Art. 2.-CATULLUS AT HOME.

1. Gai Valeri Catulli Carmina. Edit. J. P. Postgate. London: Bell, 1889.

2. A

Commentary on Catullus. By Robinson Ellis. Second Edition. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1889.

3. Criticisms and Elucidations of Catullus. By H. A. J. Munro. Second Edition. London: Bell, 1905.

4. Catullus; Latin text with English prose translation. By F. W. Cornish. (Loeb Classical Library.) London: Heinemann, 1912.

THERE is a pleasant fascination in trying to form a clear mental picture of the surroundings amidst which a poet was born and bred, and in attempting to trace whether this environment exercised any recognisable influence on the direction which his genius followed, or on the forms in which it found expression. Among the Latin poets, for example, we can realise fairly well the rural conditions in which Virgil spent his youth on the great Lombard plain. In his earlier verse, amidst all the imagery which is there borrowed from Greek sources, it is not difficult to perceive also an inspiration that came from the fields and woods, the pastures and farms among which the Mincio wound its way; and the memory of these landscapes of his boyhood continued to be traceable in his poetry up to the end. Again, in the case of Horace, we recognise the lasting impression made on his young imagination by the features of his native Apulia— its thirsty summers, its flooded Aufidus, its hills, its forests and wood-pastures, its little hill-towns, and its thrifty and industrious peasantry. The poems of Catullus, dealing as they do, in the main, with the incidents of his life in Rome, afford perhaps less distinct indications of the influence of youthful associations. Yet we venture to think that from a careful study of them, in connexion with the physical features of the region of Cisalpine Gaul where he was born and spent his youth, some facts and inferences may be gleaned which go to show that early surroundings exercised a certain influence on his muse. We propose in the following pages to attempt to trace the source and nature of this influence.

The first three books on our list need no commendation from us. The commentaries of Prof. Munro and Prof. Ellis are classics in their line; and Prof. Postgate's edition of the poet supplies the best text available for English readers. The little volume of the 'Loeb Classical Library,' which includes the Poems of Catullus, gives a good Latin text on one page and on the page opposite a scholarly and elegant English prose version by the ViceProvost of Eton. No handier edition of the poet could be desired; it should find a place in the travelling outfit of every lover of Catullus who makes a pilgrimage to Sirmio. The volume also contains the Latin text of Tibullus with a spirited English rendering by Prof. Postgate, and as if to fill up the measure of its attractiveness, it concludes with the delightful 'Pervigilium Veneris,' excellently Englished by Mr J. W. Mackail.

Among the many interesting historical associations which enhance the picturesque attractiveness of Verona, the well-founded claim of that city to be the birthplace of the greatest of Latin lyric poets is surely one of the most notable. The modern town contains few, if any, remains of Roman architecture that connect our age directly with that of Catullus. The noble arena, the ruins of a stately theatre, one or two of the arches of a bridge that still spans the rapid river, the antique gateways through which the tide of traffic still continues to ebb and flow, probably all belong to generations that lived after him. But the natural features of the district must remain much as they were when he spent his youth among them. The rushing Adige still sweeps through the town. From the heights which tower above its rapid current, the eye beholds the same noble prospect across the plains of Lombardy, to the cones of the Euganean Hills on the one side and the long range of the southern Alps on the other. No one who knows and loves his Catullus can gaze on that varied landscape without emotion. As we note, one after another, the features that were so familiar to the poet, and let our imagination dwell upon the past, his brief and troubled life, with its alternations of overmastering joy and profoundest grief, seems to unfold itself before us. We think of his boyhood and youth at Verona, where, under the roof of his father, a man of repute in the city, he must have come

into personal contact with all that was most noted in the society of the province, military as well as civil.* As we scan the varied features of the surrounding country, we can well believe that its singular loveliness could not be without some formative influence in fostering that appreciation of natural beauty, which, like a golden thread, runs through the poetry of Catullus.

In thought we follow him to Rome where, as he tells us, he eventually made his home, returning to his native district only at intervals, when a little box, selected from his travelling gear, could hold all that he needed for the visit (lxviii, 34). The vivid glimpses which the poems reveal of the gay society of his day in Rome, and the touching evidence they afford of the fluctuations of his intensely emotional nature, crowd upon the memory. They show us his abounding sociality and gaiety as a companion, the depth and tenderness of his affection for those whom he loved, the true sympathy with which he embraced his friends in their sorrows no less than in their joys; at the same time the vigour of his hatreds, or at least the strength of the vituperation with which, perhaps, he often simulated them; † and above all his passionate and tragic infatuation for the captivating but worthless Lesbia, which was at once a prime inspiration of his muse and the ultimate ruin of his life.

We recall especially that memorable journey to Bithynia, on the staff of the proprætor Memmius, where the poet hoped to replenish a purse which, he said, had come to be full only of dusty cobwebs, but where the governor's vigilance frustrated his junior's intention to

*The great proconsul Julius Cæsar is said to have been a frequent guest in the house.

See Munro (op. cit., p. 75) for a reasoned argument to show that the poet's defamatory attacks on some of his contemporaries are not to be judged by modern standards of taste, but must be looked at in the light in which they would be generally understood in his day. The Roman populace, when in merry mood, were wont to vie with each other in scurrilous Fescennine verse; but the personal abuse in which they indulged was only a pastime which did not denote any real unfriendliness or enmity. Such contests in vituperation were perpetuated for many centuries. In the latter half of the fifteenth century they were signally exemplified in the sonnets of the Italian poets Luigi Pulci and Matteo Franco; and a generation or two later the most noted Scottish poets, in their flytings,' or scoldings of each other, exhausted the vocabulary of scurrilous epithets wherein their native language was specially rich, yet they remained good friends.

xiii, 8.

enrich himself at the expense of the provincials. We can picture the consequent disappointment and disgust which led him to throw up his place on the staff and return home; his eagerness to travel and see famous places by the way, and the kindly companionship that prompted the sonnet in which he bade farewell to the comrades whom he left behind him. More especially do we think of him at his brother's grave in the Troad, and of the anguish of that lasting grief to which he again and again gave vent in language of such passionate longing and hopeless despair.† The incidents of the long homeward voyage, as he has so graphically recited them, rise one by one into our recollection-the yacht which he purchased, built of wood from the forests of Pontic Amastris, whence in imagination he seemed still to hear the whistling of the wind through the rustling foliage of the trees from which her timbers had been cut; the sail across the rough Black Sea, through the wild Thracian Propontis to famous Rhodes and the Cyclad Isles, and thence along the shores of the threatening Adriatic—the vessel holding her course, alike in storm and calm, now with sails and now with oars, never outstripped by any other craft afloat, but coming back at last from the remotest seas to be piloted up the Po and the Mincio into the limpid waters of the Lago di Garda, where she was finally dedicated to the sailors' patrons, Castor and Pollux.‡

The Lake of Garda, now inseparably associated with Catullus, was not improbably familiar to him in his youth, for it lies only some twenty-five miles to the west of Verona. It may have been to the wealthier citizens of Verona what the coast of the Tyrrhene Sea was to those of Rome-a place where they erected villas and to which they were wont to resort for their summer holiday. Catullus' father may thus have possessed a villa on the shore of the lake, which could be easily and speedily reached by a good road from Verona. In any case, we know that the poet either inherited or otherwise acquired a residence at Sirmio off the southern coast. A more fitting abode for stimulating the noblest powers of his genius could not have been found in the whole compass of Italy. In Rome, where he threw himself, heart and

* xlvi.

† lxviii, 19, 91; ci.

iv.

soul, into the gay life of the city, he had many distractions and anxieties. Besides the wayward course of his passion for Lesbia, so faithfully reflected in his poems, his generosity and extravagance reduced his means and increased his solicitudes. But here, in his native province, far from the stir and strife of the capital and face to face with Nature in her most varied and alluring guise, he could regain the mastery of himself.

How deep was the attachment of Catullus to this retreat on the Garda Lake may best be realised from the exuberant joy expressed in one of his most delightful lyrics (xxxi), written on the spot, when he returned from the East. The poem is addressed to Sirmio, which he calls the little gem of all the peninsulas or islands that Neptune bears on lake or sea. He can hardly trust himself at first to believe that he has really left the hot plains of Bithynia, and is now once more in his beloved retreat. What can be more blessed, he exclaims, than to drop the burden of our cares and, wearied with the toils of foreign travel, to return to our own dear home, there to rest upon the bed so eagerly desired? Such a consummation is, indeed, ample recompense for all the fatigues that have been endured. Bursting into jubilant song, he welcomes his lovely Sirmio, bidding it to share in his delight and rejoice to have its master back once more, and, with that boyish love of mirthfulness so characteristic of his temperament, he calls on the water itself to swell the general chorus of glee with all the laughter that its rippling waves can send forth.

If it be asked what were the attractions of the place that could give rise to so exuberant an attachment, the answer can hardly be given in a few words, depending as it does partly on the special features of the lake and its surroundings, and partly on the habits and tastes of the poet himself. Having a keen eye for beauty of every kind, he appreciated the varied beauties of Sirmio. This appreciation was no doubt of a sensuous rather than a contemplative nature. It was mingled, too, with gratification that this lovely spot was his own home, endeared to him by its associations. But there were some characteristics of the place that would strongly appeal to his temperament; and a consideration of these may help us to understand his enthusiasm.