests too seriously upon 
 Glycera for his happiness, to be likely to hold her 
 affections. Women of her class are not really of one 
 mind with the love-sick wooer who wishes " the desert 
 were his dwelling-place, with one sweet spirit for his 
 minister ; " or, as Tibullus's mode of expressing the 
 same sentiment is Englished 
 
 " Then the untrodden way were life's delight 
 
 Life's loved asylum the sequestered wood : 
 Thou art the rest of cares : in murky night 
 A radiant star, a crowd in solitude" C. 
 
 Glycera must have preferred a crowd of a more normal 
 character, for ere long (it would seem within four or 
 five years after the rupture with Delia) he is found 
 in the toils of the mercenary and avaricious Nemesis, 
 to whom he addressed the love elegies of the second 
 book. If his amour with Glycera may be dated B.C. 
 24 or 23, the connection with Nemesis, who saw the 
 last of him, began about the year B.C. 21. It does 
 not seem to have had the excuse of such attractions 
 as were possessed by Delia, for the poet is silent as to 
 her personal beauty, although she exercised that in- 
 fluence over him, and made those exacting demands 
 on his finances, which bespeak a fascination quite as 
 overmastering. When we first hear of her, she has 
 left him for the country (El. iii. bk. 2), and as he 
 puts in the most exquisite of vignettes
 
 TIBULLUS AND HIS LOVES. 117 
 
 " Lo ! Venus' self has sought the happy plains, 
 And Love is taking lessons at the plough " C. 
 
 of course he needs must follow her, content to perform 
 the most menial of peasant's duties, if only he may 
 bask in her sunshine. A precedent for such a course 
 is adduced in the mythic servitude of Apollo in the 
 halls of Admetus 
 
 " The fair Apollo fed Admetus' steers, 
 
 Nor aught availed his lyre and locks unshorn ; 
 No herbs could soothe his soul or dry his tears, 
 The powers of medicine were all outworn. 
 
 He drove the cattle forth at morn and eve, 
 Curdled the milk, and when his task was done, 
 
 Of pliant osiers wove the wicker sieve, 
 
 Leaving chance holes through which the whey 
 mi:/ht run. 
 
 How oft pale Dian blushed, and felt a pang, 
 To see him bear a calf across the plain ! 
 
 And oft as in the deepening dell he sang, 
 
 The lowing oxen broke the hallowed strain." C. 
 
 " Happy days of old," sighs the poet, " when the gods 
 were not ashamed of undisguised bondage to Love ; " 
 though, as he adds 
 
 u Love's now a jest ; yet I, who bow to love, 
 
 Would rather be a jest than loveless god." 
 
 A tirade which follows in this poem against war and 
 lust of gain leads to the suspicion that now, as probably 
 with Delia, some richer mercantile or military rival is 
 in the poet's thoughts. The picture drawn of the spoils 
 of land and sea, the foreign stone imported to Italy and
 
 118 . TIBULLUS. 
 
 dragged along Eoman thoroughfares, and the moles, 
 which stem hitherto resistless seas, and protect the 
 fish against the sway of winter, is set over against the 
 simplicity of Tibullus's menage and primitive establish- 
 ment ; but, as if he knew beforehand that her taste 
 would repudiate such simplicity, he affirms that if 
 luxury and expense be the penchant of Nemesis, he 
 will turn his thoughts to pillage and rapine, to procure 
 her the means of it. His own tastes recoil from fashion 
 and finery, and go back to the pastoral way of their 
 ancestors, but he is prepared to sink his tastes 
 
 " That through the town his Nemesis may sail, 
 
 Eyed of all eyes, for those rich gifts of mine 
 The Coan maidens' gauze-spun robes and veil, 
 
 Inwrought and streaked with many a golden line." 
 
 D. 
 
 Such promises and professions were no doubt the con- 
 dition of his retaining even a share in her favour, but 
 a misgiving arises that he competes at unequal odds 
 with a richer upstart, of whom he bitterly hints 
 
 " The truth be told, he's now her bosom's lord, 
 
 Whom oft of old the slave-mart's rule compelled 
 To lift to view, imported from abroad, 
 
 The foot-soles which a tell-tale chalk-mark held." 
 
 D. 
 
 Professions, however, in Nemesis's school, are nothing 
 without practice. The more she exacts, the faster 
 becomes his bondage ; and he is not long in finding 
 that it was a delusion to dream that songs and love- 
 ditties would countervail more substantial presents 
 
 " With hollowed palm she ever craves for gold."
 
 TILULLUS AND HIS LOVES. 119 
 
 It is of no use for poets to rail against luxury and the 
 fashionable temptations to female extravagance in 
 Coan robes and Eed Sea pearls ; no use to set "the 
 girl who gives to song what gold could never buy " over 
 against her whose principle is to sell herself to the 
 highest bidder. Nemesis is not the sort of mistress to 
 be wrought upon by the " less or more " of posthumous 
 regrets, and so Tibullus resigns himself to sacrifices 
 which his instinct tells him she will appreciate. If 
 her cry of " Give, give " demands it, he protests 
 
 " My dear ancestral home I'll set to sale 
 My household gods, my all for her resign." 
 
 After this protestation, addressed to such as Nemesis, 
 it was simply a poetical surplusage to profess to be 
 ready to drink any number of love-potions ; and it is 
 satisfactory to be able to think that even the sacrifice 
 of his patrimony came to no more than the figure of 
 speech that it was. Nemesis is incidentally mentioned 
 in the complimentary " Elegy to M. Valerius Messali- 
 nus," of which mention has been made already, and 
 of which the date was about B.C. 20, in terms that be- 
 speak her influence over the poet's mind and muse, 
 and imply that if he is to live to celebrate in verse the 
 family of Messala, it will be through happy relations 
 with her, his latest love. A year after the year 
 before that of his death another elegy (vi. B. ii.) re- 
 presents him bent on following his friend and brother 
 poet, Macer, to the wars, by way of escaping Nemesis's 
 caprices. Till now he has allowed hope of better 
 treatment to sustain him, and even now he lays the
 
 120 , TIBULLUS. 
 
 blame on a false and odious go-between, who pleads 
 her mistress's illness or absence from home, when her 
 voice gives the lie to the excuse. It is characteristic 
 of Tibullus that he finds it almost impossible to think 
 any evil of his unscrupulous enslavers, and always 
 creates a deputy, in the person of whom they receive 
 his reproaches and curses. In the year B.C. 18, it 
 would appear, Tibullus succumbed to repeated in- 
 roads on a health always delicate, and died, as we 
 learn from Ovid, with his hand clasped in that of 
 Nemesis. The picture of his obsequies drawn by the 
 author of the ' Amores ' may be in part a fancy 
 sketch, where, for example, it represents Delia and 
 Nemesis embracing at the funeral pyre, and the newer 
 love waving the earlier off with assurances that 
 
 " Dying, he clasped his failing hand in mine ; " 
 
 whilst Delia faltered out that, in her reign, death and 
 failing health were not so much as thought of; but it 
 is consistent enough that the avaricious Nemesis may 
 have closed his eyes, and taken the slight needful 
 pains to keep her ascendancy to the end. Whilst the 
 chapter of Tibullus's " generally unprosperous loves " 
 cannot be regarded as in all respects edifying, it is 
 essentially part and parcel of his life and poetry, and, 
 all things considered, redounds far more in what has 
 been seen to his credit and goodness of heart than to 
 that of his successive paramours.
 
 CHAPTER HI. 
 
 T1BULLUS IN HIS CIVIL AND RELIGIOUS CAPACITY. 
 
 THOUGH on a cursory glance it might appear that 
 Tibullus was wholly absorbed in his loves, and when 
 suffering depression through their ill success took a 
 gloomy view of the world's moral government, no 
 careful student of his poetry can fail to notice how 
 stanch an observer he was of the old rites and customs 
 of his fathers, and how much the punctual fulfilment 
 of the ancient ritual of his country's religion, to say 
 nothing of its later and foreign accretions, was a law 
 to him. In keeping with this characteristic religious- 
 ness, he duly reverenced with offerings of first-fruits 
 the lone stump or old garland-wreathed stone which 
 represented the god of the country in the fields or 
 crossways, he duly kept the holidays of the Roman 
 Calendar, lie offered to the Genius customary and 
 propitiatory sacrifices on his own or his patrons' birth- 
 days. Hence, as well as for the collateral lore which 
 pious performance of such ceremonies would accumu- 
 late, one special phase of interest in his poetry is, so 
 to speak, antiquarian ; and modern readers may look 
 to him not in vain for light upon at least the rustic
 
 122 TI BULL US. 
 
 festivals of Italy, some of which, find a curious parallel 
 in old English customs growing daily more nearly obso- 
 lete. One very remarkable example is the Festival of 
 the Ambarvalia, to which Tibullus devotes the first elegy 
 of his second book, in a description which is, along 
 with a well-known passage of the First Georgic of Vir- 
 gil, a chief locus classicus touching this rural celebra- 
 tion. That which the poet describes must be regarded 
 as the private festival held towards the end of April 
 by the head of every family, and not the public and 
 national feast performed by the Fratres Arvales in 
 May. This festival, held in honour not of Ceres only, 
 . as it might seem from Virgil, but of Mars also, as we 
 gather from Gate's treatise on Rustic matters, and, as we 
 learn from Catullus, of Bacchus and the gods of the 
 family, and even Cupid, took its name from the chief 
 feature of the victim offered on the occasion being 
 thrice solemnly led round the fields before the first 
 sheaf of corn was reaped, or the first bunch of grapes 
 cut. In its train followed the reapers, vine-pruners, 
 farm-servants, dancing and singing praise to Ceres or 
 Bacchus, and making libations of honey, wine, and 
 milk. The object was the purification and hallowing 
 of themselves, their herds, their fields and fruits, by 
 the rural population of Latiuni ; and it was supposed 
 to keep plague and pestilence from the border which 
 the procession perambulated. As to the victim, an 
 earlier admission of Tibullus in the course of his 
 poems lets us into the fact that with him, owing to 
 his circumstances, it was only a lamb, whereas richer 
 worshippers offered either a calf or sometimes a lamb,
 
 SIS CIVIL AXD RELIGIOUS CAPACITY. 123 
 
 calf, and sow (suovetaurilia) together ; but in all cases 
 the festival wound up with a carousal and jollification 
 for all concerned, and furnished to the rural popula- 
 tion a picturesque and looked-for anniversary. Those 
 who are curious in finding parallels and origins for 
 their own country's old customs will trace to the 
 Ambarvalia the "Gang-days" or walkings of the 
 parish bounds in religious procession, which still 
 linger in old English parishes and boroughs, and 
 which at the Reformation were substituted for a 
 festival celebrated in the Latin Church during three 
 days at Whitsuntide. In this, one main object seems 
 to have been to solicit God's blessing on the land and 
 its crops ; and intimately connected with the cere- 
 monial which led to Rogation Days being called 
 Gang-days, was a customary procession. Feasting, 
 also, and revelry, were not forgotten ; though in the 
 present day the sole surviving feature is, here and 
 there, perambulation of the boundaries a relic, doubt- 
 less, of the very lustration of which Tibullus gives 
 the prettiest picture extant. According to him, the 
 whole face of nature was to keep holiday, whether 
 animate or inanimate, in honour of Bacchus, Ceres, 
 and their associate deities. Even women were to lay 
 by their spindles, and with ablutions, purifications, and 
 R'hite raiment, place themselves in accord with so pure 
 a festival : 
 
 " This festal day let soil and tiller rest ! 
 
 Hang up the share, and give all ploughing o'er ; 
 Unstrap the yokes. Each ox, with chapluts drest, 
 Should feed at large a well-filled stall before.
 
 124 TIBULLUS. 
 
 See the doomed lamb to blazing altars led, 
 
 White crowds behind with olive fillets bound ; 
 
 That evil from our borders may be sped, 
 
 Thus, gods of home, we lustrate hind and ground. 
 
 That ye may fend from all mischancs the swain, 
 And from our acres banish blight and bale, 
 
 Lest hollow ears should mock our hope of grain, 
 Or 'gainst weak lambs the fleeter wolf prevail. 
 
 Bold in his thriving tilth the farmer then 
 Logs on a blazing hearth shall cheerly pile ; 
 
 And slaves, by whom their master's ease we ken, 
 Frolic, and wattle bowers of twigs the while." 
 (C. ii. 1. 5-24.) D. 
 
 From the immediate context we gather that, if the 
 auspices were favourable on the showing of this rural 
 sacrifice, it was a signal for general relaxation and 
 merry-making. Tibullus would call for Falernian of 
 a prime old brand, and broach a cask of Chian to 
 boot. The revelry which in his view of things would 
 appropriately follow, reminds one of the orgies in 
 which, according to the song, " no man rose to go till 
 he was sure he could not stand." Constant toasting 
 of absent friends and patrons induced a moistness and 
 a reeling gait, which on this occasion was not a re- 
 proach or shame, but quite the contrary. It was, says 
 Tibullus, a usage of primeval precedent in the golden 
 age of man's innocency, when first the rural gods bore 
 a hand in instructing him to harvest his fruits, and 
 Uucchus assisted in organising the choral song and 
 dance which celebrated such harvests. Even Cupid, 
 who was country-born and country-bred, should bo
 
 HIS CIVIL AND RELIGIOUS CAPACITY. 125 
 
 bidden, he adds, to this rural ceremonial, for it makes 
 all the difference whether the flock and its master 
 experience the smile or frown of the much - praised 
 god: 
 
 " Great Cupid, too, 'tis said, was born and nurst 
 
 'Mongst sheep and cattle and unbroken mares ; 
 fhere with unskilful bow he practised first, 
 
 Now what a skilful hand the weapon bears. 
 Not cattle now, as heretofore, his prey, 
 
 But blooming maids and men of stalwart frame ; 
 He robs the youth and makes the greybeard say, 
 
 At scornful maiden's threshold, words of shame." 
 
 But, if he comes, he is to leave aside his bow, and 
 hide his torches. The date of this elegy is probably 
 the year B.C. 23. 
 
 In the fifth elegy of the second book, to which 
 allusion has been already made as that in which 
 Messala's eldest son, Messalinus, is complimented on 
 his election into the College of Fifteen, one pic- 
 ture or episode of rural life describes the festival 
 of the Palilia. This was a very ancient Italian holi- 
 day, partaking even more than the Ambarvalia of the 
 character of a lustration, inasmuch as in it firo and 
 water were used to purify shepherds and sheep, hinds, 
 herds, and farm-buildings. This festival fell on the 
 traditionary birthday of the city of Roi >e, and was 
 kept in honour of Pales, the tutelary goddess of 
 shepherds, such as were Rome's founders. To her 
 were offered prayers, and sacrifices of cakes, millet, 
 milk, and various eatables, one solemn preliminary, 
 according to Ovid, being the composition of the smoke
 
 126 TIBULLUS. 
 
 with Avhich stalls, sheep, and shepherds were purified 
 In the evening, after the lustration, bonfires wer<. 
 lighted, through the smoke of which the flocks were 
 driven with their shepherds thrice ; a second purifica- 
 tion, to which succeeded an open-air feasting on turf 
 benches. To this festival, which is fully described by 
 Ovid in his ' Fasti ' (iv. 731, &c.), allusion is made also 
 in the Elegies of Propertius (v. iv. 75. Paley). The 
 picture as given by Tibullus may be here represented, 
 with a note or two, from the version of Mr Cran- 
 stoun : 
 
 " On Pales' festival, the shepherd, gay 
 With wine, shall sing : then wolves be far away. 
 Wine-maddened, he will fire the stubble-heap, 
 And through the sacred flames with ardour leap. 
 His wife will bring her boy his heart to cheer, 
 To snatch a kiss, and pull his father's ear. 
 Nor will the grandsire grudge to tend the boy, 
 But prattle with the child in doting joy. 
 The worship o'er, the youths upon the glade 
 Will lie beneath some old tree's glancing shade ; 
 Or with their garments screen their rustic bowers, 
 Fill full the bowl, and crown the wine with flowers ; 
 Each bring his feast, and pile green turf on high, 
 Turf that shall festive board and couch supply. 
 Where drunk, the youth his sweetheart will upbraid, 
 And shortly after wish his words unsaid. 
 Though bearish now, he'll sober down to-morrow, 
 Swear he was mad, and shed the tear of sorrow." 
 
 (C., p. 62, 63.) 
 
 The italicised epithets have been inserted as more 
 literal, and the italicised lines as needing illustration.
 
 CIVIL AND RELIGIOUS CAPACITY. 127 
 
 The custom of leaping through the fire, under the 
 notion of being purified by the smoke, is alluded to 
 by Propertius likewise ; and is said by Mr Keightley 
 to be still kept up in parts of Ireland and Scotland. 
 The seemingly disrespectful liberty taken by the child 
 with his father's cars, is explained by the peculiar 
 and playful kiss, given by a person to another whose 
 ears he held by way of handles, which Greeks and 
 Romans occasionally practised, and which was called 
 by the latter chutra. As to the old tree at the 
 village centre, the cross-roads, or district boundary, it 
 belongs to all time, and was the natural trysting-place 
 for the festival of Pales, as many an ancient oak or 
 elm discharges a like office, or designates a like tryst, 
 in our English counties. 
 
 The scrupulousness with -which Tibullus kept these 
 rural festivals, observed his dues to Ceres, Silvanus, 
 and the Lares, and set up a Priapus in his orchard, 
 accommodated against stress of weather by a shady 
 grot, might 05 might not be taken as an argument that 
 two elegies in the third and fourth books, alluding to 
 the Matronalia, were from his muse, and not another's. 
 One so wrapt up in the country may have done all, 
 when he had discharged his duties to the deities pre- 
 siding over it j or, on the other hand, one who made 
 so much of birthdays and anniversaries, might have 
 made a point of including among his special feasts the 
 first day of the first month (March) of the sacerdotal 
 year, the festival Matronalia in honour of Juno, the 
 goddess of married women, a season when not only 
 husbands but lovers were wont to present their loves
 
 128 Tl BULL US. 
 
 with gifts, designated strence, the etrennes of New 
 Year's Day in Paris. The first elegy of the third hook 
 draws a lively picture of the stir and hustle of a day 
 not unlike St Valentine's morning in its latest develop- 
 ment ; and the second in the fourth hook, an elegant 
 and erotic performance, commends Sulpicia's heauty 
 as she appears dressed for this festival. Neither, 
 however, has the detail and the descriptiveness of 
 Tibullus's pictures of the rural feasts. Both may well 
 have emanated from one of Messala's set of proteges; 
 but any one imbued with the tone and spirit of his 
 genuine elegies will hesitate to admit these into that 
 category. But this same scrupulousness and exact- 
 ness to which we have referred, besides attesting the 
 religious spirit, according to the light that was in him, 
 of Albius Tibullus, extended itself to his civil status 
 and conduct, in relation to the powers that then were. 
 Not improbably he was at heart an old-fashioned 
 waif and stray of the republic, for whom it was 
 enough to be admitted to the literary Circle of that 
 virtuous representative of the old Roman nobles, Mes- 
 sala ; and who, while acquiescing in the imperial rule 
 from inability, and probably disinclination, to take a 
 prominent or active part in politics or social matters, 
 made a point of maintaining his independence, by 
 keeping aloof from the cohort of the bards of the 
 empire. Though Ovid can elegise his tuneful pre- 
 decessor in strains which were no more than justly 
 due to one to whom his own poetry owed not a 
 little, and imagine him in death associated with 
 Catullus, Calvus, Gallus, and other poets, we do
 
 II IS CIVIL AND RELIGIOUS CAPACITY. 129 
 
 not find Tibullus cultivating or even naming Au- 
 gustus or his ministers, or the members of his literary 
 coteries. How much or littje Horace knew of him 
 depends upon the genial Venusian's evidence in a 
 single ode and a single epistle ; and that evidence does 
 not go for much. There is nothing to prove that 
 his goodwill was warmly reciprocated ; whilst Ovid, 
 who was much junior to Tibullus, did not enjoy his 
 personal friendship. There is, at all events, consider- 
 able negative evidence that our poet valued and cher- 
 ished his independence ; and good ground for believ- 
 ing that he maintained it. Whether there is enough 
 to justify Dean Merivale's theory, " That he pined 
 away in unavailing despondency in beholding the sub- 
 jugation of his country," it would be hard to pro- 
 nounce, in the face of his slightly unpatriotic and 
 un-Roman deprecation of military service, his fondness 
 for ease and rustication, and his undeniable life of some- 
 what Anacreontic self - pleasing ; but on the other 
 hand, there is ample ground for the idea, broached 
 and shadowed forth by the same eminent historian, 
 that Tibullus " alone of the great poets of his day 
 remained undazzled by the glitter of the Caesarian 
 usurpation." * Akin to this independence of principle 
 is Tibullus's exceptional independence in literary 
 style : whilst all his contemporaries were addicting 
 themselves to Greek mythology and Alexandrine' 
 models, he stood alone in choice of themes and scenes 
 best suited to his purely Italian genius. His terse, 
 
 * History of Rome under tho Empire, iv. 602. 
 A.C.8.S., vol. iii. I
 
 130 T1BULLUS. 
 
 clear, simple language, as well as thought, distinguish 
 him. equally from the learning and imagination of 
 Catullus, and the artificial phraseology and constantly- 
 involved constructions of Propertius. He deserves the 
 meed of natural grace and unrestrained simplicity, and 
 ranks amongst his elegiac contemporaries as par excel- 
 lence the poet of nature. In some respects his genius 
 might compare with that of Burns, though in others 
 the likeness fails; and perhaps it is owing to his 
 limited range of subjects that he has not been more 
 translated into English. Dart's translation, as well 
 as that of Grainger, is almost forgotten ; the partial 
 translations of Major Packe and Mr Hopkins quite so. 
 A few neat versions of Tibullus which occur in ' Speci- 
 mens of the Classic Poets,' are due to Charles Abraham 
 Elton, the scholarly translator of Hesiod ; but it is 
 to Mr James Cranstoun that the English reader who 
 wishes to know more of this poet than can be learned 
 in a comparatively brief memoir and estimate, must 
 incur a debt such as we have incurred in the fore- 
 going pages.
 
 PROPERTIUS. 
 
 CHAPTER L 
 
 LIFE OP PROPERTIUS. 
 
 OP the youngest member of the elegiac trio it is not 
 hard to approximate the birth-date and establish the 
 birthplace. With reference to his full designation it 
 will suffice to say that the name of Sextus rests on 
 fair authority, whilst there is nothing but a copyist's 
 blunder and confusion of our poet with Prudentius 
 to account for the second name of " Aurelius " some- 
 times erroneously given to him. As to the date of 
 our poet's birth, Ovid tells us in his "Tristia"* 
 that he was younger than Tibullus, but older than 
 himself, so that whereas with Tibullus he had little 
 time for intimacy, with Propertius he enjoyed a tol- 
 erably close' literary acquaintance. This would ena- 
 ble us to place his birth somewhere betwixt n.c. 54 
 and 44, and there is a probability that it was about 
 
 * IV. x. 51-64.
 
 132 PROPERTIUS. 
 
 B.C. 49. Like his predecessors in Koman elegy, he 
 was country born and bred : nursed in the TJmbriau 
 town of Asisium in Upper Italy, amidst the pastures 
 of Mevania, near the source of the Clitumnus, unless 
 in preference to his own evidence we choose to credit 
 the comparatively modern story which connects the 
 poet and his villa with " Spello," the modern repre- 
 sentative of the ancient town of Hispellum in the 
 same neighbourhood. Propertius, indeed, is tolerably 
 circumstantial on the subject where in his fifth book * 
 he makes the old Babylonish seer, who dissuades him 
 from attempting archaeological poems about "early 
 Rome " and the like, evince a knowledge of his ante- 
 cedents by telling him 
 
 " Old Umbria gave thee birth a spot renowned 
 Say, am I right? is that thy native ground ? 
 Where, dewy-moist, lie low Mevania's plains, 
 Where steams the Umbrian lake with summer rains, 
 Where towers the wall o'er steep Asisium's hill, 
 A wall thy genius shall make nobler still." 
 
 This account, it should be observed, is consistent with 
 the poet's direct answer to the queries of his friend 
 Tullus concerning his native place at the end of the 
 first book, that 
 
 "Umbria, whose hill-border crowns 
 The adjacent underlying downs, 
 Gave birth to me a land renowned 
 For rich and finely-watered ground." 
 
 The steaming waters, which are called the Umbrian 
 * EL i. ad fin.
 
 LIFE OF PROPERTIUS. 133 
 
 lake in the first passage, are doubtless the same which 
 are credited with fertilising power in the second : 
 the same sloping river (as the derivation imports) of 
 Clitumnus, which a scholiast upon the word in the 
 second book of Virgil's 'Georgics' declares to have 
 been a lake as well as a river. The locale is of some 
 importance, seeing that it enhances our interest if 
 we can trace the lifelike scenes of Propertius's more 
 natural muse to his recollections of the Umbrian 
 home, from which he had watched the white herds 
 of Clitumnus wind slowly stall-ward at eve, had heard 
 the murmurs of the Apennine forests, and gazed with 
 delight on the shining streams and pastures of moist 
 Mevania. Scarcely less so, if we can account for the 
 exceptionally rugged earnestness of his muse by the 
 reference to his Umbrian blood, and the grave and 
 masculine temperament peculiar to the old Italian 
 races. In parentage, Propertius was of the middle 
 class, the son of a knight or esquire who had joined 
 the party of Lucius Antonius, and to a greater or less 
 extent shared the fate of the garrison of Perusium, 
 when captured by Octavius. A credible historian 
 limits the massacre there to senators of the town and 
 special enemies ; but the elder Propertius, if he came 
 off with his life, was certainly mulcted in his property ; 
 for whilst there are some expressions of the poet to 
 show that his sire's death was peaceful, though prem- 
 ature, it is certain that a largo slice of his patrimony 
 had to go as a sop and propitiation to the veterans of 
 Augustus. The poet's reminiscences of his early homo 
 must like those of Tibullus, have been associated
 
 134 PROPERTIUS. 
 
 with the hardships of proscription and confiscation ; 
 with early orphanage and forfeited lands ; with such 
 shrunken rents and decimated acreage, as made a 
 young man all the keener to bring his wits into the 
 market, and perchance to develop talents which would 
 have " died uncommended," had the stimulus of stern 
 necessity not existed. In the same elegy * already 
 alluded to, allusion is made to the sweeping en- 
 croachments of the ruthless " government measuring- 
 rod," which made him fain, when he assumed the 
 manly toga, and laid aside the golden amulet worn by 
 the children of the freeborn or " ingenui," to relieve 
 his widowed mother of the burden which his father's 
 premature death had devolved on her, and to repair 
 to Eome with a view to completing his training for 
 the bar. That he was obliged to content himself with 
 an ordinary preparation, and to forego the higher 
 Attic polish, is clear from an admission to his friend 
 Tullust that he has yet at a much later period to 
 see Athens ; but further, we may guess that his 
 keeping terms at the bar soon became only his osten- 
 sible occupation in life, and that like young Horace 
 the treasury clerk, and Virgil the suitor, and Tibullus 
 the claimant, the channel which led to real fame and 
 competence was poetry. 
 
 " Then Phoebus charmed thy poet-soul afar 
 From the fierce thunderings of the noisy bar." 
 
 Of how many modern divines, and essayists, and lit- 
 * V. i. 129-134. f I. vi. 13.
 
 LIFE OF PROPERTIUS. 135 
 
 terateurs has not the original destination been similar, 
 and similarly diverted ! It was essential, doubtless, to 
 Propertius's success in this divergent occupation and 
 livelihood that he should find a patron, to become to him 
 what Maecenas was to Horace, and Messala to Tibullus. 
 Later on, he got introduced to the great commoner, 
 prime minister, and patron, whose inner circle on the 
 Esquiline assured distinction in letters to all its mem- 
 bers : but his first patron was Volcatius Tullus, the 
 nephew of L. Volcatius Tullus, consul in RC. 33 and 
 proconsul in Asia, who was of the poet's own age, and 
 probably his uncle's lieutenant. To this Tullus are 
 addressed several of the elegies of the first book, and 
 it is reasonable to think that the link between patron 
 and client was one of equal friendship. A little of 
 the proper pride of the Umbrian rhymer comes out in 
 what he writes to Maecenas, at a subsequent period, 
 deprecating public station and prominence, and deli- 
 cately suggesting that in eschewing these and loftier 
 themes he does but imitate the retiring modesty of 
 his patron. 
 
 Before, however, we discuss his relations with patrons 
 and contemporary poets, it were well to glance at the 
 sources and subjects of his trained and erudite muse. 
 If ever epithet was fitted to a proper name, it is the 
 epithet of " doctus " or " learned " in connection with 
 that of Propertius. More than Catullus, infinitely more 
 than Tibullus, Propertius was imbued with and bathed 
 in the Alexandrian pcetry and poets. Again and again 
 he calls himself the disciple of the Coan Philetas, 
 and his ambition was to be, what Ovid designates
 
 136 . PROPERTIUS. 
 
 him, the " Eoman Callimachus." That this ambition 
 was detrimental at times to his originality and true 
 genius, there is abundant proof in the perusal of his 
 elegies. His too much learning, his stores of Alex- 
 andrian archaeology, overflow upon his love-elegies in 
 such wise as to impress the reader with the unreality 
 of the erudite wooer's compliments, and to make him 
 cease to wonder that Cynthia jilted him for a vulgar 
 and loutish praetor. And this was not confined to his 
 love-poems. Where he deals with Eoman and Italian 
 legends, he is apt to overcumber them with parallels 
 from foreign mythland : and it may be said without 
 controversy that where he fails in perspicuity, and 
 induces the most irrepressible tedium, is in his un- 
 measured doses of Greek mythology. 
 
 It is the general opinion of scholars that the essen- 
 tially Eoman poems of Propertius were his first at- 
 tempts in poetry, and that he took the lost "Dreams," 
 as he styles that poet's epic, of Callimachus for his 
 model of their style. If so, it is no less probable that 
 the self -same themes occupied his latest muse, the 
 mean space being given up to his erotic, and, par ex- 
 cellence, his Cynthian elegies. From his own showing, 
 the brilliant and fascinating mistress who bewitched 
 him, as Lesbia and Delia (we call all three by their 
 poets' noms de plume) had bewitched Catullus and 
 Tibullus, was the fount and source, the be-all and 
 end-all, of his poetic dreams and aspirations. Never- 
 theless, it may be doubted whether Propertius did 
 not give, in some of his poems on early Eome, 
 earnests of a more erudite^'if a less attractive, bal-
 
 LIFE OF PROPERT1US. 137 
 
 ladic gift, than the more facile Ovid, whose ' Fasti ' 
 have cast into shade his predecessor's experiments in 
 turning the Roman Calendar into poetry. Reserving 
 the story of his loves for another chapter, it will bo 
 advisable that in the present we should confine our- 
 selves to the record of his life and career, indepen- 
 dently of that absorbing influence. It was no doubt 
 a turning-point for him, when Propertius gained in- 
 troduction and acceptance into the literary coterie of 
 Maecenas. Although his difference in age, and his 
 probably less courtly manners and temper, interfered 
 with his admission to the same close intimacy as tho 
 lively Venusian in the minister's villa and gardens 
 on the Esquiline, there is abundant internal evidence 
 that he was welcomed there not only for his merit as 
 a poet, but also for the special purpose of all tho in- 
 troductions to that brilliant circle namely, to nurse 
 and raise up a meet band of celebrants of the vic- 
 tories and successes of Augustus. In an elegy * which 
 evinces the depth and breadth of his archaeological and 
 mythologic lore, the poet is found excusing his in- 
 ability to write epics or heroics, though he adds that, 
 could he essay such themes, it should be to commem- 
 orate the deeds of the victor at Actium, the triumphs 
 in which golden -fettered kings were led along the 
 Via Sacra, and the praise of his stanch friend and 
 servant 
 
 "In tune of peace, in time of war, a faithful subject 
 aye." 
 
 * II. i.
 
 138 PROPERTIUS. 
 
 In the same spirit is breathed the address to the same 
 patron in the ninth elegy of the fourth book, where, 
 deprecating heroic poetry, Propertius gracefully pro- 
 fesses his readiness to rise to the height of that high 
 argument, if Maecenas will set him an example of 
 conquering his own innate dislike to prominence, and 
 assume his proper rank and position. If it is true of 
 the patron that 
 
 " Though Caesar ever gives the ready aid, 
 
 And wealth profusely proffered never fails 
 Thou shrink'st, and humbly seek'st the gentle shade, 
 And with thine own hand reef st thy bellying sails" 
 
 the poet-client insinuates that it ought to be -enough 
 for himself 
 
 " Enough, with sweet Callimachus to please, 
 
 And lays like thine, O Coan poet, weave : 
 To thrill the youth and fire the fair with these, 
 Be hailed divine, and homage meet receive." 
 
 Indeed, if ever his instinctive conviction of his proper 
 metier is shaken by the importunities of those who 
 would have won him over to the laureateship of the 
 imperial eagles, he speedily and wisely recurs to his 
 first and better judgment. It may be he had discovered 
 that to cope with such a task he needed greater plasti- 
 city of character than accorded with his Umbrian- origin 
 that he would have to smooth over defects, and, mag- 
 nify partial successes. Even where in the first elegy 
 of the third book he seems to be qualifying for the 
 office, and preluding his task by graceful compliments 
 to'jAugustus, not only do the spectres of the slaughtered
 
 LIFE OF PROPERTIES. 139 
 
 Craasi ome unbidden across the field of compliment 
 opened by the emperor's successes in the East, but 
 chronology satisfies the reader that poetic flourishes 
 about vanquished India, and about " Arabia's homes, 
 untouched before, reeling in grievous terror," could 
 not rearrange or unsettle the order of fate, that not 
 very long, probably, after the composition of this elegy 
 the expedition sent against Arabia under the command 
 of ^Elius Gallus should come to unlooked-for defeat 
 and disaster. Propertius's sounder mind falls ever 
 back upon themes that involve no such risk of mis- 
 adventure from flattery or false prophecy ; and if he 
 plumes himself for a higher flight, it is in the strain 
 of undisguised deprecation of his daring 
 
 " As when we cannot reach the head of statues all too 
 
 high, 
 
 We lay a chaplet at the feet, so now perforce do I, 
 Unfit to climb the giddy heights of epic song divine, 
 In humble adoration lay poor incense on thy shrine : 
 For not as yet my Muse hath known the wells of Ascra'a 
 
 grove : 
 Permessus' gentle wave alone hath laved the limbs of 
 
 Love. / (III. i. ad fin.) 
 
 It is hard to conceive with what justice, when such 
 was the poet's deprecation of the court laureate's task 
 (to say nothing of other inconsistencies in the theory), 
 it can have occurred to some critics and speculators to 
 identify Propertius with the " bore " who pestered 
 Horace through the streets and ways, as ho describes 
 in his satire.* The weight of Dean Merivale's name 
 
 * I l<>r., Sat. I. ix. jxusim.
 
 140 PROPERTIUS. 
 
 and knowledge may, it is true, impart strength to 
 tliis conjecture ; but assuredly a fair comparison of 
 all the data we can collect from external and in- 
 ternal sources towards the life of Propertius does 
 not lead to the conclusion that he was one 
 to intrude himself on the great or the success- 
 ful, or that lack of opportunities of introduction to 
 the court of Augustus, or the villa and gardens of 
 Maecenas, drove him to annoyance and importunity 
 of such as had the entree to either. It has always 
 seemed to us a strong note of difference, that Horace's 
 babbling fop is represented as addressing his victim 
 in short cut-and-dried interjective remarks, the very 
 opposite of the high-sounding, learned, and perhaps 
 stilted language which might have been expected of 
 Propertius, a poet who, one should fancy, spoke, if he 
 did not care to write, heroics even as Mrs Siddons is 
 said to have been, and talked, the queen, even off the 
 stage. Considering the field open to him, and the 
 invitations profusely given to him, this poet is entitled 
 to the credit of extreme moderation as regards the 
 incense heaped, after the fashion of his poetic con- 
 temporaries, upon the shrine of Augustus. His noted 
 poem on the " Battle of Actium " * is a fine and 
 grand treatment of a theme upon which to have been 
 silent would have been as much an admission of in- 
 ability to hold his own as a poet, as a proof of indif- 
 ference or disloyalty to the victor in that famous fight; 
 and who of his contemporaries would have thought 
 anything of the pretensions of a bard who did not 
 * V. vi.
 
 LIFE OF PROPERTIUS. HI 
 
 embody in such glowing verse as he could compose 
 the engrossing subject of the discomfiture and subse- 
 quent tragedy of Cleopatra? There is little heed to 
 be paid to the inference from the name of Propertius 
 not being mentioned by Tibullus or Horace, that either 
 held him in contempt, the former because he resented 
 his claiming to be the Eoman Caflimachus. As we 
 have seen, Tibullus did not affect Alexandrine erudi- 
 tion ; and Propertius is entitled to his boast without 
 controversy on Tibullus's part, though he might have 
 found it hard to maintain it seriously in the face of 
 Catullus. But of that poet's fame his elegies make 
 but a small portion ; and we are to remember that what 
 Propertius prides himself upon was the introduction 
 of the Greek or Alexandrine elegy into Latin song. 
 If neither Tibullus nor Horace names him, at least 
 Ovid makes the amend for this ; and the fact that the 
 poet is equally silent as to them, need not be pressed 
 into a proof of insignificance, or churlishness, or lite- 
 rary jealousy, seeing that he is proven to have known, 
 appreciated, and mingled familiarly with other scarcely 
 less eminent poets of the period, not to omit his gen- 
 erous auguries of the epic poems of his friend Virgil. 
 With Ponticus, a writer of hexameters, and author of 
 a lost Thebaid, ho was on terms of pleasant friendship, 
 and not of rivalry in poetry or in love. He could 
 pay graceful compliments to the iambics of his cor- 
 respondent Bassus, though not without a feigned or 
 real suspicion that that poet's design in seeking to 
 widen the range of his admiration for the fair sex was 
 an interested motive of stepping into Cynthia's good
 
 142 PROPERTIUS. 
 
 graces. As to Virgil, Propertius, in an elegy to 
 tragic poet Lynceus (who probably owes the preser- 
 vation of his name to his having presumed to flirt 
 with Cynthia at a banquet), commends that great poet 
 as being more fruitfully and worthily occupied ; and 
 commemorates his poetic achievements in strains that 
 have not the faintest leaven of jealousy or grudge : 
 
 " But now of Phoebus-guarded Actian shore, 
 And Caesar's valiant fleets, let Virgil sing, 
 
 Who rouses Troy's JEneas to the fray, 
 
 And rears in song Lavinium's walls on high : 
 
 Yield, Roman writers bards of Greece, give way 
 A work will soon the Iliad's fame outvie. 
 
 Thou sing'st the precepts of the Ascnean sage, 
 What plain grows corn, what mountain suits the vine 
 
 A strain, O Virgil, that might well engage 
 Apollo's fingers on his lyre divine. 
 
 Thou sing'st beneath Galsesus' pinewood shades 
 Thyrsis and Daphnis on thy well-worn reed ; 
 
 And how ten apples can seduce the maids, 
 
 And kid from unmilked dam girls captive lead. 
 
 Happy with apples love so cheap to buy ! 
 
 To such may Tityrus sing, though cold and coy : 
 happy Corydon ! when thou mayst try 
 
 To win Alexis fair his master's joy. 
 
 Though of his oaten pipe he weary be, 
 Kind Hamadryads still their bard adore, 
 
 Whose strains will charm the reader's ear, be he 
 Unlearned or learned in love's delightful lore." 
 
 (C. III. xxvi.)
 
 LIFE OF PROPERTIUS. 143 
 
 Our quotation is from Mr Cranstoun's well-considered 
 version, which in this instance embodies and repre- 
 sents the rearrangement of the original elegy by Mr 
 Munro. It gives us allusions in inverted sequence 
 to the '^Eneid,' the ' Georgics,' and the 'Eclogues,' and 
 contains a reference to the neighbourhood of Taren- 
 tum, which draws from the editor of Lucretius the 
 remark that Virgil may have taken refuge thereabouts 
 in the days when he and his father lost their lands 
 along with other Mantuans. " When I was at Taren- 
 tum some months ago, it struck me how much better 
 the scenery, flora, and silva of these parts suited many of 
 the ' Eclogues ' than the neighbourhood of Mantua." * 
 It is needless to say that the " precepts of the Ascrsean 
 Hesiod " refer to Virgil's imitation of that poet in his 
 ' Georgics,' whilst the names of Thyrsis, Daphnis, 
 Corydon, and Alexis recall the ' Eclogues,' and Tity- 
 rus represents Virgil himself. Galesus, celebrated also 
 by Horace on account of its fine-fleeced sheep, was a 
 little river in the neighbourhood of Tarentum, ap- 
 parently the locality in which some of the ' Eclogues ' 
 were written. 
 
 Amongst other less specially literary friends of Pro- 
 pcrtius, to whom his elegies introduce us, were J-'.lius 
 Gallus, already mentioned as the leader of an ill-starred 
 expedition to Arabia ; Posthumus, who, according to 
 our poet in El. IV. xii., left a faithful wife for another 
 campaign to the East, and whoso wife's laments arc 
 supposed to be described in the pleasing third elegy 
 of the fifth book, that of Arethusa to Lycotas. Of 
 * Journal of Philology, vi. 41.
 
 144 PROPERTIUS. . - 
 
 Volcatius Tullus and his patronage we have taken 
 notice above. The poet's elegies to him* affection- 
 ately speed his parting for the East, and in due 
 course long to welcome his return to the Rome of 
 his friends and ancestors. The first supplies, inci- 
 dentally, evidence that Propertius had not, up to the 
 date of it, visited Athens ; and it is very doubtful 
 whether though in IV. xxi. he seems to contemplate 
 a pilgrimage thither in the fond hope that length of 
 voyage may make him forget his untoward loves, and 
 though iu I. xv. he gives a graphic picture of the 
 dangers and terrors of a storm at sea he ever really 
 left his native shores, or indulged in foreign travel. 
 There is much reason to agree with Mr Cranstoun that 
 the absence of direct testimony on this point negatives 
 the supposition ; and his periodical threats of taking 
 wing, and thrilling pictures of perils of waters, may 
 perhaps be interpreted as only hints to his mistress 
 to behave herself, and suggestions of desertion, which 
 she probably valued at a cheap rate from a knowledge 
 of her influence and attractions. Though full of the 
 mythic lore of Greece, the poetry of Propertius betrays 
 no eyewitness of its ancient cities or learned seats ; 
 and it is a more probable conclusion that he was a 
 stay-at-home, though not xmimaginative, traveller. 
 His continued attachment to Cynthia a long phase 
 in his life-history to be treated separately tends to 
 this conclusion ; and we know so little of him after 
 the final rupture with her, that silence seems to con- 
 firm the unlocoruotiveness of his few remaining years. 
 * I. vi. and IV. xxii.
 
 LIFE OF PROPER! 1 US. 145 
 
 In one so wedded to Greek traditions, a treading of 
 classic soil must have reawakened long-banished song ; 
 but Propertius died comparatively young, like Catul- 
 lus and Tibullus, and he probably ceased to write and 
 to live about the age of thirty-four, or from that to 
 forty. Though Pliny's gossip credits him with lineal 
 descendants which involves a legal union after Cyn- 
 thia's death there is everything in his extant remains 
 to contradict such a story. He doubtless sang his 
 mistress in strains of exaggeration for which one makes 
 due allowance in gleaning his slender history ; but 
 substantially true was his constant averment that 
 Cynthia was his last love, even as she was his first. 
 It is irresistible to cling to the belief that the com- 
 paratively brief space of life he lived without her and 
 her distracting influences was the period of his finest 
 Roman poems, and of the philosophic studies to M'hich 
 his Muse in earlier strains looked forward. He is 
 supposed to have died about B.C. 15. In his poetry 
 he contrasts strongly with his co-mates Catullus and 
 Tibullus. As erotic as the first, he is more refined 
 and less coarse without being less fervent. On tlie 
 other hand, he can lay no claim to the simplicity and 
 nature-painting of Tibullus, though he introduces into 
 his verse a pregnant and often obscure crowding of 
 forcible thoughts, expressions, and constructions, which 
 justify the epithet that attests his exceptional learn- 
 ing. In strength and vigour of verse he stands pre- 
 eminent, unless it be when he lets this learning have 
 its head too unrestrainedly. And though the verdict 
 of critics would probably bo that he is best in the love 
 A.c.8.8., vol. iii. K
 
 146 PROPERTIUS. 
 
 elegies, and in the less mythologic portions of these, 
 where pathos, fervour, jealous passion supply the 
 changing phases of his constant theme, it may he 
 doubted if some of the more historic and Roman 
 elegies of the fifth book do not supply as fine and 
 memorable a sample of his Muse, which inherited 
 from its native mountains what Dean Merivale desig- 
 nates " a strength and sometimes a grandeur of lan- 
 guage which would have been highly relished in the 
 sterner age of Lucretius." His life and morality were 
 apparently on the same level as those of his own gen- 
 eration; but if a free liver, he has the refinement to 
 draw a veil over much that Catullus or Ovid would 
 have laid bare. And though his own attachment was 
 less creditable than constant, that he could enter into 
 and appreciate the beauty of wedded love, and of care- 
 ful nurture on the elder Roman pattern, will be patent 
 to those who read the lay of Arethusa to Lycotas, or 
 peruse the touching elegy, which crowns the fifth 
 and last of his books, of the dead Cornelia to .^Emilius 
 Paullus.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 CYNTHIA'S POET. 
 
 As with Catullus and Tibullus, there would be scant 
 remains of the poetry of Propertius scant materials 
 for a biography of him if his loves and the story of 
 them were swept out of the midst. With the poets of 
 his school Love was the prime motive of song; and he 
 was truly a sedulous example of his own profession : 
 
 " Many have lived and loved their life away : 
 Oh, may I live and love, then c^ie ps, they ! 
 Too weak for fame, too slight for war's stern rule, 
 Fate bade me learn in only Love's soft school." 
 
 (I. vi. 27.) M. 
 
 Yet it must be confessed that, however forcible and 
 fervid the verse in which he commemorates this love, 
 the results fail to impress us with the same reality and 
 earnestness as his predecessors, partly perhaps because 
 " he makes love by book," and ransacks the Greek 
 poets and mythologists for meet comparisons with his 
 mistress ; and partly because occasionally his verses 
 betray the fickleness of a man of pleasure and gal- 
 lantry, whose expressions and protestations are to be 
 taken only at their worth. Famous as the elegies
 
 148 PROPERTIUS. 
 
 to Cynthia have become in after-time, and customary 
 as it is to regard Propertius as the sympathetic friend 
 of ill - used lovers, we fear that Cynthia had too 
 much justification for her inconstancy in his be- 
 haviour; and that however tragic his threats and 
 resolutions, his passion for her was much less absorb- 
 ing and earnest than that of Catullus for Lesbia, or 
 Tibullus for Delia. His own confession (IV. xv. 6) 
 acquaints us with an early love-passage for a slave-girl, 
 Lycinna, before he was out of his teens ; and though 
 he assures Cynthia that she has no cause for un- 
 easiness lest this passion should revive, a number of 
 casual allusions make it manifest that at no period 
 was he exclusively Cynthia's, though her spell no 
 doubt was strongest and most enduring. Who, then, 
 was this lovely provocative of song, to whom love- 
 elegy is so much beholden ? It seems agreed that 
 the name of Cynthia is a complimentary disguise, like 
 those of Delia and Lesbia : and according to Apuleius, 
 the lady's real name was Hostia, derived from Hostius, 
 a sire or grandsire of some poetic repute, and not im- 
 probably an actor or stage-musician, an origin which 
 would explain her position as born of parents of 
 the freedman class. It would be consistent too with 
 the tradition of her accomplishments and cultiva- 
 tion, which we find from Propertius to have been 
 various and considerable, as indeed they had need 
 to be, to appreciate the compliments of a bard whose 
 escritoire must have teemed with classical and mytho- 
 logical parallels for her every whim and humour, for 
 every grace of her form and every charm of her mind.
 
 CYNTHIA'S POET. 149 
 
 To borrow his manner of speech, Phoebus had gifted her 
 with song, Calliope with the Aonian lyre : she excelled 
 in attractive conversation, and combined the char- 
 acteristics of Venus and Minerva. It cannot have 
 been in empty compliment that Propertius styles her 
 " his clever maid," and prides himself on his success 
 in pleasing her in encounters of wit and raillery, or re- 
 gards her appreciation of " music's gentle charms " as 
 the secret of his favour in her eyes. The whole tone 
 of his poetic tributes bespeaks a recognition of her 
 equality as to wit and intellect, and we may fairly 
 credit her with the mental endowments of the famous 
 Greek hetaerae. Amongst her other attractions was a 
 skill in music and dancing, commemorated by the poet 
 in II. iii. 9-22 : 
 
 " 'Twos not her face, though fair, so smote my eye 
 
 (Less fair the lily than my love : as snow* 
 Of Scythia with Iberian vermil vie ; 
 As flout in milk the petals of the rose) ; 
 
 Nor locks that down her neck of ivory stream, 
 Nor eyes my stars twin lamps witli love aglow ; 
 
 Nor if in silk of Araby she gleam 
 (I prize not baubles), does she thrill me so 
 
 As when she leaves the mantling cup to thread 
 The mazy dance, and moves before my view, 
 
 Graceful as blooming Ariadne led 
 The choral revels of the Bacchic crew ; 
 
 Or wakes the lute-strings with ^Eolian quill 
 To music worthy of the immortal Nine, 
 
 And challenges renowned Corinna's skill, 
 And rates her own above Erinna's line." C.
 
 150 PROPERTIUS. 
 
 The quatrains above quoted express the two-fold 
 charm of intellectual and physical grace, and, with 
 lover-like caution, weigh warily the preponderance of 
 compliment to either side of the balance. If Cynthia's 
 dancing is graceful as Ariadne's, and her music recalls 
 the chief female names in Greek lyric poetry, Pro- 
 pertius introduces a subtle and parenthetic make- 
 weight in praise of her exquisite complexion (which 
 he likens, after Anacreon and Virgil, to rose-leaves 
 in contact with milk, or " vermilion from Spain 
 on snow"), her flowing ringlets, and her star-like 
 eyes. Elsewhere he sings explicitly of her form and 
 figure: 
 
 " The yellow hair, the slender tapering hand, 
 The form and carriage as Jove's sister's, grand ; " D. 
 
 or again twits the winged god, Cupid, with the loss 
 to the world he will inflict if he smite him with his 
 arrows : 
 
 " If thou shouldst slay me, who is left to hymn 
 
 Thy glory, though the champion be but slight, 
 Who praises now her locks and fingers slim, 
 
 Her footfall soft, her eyes as dark as night ? " D. 
 
 "With these and many more hints for a portrait of his 
 lady-love, to be gleaned from Propertius's impassioned 
 description, it is no marvel that he was so plain-spoken 
 in declining solicitations of Maecenas to exchange 
 the elegy for the epic. To quote Mr Cranstoun on 
 this subject in his version of the first elegy of the 
 second book :
 
 CYNTHIA'S POET. . 151 
 
 " It is not from Calliope, nor is it from Apollo, 
 But from my own sweet lady-love my inspiration 
 springs. 
 
 If in resplendent purple robe of Cos my darling dresses, 
 I'll fill a portly volume with the Coan garment's praise : 
 
 Or if her truant tresses wreathe her forehead with caresses, 
 The tresses of her queenly brow demand her poet's lays. 
 
 Or if, perchance, she strike the speaking lyre with ivory 
 
 fingers, 
 
 I marvel how those nimble fingers run the chords along ; 
 Or if above her slumber-drooping eyes a shadow lingers, 
 My tranced mind is sure to find a thousand themes of 
 song. 
 
 Or if for love's delightful strife repose awhile be broken, 
 Oh ! I could write an Iliad of our sallies and alarms ; 
 
 If anything at all she's done if any word she's spoken 
 From out of nothing rise at once innumerable charms." 
 
 A charmer with so perfect a tout ensemble was cer- 
 tain to command the passionate admiration of so 
 inflammable a lover ; and hence the history of his 
 erotic poetry consists in an alternation of his rap- 
 tures, his remonstrances, his despairs, according as 
 Cynthia was kind, or volatile, or cruel. And to tell 
 the truth, a lover of Cynthia could have had little 
 smooth sailing on a sea where the winds of jealousy 
 were evermore rising to a hurricane. He may not 
 have been worthy of ideal fidelity, but certainly from 
 the traits we have of Cynthia's faulty character, she 
 must have given her bard and lover only too much 
 cause for uneasiness. Fitful in her fancies, alike jeal- 
 ous and inconstant, she was expensive in her tastes,
 
 152 PROPERT1US 
 
 extravagant in her addiction to dress, unguents, and 
 ornaments ; and a victim to the indulgence of the 
 wine-cup, though the poet does not seem to have 
 found so much fault with this, as with her partiality 
 for the foreign worship of Isis, for which it will be 
 recollected that Delia also had a weakness. All these 
 proclivities suggest the costliness of such a union as 
 that which, as far as we can judge, subsisted between 
 Propertius and Cynthia, not a union recognised by 
 law, but a connection occupying the borderland be- 
 tween recognised respectability and open vice. Whilst 
 a touching elegy (II. vii.) congratulates Cynthia on 
 the throwing out or postponement of a law which 
 would have obliged Propertius to take a wife and to 
 desert his mistress, it is obvious that he enjoyed his 
 immunity at a very costly price, to say nothing of her 
 keen eye to the main chance, which made him justly 
 fearful of the approach of richer admirers. Mr Crans- 
 toun infers from the twentieth elegy of the fourth 
 book "that a marriage of some sort existed between 
 Propertius and Cynthia, in which the rights and 
 duties of the contracting parties were laid down and 
 ratified;" and doubtless such compacts were really 
 made at Eome, even where, as in this case, legal matri- 
 mony was out of the question. But the bond was of a 
 shifting and elastic nature ; and if Propertius hugged 
 his chain, it must have been with a grim sense at 
 times of the cost and disquiet which it entailed upon 
 him. Cynthia was dressy and extravagant, and if 
 she took the air, loved to tire her hair in the newest 
 fashion, wear the diaphanous silk fabrics of Cos, and
 
 CYNTHIA'S POET. 153 
 
 to indulge in perfumes from the banks of the Syrian 
 Orontes. Her poet perhaps may have had a doubt 
 whether these adornments were all for his single sake, 
 and this may have given a point to the praises of 
 simplicity and beauty unadorned, which in several 
 elegies gem his poetry. Thus in El. ii, B. I. : 
 
 u With purchased gauds why mar thy native grace, 
 
 Nor let thy form on its own charms depend ? 
 No borrowed arts can mend thy beauteous face : 
 
 No artist's skill will naked Love befriend. 
 See of all hues the winsome earth upsends, 
 
 How ivy with no training blooms the best ! 
 How rarest grace and growth the arbute blends 
 
 In mountain dells remotest, loneliest ! 
 And streams that glide in wild unstudied ways, 
 
 And shores with native pebbles glistering, 
 Outvie the attempts of art : no tutored lays 
 
 Sound half so sweet as wild bird's carolling." D. 
 
 It is indeed hardly to be wondered that poetry ot 
 so didactic a strain had slight influence upon a lady 
 of Cynthia's proclivities. Whilst there were others, 
 if Propertius failed her, who, if they could not dower 
 her with song or elegy, had purse-strings to relax at 
 her bidding, when 
 
 a For fan a peacock's tail she now demands, 
 Now asks a crystal ball to cool her hands ; 
 Begs me, grown wroth, to cheapen ivory dice, 
 And Sacra Via's glittering trash " 
 
 and were fain to win her smiles by lavish presents 
 from the fancy-ware shops of that frequented lounge,
 
 154 PROPERTIUS. 
 
 it was labour lost in the poet to preach to one, who 
 weighed her lovers "by their purses, of Eomulean sim- 
 plicity, or to sigh 
 
 " Would none were rich in Rome, and Caesar's self 
 Could be content in straw-built hut to dwell ! 
 Our girls would then ne'er barter charms for pelf, 
 But every home of hoar} 1 - virtue tell." 
 
 (III. vii.) CL 
 
 Yet he could not forbear to address her ever and anon 
 in verses, now complimentary, now spiteful, and not 
 seldom a mixture of both in pretty equal proportions. 
 One of his complaints against her is that she dyes 
 her hair and paints her face ; for which causes, in an 
 exaggerated strain of fault-finding, he likens her to 
 the " woad-stained Britons."* Where in the same 
 passage he vows vengeance against those "who dye 
 their own or wear another's hair," he testifies to the 
 prevalence of a mistaken resort to hair-dyes on the 
 part of the fair sex in all ages, as well as, we may 
 add, to the consensus of the lords of the creation 
 against such disfigurement of nature's gifts ; yet it is 
 just possible, from several hints here and there in the 
 Elegies, that Cynthia was driven by the inroads oi 
 time to these resorts. According to one reading of 
 El. xxiv. 6 in the third book, her poet represents 
 her as " treading with aging foot the Appian Way ; " 
 and there are several other passages which render it 
 probable that she was older than Propertius, whom 
 we know that she predeceased : if so, it was in 
 
 * III. ix. 6
 
 CYNTHIA'S POET. 155 
 
 keeping with her character and avocations that she 
 should repair the ravages of time, and seek to disguise 
 her grey hairs and her crow's-feet. Whatever her 
 years, however, her spell must have been more than 
 commonly lasting; for seldom have a lover's verses 
 recorded so many and diverse endeavours to win, 
 retain, or recover his mistress's good graces, as the 
 first four books of the Elegies of Propertius. And 
 this in spite of several drawbacks which usually 
 estrange or impair love. Though he had saws and 
 instances by the score to quote against the abuse of 
 wine, Cynthia is an exception to the general rule : 
 
 " Though beauty fades, and life is wrecked by wine, 
 
 Though wine will make a girl her love forget, 
 Ah ! how unchanged by cups this maid of mine ! 
 Unspoilt 1 unhurt ! drink on, thou'rt beauteous yet ! 
 
 Whilst low thy garments droop towards the bowl, 
 And with unsteady voice thou reod'st my lay, 
 
 Still may the ripe Falernian glad thy soul, 
 And froth in chalice mellower every day." 
 
 (III. xxv.) D. 
 
 Though he is ever more or less a prey to jealousy 
 not without foundations, and suffers no slight pangs 
 from stumbling upon her in company with those 
 convenient " cousins " whom all flirts from time im- 
 memorial have " loved in a sisterly way " 
 
 " Sham cousins often come, and kiss thee too, 
 As cousins always have a right to do ; " 
 
 (II. vi. 7, 8.)
 
 156 PROPERTIES. 
 
 or, worse still, from learning that he is excluded for 
 the sake of a rich and stupid praetor from Illyria, of 
 whom he writes 
 
 " From the Illyrian land the other day 
 
 Your friend the praetor has returned, I learn, 
 To you a fruitful source of welcome prey, 
 To me of inexpressible concern. 
 
 Yet reap the proffered harvest, if you're wise 
 And fleece, while thick his wool, the silly sheep ; 
 
 And when at last in beggary he lies, 
 
 For new Illyrias bid him cross the deep " 
 
 (III. vii.) C. 
 
 in spite of these provoking rebuffs and infidelities, the 
 poet still courts and sighs for his inconstant charmer ; 
 and whether she be near or far, follows her in fancy and 
 with the breath of cultivated song. Allowance must 
 of course be made for the change of winds in the 
 course of a love which could not be said even by 
 courtesy to run smooth. It is a rare phenomenon to 
 find Propertius in such bliss and rapture as the fol- 
 lowing lines betoken : 
 
 " With me if Cynthia sink in longed-for sleep, 
 Or spend the livelong day in dalliance fain, 
 I see Pactolus' waters round me sweep, 
 And gather jewels from the Indian main. 
 
 My joys then teach me kings must yield to me ; 
 
 May these abide till Fate shall close my day ! 
 Who cares for wealth, if love still adverse be ? 
 
 If Venus frown, be riches far away ! "
 
 CYNTHIA'S POET. 157 
 
 Much oftener he is (if we are to believe him, aud not 
 to set dovn his desperate threats and bemoanings to 
 an appeal for pity) on the eve of a voyage, to put 
 the sea between himself and the faithless one. There 
 is strong reason to suspect that these voyages never 
 came off, and that the poet's lively pictures of ship- 
 wreck were drawn from imagination rather than ex- 
 perience. But it was a telling appeal to herald his 
 departure, picture his perils, and reproach the fair 
 one with her indifference : 
 
 As airily thou trimm'st thy locks as thou didst yester- 
 
 morn, 
 
 And leisurely with tireless hands thy person dost 
 adorn ;" 
 
 and not less effective to return to the subject, after 
 the supposed disaster had occurred, with a slight in- 
 fusion of generous blame towards himself. There 
 would have been infinite pathos in the elegy which 
 follows, if only it had been founded on facts. But 
 it was a dissuasive to Cynthia's fickleness, not the 
 description of a fait accompli ; 
 
 " Rightly I'm served, who had the heart to fly ! 
 
 To the lone halcyons here I make my moan : 
 Nor shall my keel its wonted port draw nigh 
 Adrift on thankless shore my vows are thrown. 
 
 Nay, more! the adverse winds espouse thy side! 
 
 Lo ! in rude gusts how fiercely chides the gale! 
 Will no sweet Peace o'er yon wild tempest ride ? 
 
 Must these few sauds to hide my corpse avail /
 
 158 PROPERTIUS. 
 
 Nay, change thy harsh complaints for milder tones .' 
 Let night on yonder shoals my pardon buy. 
 
 Thou wilt not brook to leave unurned my bones : 
 Thou wilt not face my loss with tearless eye. 
 
 Ah ! perish he who first with raft and sail 
 The whirlpools of a hostile deep essayed ! 
 
 Liefer I'd let my Cynthia's whims prevail, 
 And tarried with a hard, yet matchless, maid 
 
 Than scan a shore with unknown forests girt, 
 
 And strain mine eyes the welcome Twins to sight. 
 
 At home had Fate but stilled my bosom's hurt, 
 And one last stone o'er buried love lain light, 
 
 She should have shorn her tresses o'er my tomb, 
 And laid my bones to rest on cushioned rose, 
 
 Called the dear name above the dust of doom, 
 And bade me 'neath the sod uncrushed repose. 
 
 Daughters of Doris, tenants of the deep, 
 Unfurl the white sail with propitious hand ; 
 
 If e'er sly Love did 'neath your waters creep, 
 Oh ! grant a fellow-slave a kindly strand." 
 
 (I. xvii.) D. 
 
 Perhaps upon the principle of omne ignotum pro 
 magnifico, the theme of shipwreck was a favourite one 
 with Propertius, who elsewhere vouchsafes to Cynthia 
 an elegy depicting his dream of such a fate betiding 
 her in the Ionian sea : 
 
 " Thy vessel's shivered timbers round thee strewn, 
 Thy weary hands for succour upward thrown, 
 Confessing all the falsehoods thou hadst told, 
 While o'er thy matted hair the waters rolled."
 
 CYNTHIA'S POET. 159 
 
 It will be seen in the third line that he was not 
 above administering a covert reproof in the midst 
 of poetic compliments ; but the latter certainly pre- 
 dominate, as he declares that in her extremity, as it 
 seemed, he often feared lest 
 
 " In the Cynthian sea, 
 Sailors should tell thy tale, and weep for thee ; " 
 
 and lest, if Glaucus had beheld her bright eyes as she 
 sued for help 
 
 " The Ionian sea had hailed another queen, 
 And jealous Nereids would be chiding thee, 
 Nisoea fair, and green Cymothoe." 
 
 The dream, says the poet, became so painful, that ho 
 awoke amidst the imaginary operation of taking a 
 header. But in his waking thoughts, and in con- 
 templation of a real voyage, he volunteers to bear her 
 company, witli protestations that 
 
 " If only from mine eyes she never turn, 
 Jove with his blazing bolt our ship may burn : 
 Naked, we'll toss upon the self-same shore 
 The wave may waft me, if thou'rt covered o'er." 
 
 (III. xviii.) C. 
 
 In another elegy of the same book we learn that her 
 poet clearly believed that his mistress's destiny after 
 such a catastrophe would be that of a goddess or a 
 heroine. When an autumn and winter at Home had 
 endangered her life with malaria, he contemplates her 
 apotheosis with the satisfaction of thinking of the com- 
 pany she will hereafter keep :
 
 1GO PROPERTIUS. 
 
 " Thou'lt talk to Semele of beauty's bane, 
 
 Who by experience taught will trust thy tale ; 
 Queen-crowned 'mid Homer's heroines thou'lt reign, 
 Nor one thy proud prerogative assail." 
 
 (III. xx.) 
 
 On the whole, the round of topics of which Proper- 
 tius avails himself for the poetic service of his lady- 
 love is extensive enough to furnish the most assiduous 
 lover's vade-mecum. He has songs for her going 
 out and coming in. He has serenades for her door at 
 Borne, which remind us of the famous Irish lover ; he 
 has soliloquies on her cruelty, addressed to the winds, 
 and woods, and forest-birds ; he has appeals from a 
 sick-bed, and the near prospect of death, out of which 
 he anon recovers, and proposes, after the manner of 
 lovers in all time 
 
 " Then let us pluck life's roses while we may, 
 Love's longest term flits all too fast away." 
 
 (I. xix. 25.) 
 
 And there is one elegy in which he descends to threats 
 of suicide, and another where he gives directions 
 for his funeral, and prescribes the style and wording 
 of his epitaph : 
 
 " On my cold lips be thy last kisses prest, 
 
 While fragrant Syrian nard one box thou'lt burn ; 
 And when the blazing pile has done the rest, 
 Consign my relics to one little urn. 
 
 Plant o'er the hallowed spot the dark-green bay, 
 To shade my tomb, and these two lines engrave : 
 
 Here, loathsome ashes, lies the bard to-day, 
 Who of one love was aye the faithful slave." (III. iv.)
 
 CYNTHIA'S POET. 161 
 
 More amusing, perhaps, than most of his expressions 
 cf poetic solicitude for this volatile flame of his, is the 
 elegy he indites to her, when she has taken it into her 
 head to run down to the fashionable watering-place of 
 Baiae, where his jealousy no doubt saw rocks ahead, 
 though he is careful to disown any suspicions as to 
 her conduct, and only urges in general terms that the 
 place is dangerous. Here is his delicate caution in the 
 eleventh elegy of the first book : 
 
 " When thou to lounge 'mid Baiao's haunts art fain, 
 
 Near road first tracked by toiling Hercules, 
 Admiring now Thesprotus' old domain, 
 
 Now famed Misenum, hanging o'er the seas; 
 
 Say, dost thou care for me, who watch alone ? 
 
 In thy love's corner hast thou room to spare ? 
 Or have my lays from thy remembrance flown, 
 . ' Some treacherous stranger finding harbour there ? 
 
 Rather I'd deem that, trusting tiny oar, 
 
 Thou guidest slender skiff in Lucrine wave ; 
 
 Or in a sheltered creek, by Tenthras' shore, 
 Dost cleave thy bath, as in lone ocean cave, 
 
 Than for seductive whispers leisure find, 
 
 Reclining softly on the silent sand, 
 And mutual gods clean banish from thy mind, 
 
 AB flirt is wont, no chaperon near at hand. 
 
 I know, of course, thy blameless character, 
 
 Yet in thy fond behalf all court I fear. 
 Ah ! pardon if my verse thy choler stir, 
 
 Blame but my jealous care for one so dear. 
 A.C.S.S., vol. iii. L
 
 162 PROPERTIU&. 
 
 Mother and life beneath thy love I prize, 
 
 Cynthia to me is home, relations, bliss ; 
 Come I to friends with bright or downcast eyes 
 
 'Tis Cynthia's mood is the sole cause of this. 
 
 Ah ! let her, then, loose Baise's snares eschew 
 Oft from its gay parades do quarrels spring, 
 
 And shores that oft have made true love untrue : 
 A curse on them, for lovers' hearts they wring." D. 
 
 In contrast to his disquietude at her sojourn, by the 
 seaside should be read his calmer contemplation of 
 her proposal to rusticate in the country a poem which 
 evinces an exceptional appreciation of the beauties of 
 nature, to say nothing of a rare vein of tenderness. 
 Here she is out of the way of tempters and beguilers 
 by day and by night, afar from fashionable resorts, and 
 the fanes and rites which cloak so many intrigues : 
 
 " Sweet incense in rude cell thou'lt burn, and see 
 
 A kid before the rustic altar fall ; 
 With naked ankle trip it on the lea, 
 
 Safe from the strange and prying eyes of alL 
 
 I'll seek the chase : my eager soul delights 
 
 To enter on Diana's service now. 
 Awhile I must abandon Venus' rites, 
 
 And pay to Artemis the bounden vow. 
 
 I'll track the deer : aloft on pine-tree boughs 
 The antlers hang, and urge the daring hound ; 
 
 Yet no huge lion in his lair I'll rouse, 
 
 Nor 'gainst the boar with rapid onset bound. 
 
 My prowess be to trap the timid hare, 
 
 And with the winged arrow pierce the bird, 
 
 Where sweet Clitumnus hides its waters fair, 
 
 'Neath mantling shades, and laves the snow-white herd."
 
 CYNTHIA'S POET. 163 
 
 Yet even into this quiet picture creeps the alloy of 
 jealousy. The poet concludes his brief idyll with a 
 note of misgiving : 
 
 " My life, remember thou in all thy schemes, 
 I'll come to thee ere many days be o'er ; 
 But neither shall the lonely woods and streams, 
 That down the mossy crags meandering pour, 
 
 Have power to charm away the jealous pain 
 That makes my restless tongue for ever run 
 
 'Tween thy sweet name and this love-bitter strain : 
 ' None but would wish to harm the absent one.' " 
 
 (III. x.) C. 
 
 Without professing to note the stages of Propertius's 
 cooling process a process bound to begin sooner or 
 later with such flames as that which Cynthia inspired 
 we cannot but foresee it in his blushing to be 
 the slave of a coquette, in his twitting her with her 
 age and wrinkles, nay, even in the bitterness with 
 which he reminds her that one of her lovers, Panthus, 
 has broken loose from her toils, and commenced a 
 lasting bond with a lawful wife. According to Mr 
 Cranstoun's calculation, the attachment between Pro- 
 pertius and Cynthia began in the summer of B.C. 30, 
 and lasted, with one or more serious interruptions, for 
 five years. The first book which be dignified with 
 her name, was published in the middle of B.O. 28. 
 The others, and among them the fourth, which records 
 the decline of the poet's affections, were left unfinished 
 at his death. In the last two elegies of the fourth 
 book, it is simply painful to read the bitter palinodes
 
 164 PROPERTIUS. 
 
 addressed to her whom he had so belauded. He .8 
 not ashamed to own that 
 
 " Though thine was ne'er, Love knows, a pretty face, 
 In thee I lauded every various grace " 
 
 and to declare his emancipation in the language of 
 metaphor : 
 
 " Tired of the raging sea, I'm getting sane, 
 And my old scars are quite skin-whole again." 
 
 (IV. xxiv.) 
 
 And one sees rupture imminent when he indites such 
 taunting words as follow : 
 
 " At hoard and banquet have I been a jest, 
 
 And whoso chose might point a gibe at me ; 
 Full five years didst thou my staunch service test, 
 Now shalt thou bite thy nails to find me free. 
 
 I mind not tears unmoved by trick so stale ; 
 
 Cynthia, thy tears from artful motives flow ; 
 I weep to part, but wrongs o'er sobs prevail ; 
 
 'Tis thou hast dealt love's yoke its crushing blow. 
 
 Threshold, adieu, that pitied my distress, 
 
 And door that took no hurt from angered hand ; 
 
 But thee, false woman, may the inroads press 
 
 Of years, whose wrack in vain wilt thou withstand. 
 
 Ay, seek to pluck the hoar hairs from their root ; 
 Lo, how the mirror chides thy wrinkled face ! 
 
 Now is thy turn to reap pride's bitter fruit, 
 And find thyself in the despised one's place : 
 
 Thrust out, in turn, to realise disdain, 
 
 And, what thou didst in bloom, when sere lament : 
 Such doom to thee foretells my fateful strain ; 
 
 Hear, then, and fear, thy beauty's punishment." 
 
 (IV. 25.) D.
 
 CYNTHIA'S POET. 165 
 
 After this, one should have said there was scant open- 
 ing for reconciliation ; yet Mr Cranstoun, with some 
 probability, adduces the seventh elegy of the last book 
 in proof that Cynthia, if separated at all, must have 
 been reunited to her poet before her death. In it 
 Propertius represents himself as visited in the night- 
 season by Cynthia's ghost, so lately laid to rest beside 
 the murmuring Anio, and at the extremity of the 
 Tiburtine Way, as the manner of the Romans was to 
 bury. Whether he was in a penitent frame there 
 might be some doubt, if the ghost's means of informa- 
 tion were correct ; but certainly his testimony with 
 regard to her 
 
 " That same fair hair had she, when first she died ; 
 Those eyes though scorched the tunic on her side " 
 
 points to his presence at her death and obsequies, and, 
 presumably, to his reconciliation, prior to that event. 
 Not, indeed, that the ghost's upbraidings testify to 
 much care or tenderness, on her lover's part, before or 
 after. She hints that she was poisoned by her slave 
 Lygdamus, and that Propertius neither stayed her 
 parting breath, nor wept over her bier : 
 
 " You might have bid the rest less haste to show, 
 If through the city gates you feared to go." 
 
 liut the truth was, another and a more vulgar mistress 
 had stepped into her place : 
 
 "One for small hire who plied her nightly trade, 
 Now sweeps the ground, in spangled shawl arrayed, 
 And each poor girl who dares my face to praise, 
 With double task of wool-work she repays.
 
 166 PROPERTIUS. 
 
 My poor old Petale, who used to bring 
 
 Wreaths to my tomb, is tied with clog and ring. 
 
 Should Lalage to ask a favour dare, 
 
 In Cynthia's name, she's flogged with whips of hair : 
 
 My gold-set portrait well the theft you knew, 
 
 An ill-starred dowry from my pyre she drew." 
 
 To cruelty towards her predecessor's servants the 
 now mistress has added, it seems, the appropriation of 
 her gold brooch. As Mr Cranstoun acutely notes, 
 Cynthia must have died under Propertius's roof, or 
 care, for him to have had the disposal of her personal 
 ornaments ; and the inference is that death aione, as 
 the poet had often vowed in the days of his early devo- 
 tion, finally and effectually severed a union so famous 
 in song. Even the ghost, whose apparition and whose 
 claims on her surviving lover we have given from Mr 
 Paley's version of the fifth book, seems to rely upon 
 an influence over him not quite extinct, where she 
 enjoins him 
 
 " Clear from my tomb the ivy, which in chains 
 Of straggling stems my gentle bones retains. 
 Where orchards drip with Anio's misty dew, 
 And sulphur springs preserve the ivory's hue, 
 Write a brief verse, that travellers may read, 
 As past my tombstone on their way they speed, 
 ' In Tibur's earth here golden Cynthia lies ; 
 Thy banks, O Anio, all the more we prize.' " 
 
 (V. vii.) P. 
 
 And she vanishes with a fond assurance that, who- 
 ever may fill her place now, in a short time both will 
 be together, and "his bones shall chafe beside her
 
 CYXTHIA'S POET. 167 
 
 bones." "We have slight data as to the fulfilment of 
 this prophecy none, in fact, except the tradition of 
 his early death. It is pleasant to assume that his 
 latter years were free from the distractions, heart-aches, 
 and recklessness of his youth, and that, as time sped, 
 he wrapt himself more and more in the cultivation 
 of loftier themes of song, inspired by stirring history 
 and divine philosophy. And- yet, the world of song 
 would have lost no little had Cynthia's charms not 
 bidden him attune his lyre to erotic subjects, and taught 
 him how powerful "for the delineation of the master- 
 passion in its various phases of tenderness, ecstasy, 
 grief, jealousy, and despair, was the elegiac instrument, 
 which he wielded with a force, earnestness, pathos, 
 and originality most entirely his own."
 
 CHAPTER TIL 
 
 PROPEETIUS AS A SINGER OP NATIONAL ANNALS 
 AND BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 IN the ninth elegy of the fourth book, Propertius had 
 promised, under the guidance and example of Maecenas, 
 to dedicate his Muse to grander and more national 
 themes. He had encouraged the hope that he would 
 some day 
 
 " Sing lofty Palatine where browsed the steer 
 
 Rome's battlements made strong through Remus slain 
 
 The royal Twins the she- wolf came to rear 
 And loftier themes than these, shouldst thou ordain : 
 
 I'll sing our triumphs won in East and "West, ' 
 The Parthian shafts back-showered in foul retreat, 
 
 Pelusium's forts by Roman steel opprest, 
 And Antony's self-murder in defeat :" C. 
 
 and that hope he appears to have satisfied in the latter 
 years of his life by re-editing some of his earlier Roman 
 poems, and enlarging the list of them by added elegies. 
 In the first half 'of the first elegy of his last book 
 appears a sort of proem to a volume of Roman ' Fasti,' 
 to which were to belong such elegies as " Vertumnus,"
 
 NATIONAL ANNALS AND BIOGRAPHY. 169 
 
 "Tarpeia," the "Ara Maxima" of Hercules, and the 
 "Legend of Jupiter Feretrius," and the " Spolia Opima," 
 as well as such stirring later ballads of the empire in 
 embryo as the " Battle of Actium." It would seem 
 that the poet was either disinclined for his task or 
 dissatisfied with his success ; for it is probable that 
 most of those we have enumerated are but revised 
 and retouched copies of earlier work, whilst the gems 
 of the book, " Arethuse to Lycotas " and " Cornelia," 
 are in another vein, of another stamp, and, as it seems 
 to us, of a more mellow and perfect finish. That 
 Propertius never approached the task of historic elegy 
 with his whole heart, or even with the liveliness 
 nd versatility with which Ovid afterwards handled 
 kindred topics in his ' Fasti,' peeps out from the ab- 
 rupt cutting short of the " Early History of Home " in 
 the first elegy, and the supplement to it in a wholly 
 different vein, where we are introduced to a Babylonian 
 seer, and made acquainted with several data of the 
 poet's personal history. The earlier portion has been 
 ascribed to the period before his connection with 
 Cynthia : the latter, which is not now to our purpose, 
 belongs to his later revision-period. Perhaps it was 
 the grandness of the programme that eventually con- 
 vinced him of its intractability; yet nope can regret 
 that the poet did not burn the half-dozen proofs of 
 what ho might have achieved as a poetic annalist or 
 legend-weaver. To take for example the first elegy 
 from the version of Mr Paley, who in these Iloman 
 elegies is/always accurate and often not unpoetical 
 there it fancy aiftl picturesqueness in the description
 
 170 PROPERTIUS. 
 
 of the olden abode of the founders of Rome on the 
 Palatine, which was twice burnt in the reign of Augus- 
 tus, but the commemoration of which was dear to the 
 powers that were in Propertius's day : 
 
 "Where on steps above the valley Remus' cottage rises 
 
 high, 
 
 Brothers twain one hearthstone made a mighty principality. 
 By that pile, where now the senate sits in bordered robes 
 
 arrayed, 
 Once a band of skin -clad fathers, clownish minds, their 
 
 council made. 
 Warned by notes of shepherd's bugle there the old Quirites 
 
 met ; 
 Many a time that chosen hundred congress held in meadows 
 
 wet. 
 O'er the theatre's wide bosom then no flapping awning 
 
 swung ; 
 O'er the stage no saffron essence cool and grateful fragrance 
 
 flung. 
 None cared then for rites external, none did foreign gods 
 
 import, 
 
 Native sacrifice the simple folk in fear and trembling sought. 
 No Parilia then the people kept with heaps of lighted hay, 
 Now with horse's blood we render lustral rites of yesterday." 
 
 (V. i. 10-20.) 
 
 The Parilia, or Palilia, were the rural festival already 
 described in the third chapter of the sketch of Tibullus 
 (p. 126), and a contrast is intended here between the 
 rude bonfire of early days and the later lustration, for 
 which the blood of the October horse was de rkgle. 
 The poet proceeds to surround early Rome with all 
 the proud vaunts of its legendary history its Dardan 
 origin, its accretions from the Sabine warriors and
 
 NATIONAL ANNALS AND BIOGRAPHY. 171 
 
 Tuscan settlers, its glory in the legend of the she- 
 wolf: 
 
 "Nought beyond the name to Roman nursling from his 
 
 kin remains : 
 Save that from the wolf that reared him wolfish blood he 
 
 still retains" 
 
 a sentiment which Lord Macaulay embodies in his 
 " Prophecy of Capys:" 
 
 * But thy nurse will bear no master, 
 
 Thy nurse will bear no load, 
 
 And woe to them that shear her, 
 
 And woe to them that goad ! 
 
 When all the pack, loud baying, 
 
 Her bloody lair surrounds, 
 She dies in silence, biting hard, 
 
 Amid the dying hounds." 
 
 The historic part of the elegy closes with a fine rhap- 
 sody, in which its author aspires to the glories of a 
 nobler Ennius, and repeats his less ambitious claim to 
 rank as the Roman Callimachus. In the second elegy 
 of this book, Vertumnus, the god of the changing year, 
 is introduced to correct wrong notions as to his name, 
 functions, and mythology, with an evident penchant 
 for that infant etymology which is so marked a feature 
 in the ' Fasti' of Ovid. In the fourth a most beauti- 
 ful and finished elegy the love-story of Tarpeia, if an 
 early poem, has been so retouched as to make us regret 
 that Propertius had not resolution to go on witli his 
 rivalry of " father" Ennius. It opens with a descrip- 
 tion of the wooded dell of the Capitolino hill, beneath'
 
 172 PROPERTIES. 
 
 the Tarpeian rock where, to the native fancy, La 
 belle Tarpeia still is to be seen at intervals, bedecked 
 with gold and jewels, and dreaming of the Sabine 
 leader for whose love she was content to prove trai- 
 tress. To a stream or fountain which it enclosed she 
 had been wont to repair to draw water for Vesta's 
 service, and thence chanced to espy Titus Tatius, the 
 Sabine leader, engaged in martial exercises. With 
 no sordid thirst of gold, as the Tarpeia of Livy, but 
 smitten by the kingly form, the maiden lets Vesta's 
 fire go out in her preoccupied dreams : 
 
 " Oft now the guiltless moon dire omens gave, 
 Oft to the spring she stole her locks to lave : 
 Oft silver lilies to the nymphs she bare, 
 That Koman spear that handsome face might spare:" 
 
 and so often did she brood and soliloquise over her 
 comely knight, that at last her scheme of treachery 
 took form and substance, and the rural festival, which 
 was Eome's founder's holiday, - afforded meet oppor- 
 tunity for her betrayal of the city by the secret postern, 
 from which she found daily egress : 
 
 " To slack the watch the chief his guards had told, 
 The trump to cease, the camp repose to hold. 
 Their time is hers : Tarpeia seeks the foe, 
 The contract binds, herself the road to show. 
 The ascent was hard, the feasters feared no fraud, 
 The barking dogs are silenced by the sword : 
 Fatigue and wine brought slumber : Jove alone 
 Wakes that the traitress may her crime atone. 
 The gate is opened, passed ; the fort betrayed ; 
 The day of marriage chosen by the maid.
 
 NATIONAL ANNALS AND BIOGRAPHY. 173 
 
 But Rome's proud foeman is by honour led : 
 ' Marry,' he cried, ' climb thus my royal bed ! ' 
 He spoke : his comrades' shields upon her thrown, 
 She sank o'erwhelmed meet treachery for her own. 
 From him, the sire, the rock received its name : 
 He lost a daughter, but he gained a fame." 
 
 (V. iv. ad fin.) P. 
 
 Treachery akin to Tarpeia's is familiar to the readers 
 of the legends of many lands ; and there is in the 
 Norman-French legend of "Fulk Fitzwarin" in our 
 own chronicles an account of the capture of Ludlow 
 Castle, or Dynan, through the treachery of one 
 Marion de la Bruere, who was led to it by a secret 
 passion for a captive knight, Sir Ernald de Lisle.* 
 
 We must barely glance at the two poems in which 
 Propertius, with the same eye to early topography and 
 to explanatory etymology, recounts the legends of 
 Hercules and Cacus, and the origin of the title of 
 Jupiter Feretrius. The former poem has a fine par- 
 all-l in the eighth book of the ' ^Eneid ; ' the latter 
 strikes the reader as an early effort of the poet, which 
 would scarcely have been missed if it had not sur- 
 vived. With the foundation by Hercules of the Ara 
 Maxima after his punishment of Cacus for stealing the 
 oxen of Geryon, he connects the low part of the city 
 called the Velabrum (where he and his oxen rested, 
 and near which Cacus plied his nefarious trade), 
 through the sails (vela) which the first inhabitants 
 used to navigate the swamp. The so-called Forum 
 
 * Se Chronicle of Ralph de Coggesluill, p. 275 d eq. Master 
 of the Rolls' Series.
 
 174 PROPERTIVS. 
 
 Boarium of local topography is referred to the lowing 
 herds in the verses : 
 
 "My oxen, go, my club's last toil, 
 Twice sought for, twice the victor's spoil. 
 Give tongue, my beeves, the sounds prolong : 
 Hence men shall celebrate in song, 
 For memory of my matchless might, 
 The Forum from ox-pastures hight." 
 
 (V. ix. 15-20.) P. 
 
 And the refusal of the maidens of the cell and spring 
 of the Bona Dea to admit Hercules to approach, when 
 athirst, the precincts which no male might enter under 
 pain of blindness, is made the immediate cause of his 
 dedicating a mighty altar, turning the tables on the 
 other sex, and serving by its consecration to com- 
 memorate the hero's Sabine title of " Sancus." 
 
 It may be a fair question whether these learned ety- 
 mologies are as attractive an element in Propertius's 
 poetry as the phases of his love, or the praises of 
 Maecenas and Augustus, to say nothing of the laments 
 over Psetus and young Marcellus. Of the same fibre 
 as these last-named elegies is the " Battle of Actium," 
 in the fifth book, a sort of Epinician poem of a date 
 near the end of our poet's life, on the occasion of the 
 quinquennial Actian games established by Augustus. 
 As if in act to sacrifice, the poet assumes the functions 
 of a priest, and prefaces his song of triumph with all 
 the concomitant ceremonies which Callimachus intro- 
 duces into his hymns. Our quotation shall be taken 
 from Mr Paley's translation when it is fairly launched, 
 a sample of descriptive poetry of high merit :
 
 NATIONAL ANNALS AND BIOGRAPHY. 175 
 
 "A gulf called Phoebus' Bay retires on Athamaniau 
 
 shores 
 Where pent within the Ionian wave no longer chafes and 
 
 roars. 
 Here memories meet of Julian fleet, of deeds at Actium 
 
 done, 
 
 Of safe and easy entrance oft by sailors' offerings won. 
 'Twas here the world's vast armies met ; the pine-built 
 
 galleys tall 
 
 Seemed rooted in the sea, but not one fortune favoured all. 
 The one Quirinus, Troy-born god, had with his curse 
 
 pursued, 
 Nor brooked the thought of llonian fleets by woman's 
 
 lance subdued. 
 On that side Caesar's fleet, the sails well filled with breezes 
 
 free, 
 
 And standards that in many a fight had flown victoriously. 
 Moved now the fleets, in crescents twain, by Nereus' self 
 
 arrayed : 
 The sheen of arms upon the waves in dimpling flashes 
 
 played. 
 Then Phoebus from his Delos came, and bade it wait 
 
 awhile 
 Nor dare to move : for angry winds once bore that floating 
 
 isle. 
 
 On Caesar's ship astern he stood, and ever and anon 
 A wondrous sight, a wavy light as from a torch there 
 
 shone. 
 No flowing locks adown his neck the vengeful god had 
 
 brought, 
 Nor on the shell to wake the spell of peaceful music 
 
 sought, 
 But as with looks of death he glared on that Pelopid 
 
 king, 
 And caused the Greeks their dead in heaps on greedy pyre* 
 
 to fling ;
 
 176 PROPERTIUS. 
 
 Or when he scotched the Python-snake, and all the might 
 
 disarmed 
 Of those huge serpent coils, which erst the unwarlike 
 
 Muse alarmed." (V. vi. 15-36.) P. 
 
 Here, as in the address of Phoebus from the stern of 
 Augustus's galley, the poet is quickened to a fire and 
 enthusiasm which befits his subject, and of which the 
 accomplished scholar from whom we have quoted is not 
 insensible. In one line of it, the sentiment, 
 
 " It is the cause that overawes or lends the soldier might," 
 is an anticipation of Shakespeare's adagial lesson, 
 " Thrice is he armed that hath his quarrel just ;" 
 
 and the bard's conclusion takes the form of pervading 
 festivity, whilst it merely glances at the principal 
 military exploits of Augustus, and hints that he 
 should leave some " fields to conquer " to his sons. 
 
 Yet after the taste of this heroic vein already given, 
 it would be hard to part with Propertius upon ground 
 where there is little room for his rare gift of pathos. 
 And so two beautiful elegies which exhibit him at 
 his best, and in his tenderest mood, have been kept to 
 the last. The one is the letter of Arethuse to her hus- 
 band Lycotas on a campaign ; the other the imaginary 
 appeal of the dead Cornelia to her husband, Paullus. 
 The first is proof positive that Ovid does not deserve 
 the credit which he claims in his ' Art of Love ' of 
 having originated the style of poetry which we know 
 as Epistles ; and Ovid never wrote anything so really 
 pathetic and natural. Of both we are fortunate in 
 having free yet adequate translations in graceful verse
 
 NATIONAL ANNALS AND BIOGRAPHY. 177 
 
 by a late scholar and man of affairs and letters, Sir 
 Edmund W. Head, to which we give the preference 
 in presenting them to English readers. For "Are- 
 thuse to Lycotas" it has been suggested with pro- 
 bability that we might read in plain prose " JElia. 
 Galla to Postumus," since in the twelfth elegy of 
 the fourth book Propertius has addressed verses to 
 the latter on his leaving his wife for an expedition 
 against the Parthians. The question is unimportant. 
 It suffices that the love-letter in the fifth book is a 
 copy of the lorn bride's heart-pourings, very true to 
 nature in its struggle between the pride of a soldier's 
 wife and the love and jealous misgivings of a doting 
 woman : 
 
 " Men tell me that the glow of youthful sheen 
 
 No longer on thy pallid face they see : 
 I only pray such changes in thy mien 
 May mark the fond regret thou feel'st for me. 
 
 When twilight wanes and sinks in bitter night, 
 
 I kiss thy scattered arms, and restless lie, . 
 
 And toss complaining till the tardy light 
 
 Hath waked the birds that sing of morning nigh. 
 
 The scarlet fleece, when winter evenings close, 
 I wind on shuttles for thy warlike weeds ; 
 
 Or study in what course Araxes flows, 
 
 And how the Purthians press their hardy steeds. 
 
 I turn the map, and struggle hard to learn 
 
 Where God hath placed the land and where the sea, 
 
 What clinles are stiff with frost, what summers burn, 
 And guess what wind may waft thee home to me." 
 
 A.p.8.8., vol. iii. M
 
 178 PROPERTIUS. 
 
 The simple expression of her lonely days, and the 
 little lap-dog that whines for its master sharing her 
 hed by night, of her dread lest her lord should rashly 
 provoke some single combat with a barbarian chief, 
 and of her delight could she see him return safe, 
 triumphant, and heart-whole, are unmatched by any- 
 thing in Propertius, unless it be the elegy on the 
 premature death of Cornelia, in which she is supposed 
 by the poet to console her widower husband, -ZErnilius 
 Paullus, the censor and friend of Augustus. The 
 theme had elements of grandeur in Cornelia's ancestry 
 (she was daughter of P. Cornelius Scipio and Scrib- 
 onia), and in the vindication, as from the dead, of her 
 fair fame and due place among honoured elders, which 
 had seemingly been unjustly assailed. Cornelia died 
 in 16 B.C. ; and if the poet's death occurred in B.C. 15, 
 we may take this elegy, as it would be pleasant to do, 
 as his swan's song. It is not, like many poems of Pro- 
 pertius, prodigal of mythology and Roman annals, yet 
 it appeals to both with force and in season. Where 
 the speaker proclaims her blameless life and high 
 descent before the infernal judges, she opens with 
 the boast 
 
 " If any maid could vaunt her sires in Eome, 
 Ancestral fame was mine on either side : 
 For Spam and Carthage decked with spoil the home, 
 Where Scipio's blood was matched with Libo's pride." 
 
 E. W. H. 
 
 And afterwards she pleads her readiness to have sub- 
 jected her character and innocence to such tests as
 
 NATIONAL ANNALS AND BIOGRAPHY. 179 
 
 uhose of the famous Vestals, Claudia and Emilia (the 
 former the mover of a vessel that had foundered in 
 Tiber, the latter rekindler of Vesta's fire with her 
 linen robe), if it needed 
 
 "Judge or law to guide 
 One in whose veins the blood of all her race . 
 Swelled with the instinct of a conscious pride, 
 And bade maintain a Koman matron's place/ 
 
 In other stanzas breathes the distinctive pride of a 
 mother who has borne sons to inherit an ancient 
 lineage, and of a wife, who, even in death, has 
 cherished her ambition of winning honour. But the 
 climax of pathos is in the last verses, where she 
 addresses her husband and children in order : 
 
 " Be careful if thou e'er for me shalt weep 
 
 That they may never mark the tears thus shed : 
 Let it suffice thyself to mourn in sleep 
 The wife whose spirit hovers o'er thy bed : 
 
 Or in thy chamber, if thou wilt, aloud 
 Address that wife as if she could reply : 
 
 Dim not our children's joys with sorrow's cloud, 
 But dj#y the tear, and check the rising sigh ! 
 
 You too, my children, at your father's side 
 In after years a step-dame if you see, 
 
 Let no rash word offend her jealous pride, 
 Nor indiscreetly wound by praising me.. 
 
 Obey his will in all : and should he bear 
 
 In widowed solitude the ills of ajje, 
 Let it be yours to prop his steps with care, 
 
 And with your gentle love those woes assuage.
 
 180 PROPERTIU& 
 
 I lost no child : 'twas mine in death to see 
 Their faces clustered round : nor should I grieve 
 
 If but the span of life cut off from me 
 Could swell the years in store for those I leave." 
 
 E. W. H. 
 
 It is meet to part from Properties with this lay on his 
 lips, which might make us fain to believe what, in 
 truth, the facts and probabilities appear to forbid 
 the story of Pliny that, after Cynthia's death, the poet 
 contracted a lawful union, and transmitted to a lawful 
 issue the inheritance of his name and genius. It is 
 pretty certain that the poems to Cynthia are the chief 
 memorial and representatives of these ; and indeed 
 the sole, if we were to except the two exquisite poems 
 last quoted, one or two others to his patrOns, and 
 a song apropos of his " Lost Tablets." His compara- 
 tively early death allows us, by the light of a brief but 
 brilliant life, to conceive what he might have been. 
 His extant books, and the loving pains bestowed on 
 them by commentators and translators, have been of 
 use in picturing, in some measure, the man and the 
 poet as he was. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 643
 
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