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,
