Catullus, Tibullus, and Propertius/Chapter 4
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 compeers 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 Campus Martius, in the bend of the Tiber to the north of the Circus Flaminius, and to have represented a familiar portion of the great Roman 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 furnishes 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 the scale may be counted the names of learned and witty contemporaries—known like himself to fame—with whom Catullus was in familiar intercourse. Foremost perhaps we should set Cornelius Nepos and Cicero: the former, because to him Catullus dedicates his collected volume; the latter, for the very complimentary 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 identity 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 survived 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 Nepos. 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:—
Fresh pumice-polished, 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?
Some value didst to them allow,
And that from thee is fame,
Who daredst in thy three volumes' space,
Alone of all Italians, trace
Our history and name.
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 be simply metaphorical, and designed 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 Cornelius Nepos, which externally and internally laid equal claim to neatness. It was not so always, as we 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—
He keeps fair-copied—scribbled not
On palimpsest—but ripe for view;
Red strings, spruce covers, paper new
And superfine, with parcliment 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 depend 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:—
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 Tibullus that if there is any after-world, learned Catullus, 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 Cæsar 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:—
My Calvus had denounced
Vatinius, and his infamies
Most mercilessly trounced—
My sides I nearly split
With laughter, as it cried, 'By Jove!
An eloquent tom-tit!'"—(C. liii.)
As is not uncommon with men of like stature, vehemence 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 might meetly be headed "Retaliation;" 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:—
To stall and book-shop, and the trash I buy,
With sums on Cæsius 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:—
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."
And shades are touched by sense of mortal tears,
Mourning in fresh regrets love's vanished bloom,
Weeping the dear delights of vanished years;
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.
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.[2]
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 Cæcilius 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—
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 rustication and retirement. Cæcilius is engaged on a poem "To the Mighty Mother, Cybele," and has excited his mistress's curiosity and interest by recital 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 concluding stanza:—
Fair maid, in whom the Sapphic Muse
Speaks with a richer tongue;
For no unworthy strains are his,
And nobly by Cæcilius is
The Mighty Mother sung."
Of Cornificius as little is known as of Cæcilius. 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 translations, we know none that does it justice but Theodore Martin's:—
Is thy Catullus' breast;
Each day, each hour that passes, sees
Him more and more depressed.
Kind thought, however slight,
Comes from thy hand. Ah! is it so
That you my love requite?
To give my spirit ease—
Ay, though 'twere sadder than the tears
Of sad Simonides."