56 B.C.) had witnessed the so-called renewal of the triumvirate at Luca, and Cæsar appeared to have won everything. In accordance with the agreement made at the Luca conference, Pompey and Crassus were consuls a second time for the year 55, and the senatorial party was at its wits' end. Catullus was apparently not an active political worker, but he did not hesitate to join his political friends in personal attacks upon the foe. Perhaps his earlier shafts were those aimed against Mamurra (cf. § 73), Cæsar's notorious favorite (cc. 29, 41, 43, 57), whom Catullus sometimes celebrates under the nickname of Mentula (cc. 94, 105, 114, 115), and these opened the way for the direct attack upon Cæsar himself (cc. 54, 93). But whatever the order of attack, that Cæsar was piqued by it we know from Suetonius (Iul. 73). That he made a successful effort to win over Catullus, as he did Calvus, we are also assured from the same source. Cæsar understood better than most Romans that political power in that city and that day must rest largely upon personal popularity, and he was not above exerting himself to win the good will of individuals of high or low degree. And aside from the fascination due to his great political and military success, he had personal traits that gave him a power over young men. It was the mysterious influence of a natural leader of men; and in many more than these two instances the number of his friends was recruited from the ranks of the younger of his fiercest foes. There was another element also that must have tended to promote the reconciliation between Cæsar and Catullus. The father of Catullus was resident at Verona within the limits of Cæsar's Cisalpine province. He may not have taken an active part in politics, but at any rate he was a personal friend of Cæsar, and often his host (Suet. c.). This intimacy may well have led him to see clearly what the result of the approaching struggle for supremacy in Rome was likely to be, and to desire the more eagerly to see his son arrayed for Cæsar and not against him.

39. At all events, the reconciliation was brought about, and the lively pen of Catullus ceased to lampoon the great commander. Some have thought, however, that Mamurra was not included in the peace, and that the utmost Cæsar could effect in his favorite's behalf was that his personality should be thereafter thinly veiled under the pseudonym Mentula.

40. But Cæsar was not to profit greatly from his new ally. Up to the end of the year 55 B.C. Catullus displays only hostility to Cæsar and the Cæsarians. The reconciliation apparently took place at the house of the father of Catullus at Verona during the winter visit of the governor to the nearer province in the early part of the year 54 (Cæs. B. G. V. 1). The only poem that shows the change of feeling toward Cæsar is c. 11, and this is connected with another marked incident in the life of the poet.

41. Catullus was now the friend of Cæsar. The great commander was entertained at his father's house, and perhaps even there was making his plans for future campaigns. The fortunes of the poet were rising. What might he not hope for from his great patron, and why should others not share in his success? Furius and Aurelius, scorned by him since their faithlessness in the matter of Juventius, were eager to crawl back into his favor. And they fancied they could bring him a message that would be joyfully greeted, and would secure them the favorable reception they sought for their own advances: Lesbia was willing to recall her recalcitrant lover. She had once before been successful when making the first advances herself (cf. § 19). Why should she fear defeat now? But both she and her ill-chosen emissaries were speedily undeceived. The broken chain of the old love could never be welded again. Catullus had won by absence, by self-discipline, and most of all, perhaps, by real knowledge of facts in the case, the freedom from his passion for which he had prayed (c. 76). He could once more believe in the friendship of Cælius Rufus, and to him acknowledge, with pain, indeed, but no longer with unavailing torture, his true view of Lesbia's character (c.58). And

these proffers now made to him through, and by, Furius and Aurelius were definitely and disdainfully rejected (c. 11),with a manly, not a petulant disdain, for Catullus could not even then forget that he had loved Lesbia.

42. This manly utterance was almost the last of the poet's life. A few scattered verses there may have been, closing perhaps with the touching appeal written from Verona (cf. § 56) to his brother-poet, Cornificius, for a word of consolation, but that was all; and sometime in the year 54 B.C., in his beloved Rome, so says the chronicler, the swiftly burning candle of his life burned itself out.

43. With him died the clearest, if not the richest, poet-voice ever lifted in Rome. He lacked the lofty grandeur of Lucretius, the polished stateliness of Vergil, the broad sympathies of Horace. For on the one hand, he was no recluse to be filled with heavenly visions, and on the other, his personality was too intense to allow him to cultivate a tolerant spirit. He delighted in life with a vigorous animal passion. Not withou charm to him was nature in her sylvan aspect (cf. e.g. c. 34.9 ff.) yet his highest enjoyment was in the life of men. And this life he did not study, as did Horace, from the standpoint of a philosopher. Indeed, he did not study it at all, but simply felt it. For he was not outside of it, but a part of it to the fullest degree, swayed by its ever-changing emotions. Such a nature must of necessity ever remain in many essential aspects the nature of a child. And such was the nature of Catullu. throughout his brief life, -warm in quick affections, hot in swift hatreds, pulsing with most active red blood.

POEMS.

44. The great majority of his verses all the most suc、 cessful of them- are the direct expression of his own heart at the moment. No poet was ever more unreserved, more perfectly ingenuous. And yet, such is the facility of his genius and the excellence of his taste, his verses show no ruggedness

or roughness, but glide along with the utmost ease and swift grace toward their mark. But he was no precisianist in metrics. His hexameters are less perfect and flexible than those of P. Varro or of Lucretius, his elegiacs less harmonious and melting than those of the Augustans, his logaœedics often less melodious than those of Horace. And nevertheless his rhythmical skill suggests constantly that it is the effect of great artfulness.

45. He studied with admiration both the Lesbian and the Alexandrian poets, though it is not easy to determine the precise limits of the influence of either school upon his genius. Part of this difficulty arise: from the meagreness of the remains of these Greek writers that have survived the Middle Ages, and part from the intense fire of his own personality that has metamorphosed into its own likeness all the material that came into contact with it. Even when he is professedly translating Sappho or Callimachus (cf. cc. 51, 66), his translation is full of original elements, and is worked out in a personal fashion. He is often Sapphic in his tendency to self-address, and in the warmth and tenderness of his emotions, and often Alexandrian in his liking for episode, for richness of mythological allusion, for striking turns of phrase (cf. especially cc. 63, 64, 68' passim); and yet he is, after all, never other than distinctively Roman.

46. The speech Catullus employs is, as might be expected from what has already been said, the speech of every-day life. It will not be necessary to discuss here its phenomena in detail. It approximates closely in general to the speech of Plautus and Terence and of Cicero's letters, and suggests in some respects that of Petronius and other writers of the Silver Age, abounding as it does in diminutives (for the expression of tenderness, or of scorn, or even without any proper diminutive force), in words of Greek or of provincial extraction, in alliteration and anaphora. Yet in many instances in epic passages, or those of a more elevated tone than the majority of his lyrics,

he does not hesitate to employ words and figures that suggest the earlier tragedians rather than the comedians.

47. Cicero, in his later years, professed contempt for the whole tribe of these poetae noui (like Catullus and his friends) who had forsaken all the traditions of Ennius (Or. 161; Tusc. III. 45; Att. VII. 2. 1); and Horace mentions Catullus but once, and then with definite disparagement (Sat. I. 10. 19); but even from these references it may be fairly inferred that the poetry of Catullus was well and acceptably known among his immediate generation of Romans, and had not to wait till the time of the elegiasts for a purely posthumous fame. It was, indeed, not so very long after his death that Cornelius Nepos ventured to rank him in quality alongside Lucretius (Att. 12. 4). His fame, then, was contemporary with him self. But even a cursory examination of his extant book of poems shows evidence that it was not published till after the poet's death. For although it has come down to us mutilated by the accidents of time in a most unseemly manner, no mutilation can account for the condition of c. 58°, which is clearly but a rejected trial-sketch for the poem afterward elaborated as c. 55, and not a misplaced part of c. 55 itself (note the much greater frequency of dactyls in the second place in the verses of c. 58' than of c. 55). Would Catullus himself have published such a mere fragment? Still more, would he after the reconciliation with Julius Cæsar have published, or republished, the poems in which Cæsar is bitterly assailed? For this same reason, if for no other, it is also impossible to suppose, with certain critics, that Catullus himself arranged the book for publication, but was overtaken by death before it was actually published.

48. The only satisfactory hypothesis is that the book was both arranged and published, after the author's death, by some literary friend of his at Rome, where he ordinarily kept his books and papers (cf. c. 68. 33-36). The posthumous editor arranged the poems in three general groups. First come sixty shorter poems on various themes, all in iambic or logaœedic