Catullus, Tibullus, and Propertius/Chapter 3
CHAPTER III.
CATULLUS BEFORE AND AFTER THE MISSION TO BITHYNIA.
The fever of Catullus for Lesbia asserts for itself a first 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. lxviii. 15-19, he says, according to Mr Ellis's "Longs and Shorts"—
Whiles in jollity life sported a spring holiday,
Youth ran riot enow; right well she knows me, the Goddess—
She, whose honey delights blend with a bitter annoy,"—
he probably wrote those poems of a more or less scurrilous and unproducible 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, more than other poems distinctly later in date, the urbanity which Catullus could assume upon occasion. Some of them are simply reproductions of local gossip and scandal, the piquancy of which belonged to the hour. One (C. lxxxii.) 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 himself. It appears that this bridge had been the scene of all the country town's fêtes and galas; and its inadequacy for such work is amusingly compared with the ill-matching of December and May, which is illustrated hard by it. A stave of the version by Professor Badham of Sydney will furnish so much of a taste of this poem as the reader will care to read:—
For the chance that his rapid descent to the bog
Might his lethargy jog;
And the sloth of his mind,
Being left there behind,
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-distilled perfumes filling the room; the invitation to Tibullus to come and dine, and bring with him not only his chère 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—
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 superlative unguent—
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.)
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 Fabullus."
—(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 some prætor's staff; and so they had been to Spain with Cnæus Calpurnius Piso, a commissariat officer with prætorian powers, whom collateral evidence shows to have been a selfish and needy voluptuary, whose ménage 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 rôle of friend, and from which one gathers an idea of a literary lounger's interest in travellers' tales (C. ix.)—
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 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.
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:—
What cheer? what cheer? Has all gone right?"
He goes on to surmise that they have disbursed considerably more than they netted; and branches off into some not unnatural radicalism about the folly of "courting noble friends," and the desirability of putting no trust in patrons. By this time, he had himself made trial of Memmius—for he does not scruple to classify that self-seeking prætor with the broken reed on whom his friends had depended; and, in the close of the poem we quote, he speaks plainly:—
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 expedition—to wit, the lines to his Cup-bearer, memorable 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 possible 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 proprætor 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 of foreign travel: so to Bithynia went Catullus, with his friends, Helvius Cinna, 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 clustered. It is not indeed directly that we discover what a failure it was in a commercial point of view. By putting two and two together, we collect that he spent a year in the proprætor's suite, and then visited, on the home route, Pontus, the Propontis, Thrace, Rhodes, the Cyclades, and the cities of Greece, arriving in due course, by way of the Adriatic, and by the canal which connected the Adige with the Mincio, at his own estate and villa of Sirmio. In one 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 "home, sweet 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 chère 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:—
And how much did you pocket, eh?"
The poet at first was pretty explicit:—
Nor yet the prætor, 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 prætor 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 trucklebed? 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—
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 comrades to bear him company, though it has been surmised 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 to Bithynia" 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 quotation:—
The savage howl of wintry tempests drear
In the sweet whispers of the western breeze
Has died away;—the spring, the spring is here!
Where days of sweltering sunshine soon shall crown
Nicæa's fields with wealth of golden grain,
And fly to Asia's cities of renown.
Of eager hope, that longs to be away;
Already, 'neath the light of other suns,
My feet, new-winged for travel, yearn to stray.
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, confabulations, 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-mindedness? 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 roués 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 innuendos, however 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—
Amid familiar tombs with kindred dust,
Fell Troy detains, Troy impious and unblest,
'Neath its unhallowed plain ignobly thrust"
— (C. lxviii. 97-100)
wrought a distinct change of tone in the effusions of Catullus, thenceforth more directed towards the attraction of friendly sympathy than the youthful and hot-headed concoction of scurrilous and offensive lampoons. With a vaguely-ascertained chronology, it is not easy to prove this by examples; but it is consistent 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?—
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 transcript, 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 reappears as an Oxford racing-boat, dear to its own college for victories innumerable over such rivals as
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 Robinson Ellis:—
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!
Bithynian, yet in safety thee to greet once more.
From cares no more to part us—where is any joy like this?
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.
And greet him happy; greet him all the Lydian lake:
Laugh out whatever laughter at the hearth rings clear."
Mr Ellis's expression for the last line of the Latin sets at rest a claim of various competitors, and realises the gist of the verse, though the metre is very hard to accustom one's self to. Without adopting Landor's emendations, we may quote his illustration of the concluding verses of this piece: "Catullus here calls on Sirmio to rejoice in his 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 "Ludiæ" for "Lydiæ," "dancing" 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 locale 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 epicurean 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 humorously declares it gave him an ague. He fell a-coughing incontinently, and there was nothing for it, he adds—
And cured within thy cosy 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 personified—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 lampooning. But if we turn to the crowning grief of the life of Catullus, it will be seen how severe and absorbing is his tender grief. Here is the outpouring of his heart at the grave in the Troad:—
Come I, dear 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.
O brother, dearer far than life, shall I
Behold thee never? But in sooth I will
For ever love thee, as in days gone by;
And ever through my songs shall ring a cry
Sad with thy death—sad as in thickest shade
Of intertangled boughs the melody,
Which by the woful Daulian bird is made,
Sobbing for Itys dead her wail through all the glade."
—(C. lxv.)