But the Lago di Garda does not always wear a placid smile; and Catullus, who had sailed through so many furious seas, without ever appealing for protection to the gods of the adjacent shores,* could not fail to take pleasure in watching its surface in a storm. From a firm foothold at the top of the cliff in which the island ends towards the north-a cliff which may have been the boundary of his garden-he could look across the whole expanse of this 'ventosum æquor.' Nowhere else could he behold such uproar in fresh water. It would remind him of the 'truculenta pelagi' on the Egean or the Adriatic Sea. As he looked northwards, the distant mountains and the upper part of the lake would probably be shrouded in grey mist out of which he would see the white-crested waves march towards him in rapid succession until they burst in all their fury against the limestone cliff below. If he retreated from this tumult to the sheltered lee-side of his isle, he could hear, three miles away, the loud roar of the breakers along the southern shore-a sound which, as he heard it among the eastern seas, he has expressed in words that seem to bring the scene vividly to both eye and ear:

'Litus ut longe resonante Eoa
Tunditur unda ' (xi, 3).

The visitor who knows the lake only in all the loveliness of its tranquil summer beauty, smooth as glass or only gently rippled into 'Lydian laughter,' may find a difficulty in picturing to himself what it is at the height of a great gale from the north. But should he have any geological experience, he will find at the northern end of Sirmione impressive proof of what has been achieved by the storms of many successive centuries in battering down the solid limestone rock. Precisely as happens on a bold coast exposed to the gales of an open sea, the original sloping declivity of the islet has been cut back into a vertical cliff, with a flat platform of rock at its base. When the water is low this platform may be traversed dryshod; but, when the level of the lake is high and a strong northerly gale is blowing, the waves

* iv, 18-23. Horace, on the other hand, regarded such supplication as the normal practice of seafarers-'Otium divos rogat in patenti prensus Ægæo.'-'Carm.' II, xvi, i.

sweep against the face of the cliff, which they slowly undermine. Since the glacier retired and water took the place of ice in the basin of the lake, a huge notch has thus been excavated out of the northern front of Sirmione by the bombardment of the waves. There would seem to have been an appreciable amount of loss during the last 1900 years, for some of the masonry, connected with the so-called villa of Catullus, is now at the verge of the precipice. There are probably few other places in Europe where the abrasive energy of waves generated in a freshwater lake is so strongly demonstrated.

In the neighbourhood of lofty mountains the atmospheric changes are marked by a wider range and take place with greater rapidity than is the case in lowland regions. Summer and winter are more sharply marked off from each other. Storms are more frequent; rains are heavier; and any serious fall of temperature is indicated by the appearance of fresh snow on at least the higher peaks and crests. Even in the course of a single day the changes of sky may be many, and may quickly succeed each other. The look of the landscape alters continually under these transformations of the heavens above; and thus a fresh source of beauty and charm is given to scenery that is in itself already full of attraction. The peculiar position of Sirmione is eminently favourable for watching these movements of clouds and winds, and their effects on the aspect of the mountains on the one hand and the rolling lowland on the other. Moreover, to what can be seen on land there is here added a wide expanse of water, which even more sensitively reacts to atmospheric perturbations. To a poetic eye like that of Catullus, the contemplation of these constant and almost kaleidoscopic variations in the tones and colours of the landscape, synchronous and sympathetic with the changes in the face of the sky, would be, even if unconsciously, another of the fascinations of his Sirmio.

The swiftness with which the atmospheric changes may succeed each other in that region of mountain and plain was vividly brought home to the writer in the course of a boating excursion on the southern portion of the Lago di Garda one mild day in April. There had been a slight snowfall on the loftier heights during the

previous night, but, as the day advanced, the white covering on peak and crest was growing visibly less under the warm sunshine. Huge masses of dazzlingly white cumulus cloud hung apparently motionless above the mountains, on which they threw shadows of the deepest blue; while the sunlit ridges and green slopes above the upper half of the lake gleamed with an almost prismatic radiance, that recalled the sheen of the finest Limoges enamel. The surface of the lake lay absolutely smooth and still, save when ruffled here and there into streaks and patches of darker azure by fitful gusts of air from above. Every mountain within sight was reflected on this bright mirror. It seemed as if Nature were in deep sleep, and unlikely to be roused for many hours to come. But eventually some ominous dark clouds were seen to be gathering in the north-east, whence an occasional muttering of distant thunder could be heard. These sombre masses of vapour spread over the sky with a rapidity which was in striking contrast to the immobility of the huge white clouds that seemed still asleep on the more distant western mountains. Large drops of rain and then pellets of hail began to fall, as if shot from catapults, into the oil-like surface of the water. As the storm quickly approached, the thunder grew louder and more frequent, the lightning more startlingly vivid, until the full majesty was revealed of such a tempest as can only be witnessed in a mountainous region with multitudinous echoes. The rain now fell in one continuous torrent. Flash rapidly succeeded flash, with increasing brilliance, followed and even accompanied by crashing peals, which, reverberating from the many cloud-capped ridges of the chain, gathered into one sustained roar.

'Far along

From peak to peak, the rattling crags among,

Leaps the live thunder! Not from one lone cloud,
But every mountain now hath found a tongue.'

It was a memorable experience to have been on the Lago di Garda under such different aspects in the course of a single day. Doubtless Catullus must often have witnessed a similar tempest during his sojournings by the lake; and, although he may not have appreciated, as

Lucretius could, the elemental grandeur of such displays of Nature's energy, his sensitive and imaginative temperament would not remain unmoved by their impressive magnificence.

But there was one portion of the scene to which he seems to have been blind. The panorama of mountains to be seen from the southern end of the Lago di Garda is always the feature of that marvellous landscape which first arrests the attention of modern visitors, and to which the eye most often and admiringly turns. Even when we bear in mind the horror of the antique world for the wildness and the dangers of mountains, it is impossible to escape a feeling of surprise that such a keeneyed poet as Catullus should have found words in praise of the lake, but none for its great mountain-girdle. Only once does he refer to the Alps; and then it is merely to express his conviction that his comrades Furius and Aurelius would be ready to go with him anywhere, even should he decide to tramp across the lofty Alps in order to behold the monuments of Cæsar's rule, the Gaulish Rhine, and the dreadful Britons at the end of the world (xi, 1-12). The passes through the western part of the chain had come in his day to be continually traversed by soldiers and traders; but there is no evidence in his poems that, even in the times of his deepest dejection, though he may have planned a journey, he ever ventured to distract his thoughts by visiting trans-alpine countries, or even penetrated into any of the glens of the chain which were almost visible from his home. That, living face to face with such a mountain landscape yet far away from any of its dangers, he should not only express no appreciation of it but even make no allusion to its existence, seems to us one of the most striking proofs in literature of how insensible cultivated men still were to the grander types of scenery. Seventeen centuries had to pass after his time before the glories of the mountain-world began to be discovered, and a hundred years more before they were generally appreciated in all civilised communities.

There appears to be good reason to believe that Catullus wrote some of his best poetry at Sirmio. Certainly two of the most delightful of his joyous lyrics had their birth here. His rapturous address to Sirmio

and the lake, on his return from the East, drew its inspiration from the very place itself; and the poem in which he recounts his homeward voyage was penned with the favourite yacht resting near him by the shores of his lake. Probably also he composed here the touching verses in which he conveys his sympathy to his friend Manlius, who in his deep sorrow was like a shipwrecked man cast up by the foaming waves of the deep'; while at the same time the poet himself, by the death of his beloved brother, had been plunged into the waves of misfortune,' and had lost all joy in life. His longer and more elaborate poems are with probability referred to his later years. In these the numerous allusions to the sea, to seafaring and to shipwreck suggest that, although they may have been planned or even begun in the East, they were mainly written after his return, and were carefully elaborated and corrected in such uninterrupted leisure and with such inspiring surroundings as he could best secure on the shores of Benacus. Amid the fever and fret, the joys and sorrows of his short but crowded life, it was to this much-loved spot that his thoughts fondly turned, as a haven of peace and rest amid all that is beautiful in Nature. It is here too that, after the lapse of so many centuries, readers in whose hearts he still awakens a tender sympathy by the frankness, brightness and affection of his character, and in whose ears the music of his verse ever lingers, feel themselves to be specially drawn towards him in admiration of his genius, and in pity for the brief and troubled career of so rare and lovable a spirit. To the end of time this little islet of Sirmione will remain the fitting shrine consecrated to the memory of Catullus.

ARCHIBALD GEIKIE.