The Roman Poets of the Republic Part 48

The fact that this Clodia was the sister of P. Clodius Pulcher is also indicated in the 79th poem of Catullus,

Lesbius est pulcher: quidni? quem Lesbia malit Quam te c.u.m tota gente, Catulle, tua.

The play on the word _pulcher_ might be ill.u.s.trated by many parallel allusions in Cicero's Letters to Atticus. The grat.i.tude expressed by Catullus to Allius[27], a man of rank and position, for having made arrangements to enable him to meet his mistress in secret, clearly shows that she could not have belonged to the cla.s.s of _libertinae_, in whose case no such precautions could have been necessary: and the language of Catullus in the first period of his _liaison_--

Ille mi par esse deo videtur;

and again,

Quo mea se molli candida diva pedem Intulit,

is like the rapture of a lover acknowledging the gracious condescension of a superior, as well as the delight of pa.s.sion returned. Of the two kinds of lovers, those who 'allow themselves to be loved' and are flattered by this tribute to their superiority, and those who are carried out of themselves by their idealising admiration of the object of their love, Catullus, in his earlier and happier time, unquestionably belonged to the latter. Such a feeling, on the part of a young provincial poet, although primarily inspired by charms of person and manner, would naturally be enhanced by the thought that the lady whom he loved belonged to one of the oldest and highest patrician houses, and was the wife of one of the greatest n.o.bles of Rome, who was either actual Consul, or Consul designate, at the time when she first returned the poet's pa.s.sion. The subsequent course of their _liaison_ affords further corroboration of her ident.i.ty with the famous Clodia. The rival against whom the poet's anger is most fierce and bitter, is addressed by him as Rufus[28],--the cognomen of M.

Caelius, who became the lover of Clodia in the latter part of the year 59, and was defended by Cicero in a prosecution instigated by her in the early part of 56 B.C. The speech of Cicero amply confirms the charges of Catullus as to the multiplicity of her later lovers. As, therefore, there seems no reason to doubt, and the strongest reason to accept the statement of Apuleius that the real name of Lesbia was Clodia; as the Lesbia of Catullus was, like her, evidently a lady of rank and of great accomplishment[29]; as there was no other Clodia of the family of Clodius Pulcher at Rome, except the wife of Metellus Celer, to whom the statements made in the poems of Catullus could apply; and as these statements closely agree with all that Cicero says of her,--there is no reasonable ground for doubting their ident.i.ty. If it is urged, on the other side, that a lady of the rank and station of Clodia cannot have sunk so low, as some of the later poems of Catullus imply, it may be said that all that Catullus in his jealous wrath imputed to her need not have been true, and also that other Roman ladies of as high rank and position, both in the last age of the Republic and in the early Empire, did sink as low[30].

That the intrigue was carried on and had even reached its second stage--that of the 'amantium irae'--in the life-time of Metellus, appears from the 83rd poem,

Lesbia mi praesente viro mala plurima dicit, etc.

Metellus was governor of the Province of Gallia Cisalpina in 62 B.C., and he must have returned to Rome early in 61 to stand for the Consuls.h.i.+p. Catullus may have become known to Clodia in his absence, and the earliest poem addressed to her, the translation from Sappho, which is expressive of pa.s.sionate and even distant admiration rather than of secure possession, may belong to the time of her husband's absence. But in the 68th poem, which recalls most vividly the early days of their love, when they met in secret at the house provided by Allius, the lines, in which the poet excuses her faithlessness to himself--

Sed furtiva dedit mira munuscula nocte, Ipsius ex ipso dempta viri gremio[31]--

clearly imply that these meetings occurred after the return of Metellus to Rome. The earlier love poems to Lesbia--those on her pet sparrow, the 'Vivamus, mea Lesbia, atque amemus,' and the 'Quaeris quot mihi basiationes,'--in all of which the feeling expressed is one at once of pa.s.sionate admiration and of perfect security,--belong probably to the year 60, or to the latter part of the year 61 B.C. To this period may, in all probability, be a.s.signed some of the poet's brightest and happiest efforts,--the Epithalamium in honour of the marriage of Manlius and Vinia Aurunculeia[32], and the poems ix, xii, xiii, commemorative of his friends.h.i.+p with Veranius and Fabullus. The words in the last of these--

Nam unguentum dabo, quod meae puellae Donarunt Veneres Cupidinesque--

seem to admit of no other explanation than that they were written in the heyday of his pa.s.sion. The lines in the poem, welcoming Veranius,--

Visam te incolumem audiamque Hiberum Narrantem loca, facta, nationes--

seem to speak of some adventures encountered in Spain: and from the fact that three years later the two friends, who are always coupled together as inseparable by Catullus, went together on the staff of Calpurnius Piso, the father-in-law of Caesar, to his Province of Macedonia, it seems a not unwarranted conjecture[33] that they were similarly engaged at this earlier time, and had gone to Spain in the train of Julius Caesar, and had returned with him to Rome in the middle of the year 60 B.C.[34] The twelfth poem, which is interesting as a testimony to the honour and good taste of Asinius Pollio, then a boy of sixteen, was written somewhat earlier, while Veranius and Fabullus were still in Spain.

The first hint of any rift in the loves of Catullus and Clodia is contained in the 68th poem, written in the form of a letter to Manlius[35]--

Quare, quod scribis Veronae turpe Catullo, etc.

Catullus had retired to Verona on hearing of the death of his brother, and he was for a time so overwhelmed with grief as to become indifferent both to poetry and love. He is as sincere and unreserved in the expression of his grief as of his former happiness, and as completely absorbed by it. He writes to Hortensius, enclosing, in fulfilment of an old promise, a translation of the 'Coma Berenices' of Callimachus, but at the same time expressing his loss of all interest in poetry owing to his recent affliction,--

Etsi me adsiduo confectum cura dolore Sevocat a doctis, Ortale, virginibus, etc.

In his letter to Manlius, in which he excuses himself on the same ground for not sending any poetry of his own, and for not complying with his request to send him some volumes of Greek poetry, on the ground that his collection of books was at Rome, he notices, with a feeling almost of hopeless indifference, a hint conveyed to him by Manlius, of his mistress' faithlessness[36]. In the poem written somewhat later to Allius,--

Non possum reticere deae qua me Allius in re, etc.--

in which his grief is still fresh but more subdued, and in which the full tide of his old pa.s.sion, as well as his old delight in his art, returns to him, he speaks lightly of her occasional infidelities,--

Quae tamen etsi uno non est contenta Catullo Rara verecundae furta feremus erae.

If he can no longer be her only lover, he still hopes to be the most favoured. But he soon finds even this privilege denied to him. His love-poetry henceforth a.s.sumes a different sound. For a time, indeed, his reproaches are uttered in a tone of sadness not unmixed with tenderness. Afterwards, even though his pa.s.sion from time to time revives with its old vehemence, and he again becomes the slave of Lesbia's caprice, his tone becomes angry, hard, and scornful. Finally, the evidence of her shameless life and innumerable infidelities with Caelius, Gellius, Egnatius, and 'three hundred others,' enables him utterly to renounce her. The earlier of the poems, both of anger and reconciliation, may probably have been written in the life-time of Metellus, i.e. in 60 or in the beginning of 59 B.C. But later in that year Metellus died, suspected of being poisoned by his wife, who, on the ground of that suspicion, was named by Caelius Rufus, after his pa.s.sion had merged in a hatred equal to that of Catullus, by the terrible _oxymoron_ of 'Clytemnestra quadrantaria.' Her widowhood gained for her absolute license in the indulgence of her propensities, and the first use she made of her liberty was to receive Caelius Rufus into her house on the Palatine. What her ultimate fate was we do not know, but the language of Cicero, Caelius, and Catullus show that she could inspire as deadly hatred as pa.s.sionate admiration, and that the 'Juno-like' charm of her beauty, the grace and fascination of her presence, the intellectual accomplishment which made poets and orators for a time her slaves, did not save her from sinking into the lowest degradation.

The poems representing the second and third stage--that in which pa.s.sion and scorn strive with one another--of the relations to 'Lesbia,' and containing the savage attacks on his rivals, belong to the years 59 and 58 B.C.: nor do there appear to be any other poems of importance referable to this latter date. One or two poems, in which his final renunciation is made with much scornful emphasis, belong to a later date after his return from Bithynia. He went there early in the year 57 B.C., on the staff of the Propraetor Memmius, and remained till the spring of the following year. The immediate motive for this step may have been his wish to escape from his fatal entanglement, but the chances of bettering his fortunes, the congenial society of his friend the poet Helvius Cinna and other members of the staff, and the attraction of visiting the famous seats of the old Greek civilization, were also powerful inducements to a man who combined a strong social and pleasure-loving nature with the enthusiasm of a poet and a scholar. His severance from his recent a.s.sociations and from the animosities they engendered was favourable to his happiness and his poetry. He did not indeed improve his fortunes, owing, as he says, to the poverty of the province and the meanness of his chief. He detested Memmius, and has recorded his detestation in the hearty terms of abuse of which he was a master; and he expresses his joy in quitting, in the following spring, the dull monotony of the Phrygian plains and the hot climate of Nicaea. But he had great enjoyment in his a.s.sociation with his comrades on the Praetor's staff--

O dulces comitum valete coetus.--

He was attracted to one of them, Helvius Cinna, by warm admiration for his poetic accomplishment, as well as by friends.h.i.+p[37]; and the time spent by them together was probably lightened by the practice of their art, and the study of the Alexandrine poets. Although the fame of Cinna did not become so great as that of Catullus or Calvus, he seems to have been regarded by the poets of that school in the light of a master[38]; and it is probably owing to the example of his Zmyrna, so highly lauded in the 95th poem of Catullus, that Catullus composed his Epithalamium of Peleus and Thetis, Calvus composed his Io, and Cornificius his Glaucus. A still more remarkable poem of Catullus, the Attis, the subject of which, so remote not only from Roman but even Greek life, is identified with the Phrygian highlands and the seats of the wors.h.i.+p of Cybele, probably owes its inspiration as well as its local colouring to the poet's sojourn in this district. It is not unlikely that it was during the leisure of the time spent in Bithynia that these poems were commenced, as it was during his retirement to Verona after his brother's death that his longer Elegiac poems were written. The mention of the 'Catagraphi Thyni' in a later poem is suggestive of the interest which he took in the novel aspects of Eastern life opened up to him in the province. But it is in the poems which are written in the year 56 B.C., that we chiefly note the happy effect of the poet's absence from Rome, and of his emanc.i.p.ation from his pa.s.sion. Some of these poems,--more especially xlvi, ci, x.x.xi, and iv,--are among the happiest and purest products of his genius. They bring him before us eagerly preparing to start on his journey 'among the famous cities of Asia,'--making his pious pilgrimage to his brother's tomb in the Troad,--greeting his beloved Sirmio and the bright waters of the Lago di Garda on his first return home, and recalling sometime later to his guests by the sh.o.r.es of the lake the memories of the places visited, and of the gallant bearing of his pinnace, 'through so many wild seas,' on his homeward voyage. Some of the poems written from Verona--those referring to his intrigue or perhaps his disappointment with Aufilena, and the invitation to Caecilius (x.x.xv), were probably composed about this time, before his return to Rome. The 'Aufilena' poems belong certainly to a time later than his pa.s.sion for Lesbia; and during a still later visit to Verona--probably that during which he met and was reconciled to Julius Caesar--Catullus is found engaged in love-affairs in which Mamurra was his rival. As the invitation to Caecilius was written after the foundation of Como (B.C. 59), it could not have been sent by Catullus during his earlier sojourns at Verona: and 'the ideas' which he wished to interchange with the poet who was then engaged in writing a poem on Cybele--'Dindymi domina,'--to which Catullus pointedly refers, may well have been those suggested by his Eastern sojourn, and embodied in the Attis. But soon afterwards we find him back in Rome, and the lively and most natural comedy, dramatically put before us in x--

Varus me meus ad suos amores Visum duxerat e foro otiosum--

bears the freshest impress of his recent Bithynian experiences. Poems xxviii and xlviii, inspired by his hatred of Memmius and his sympathy with the treatment, like to that which he had himself experienced, which his friends Veranius and Fabullus had met with at the hands of their chief Piso, probably belong to a later time, after the return of Piso from his province in 55 B.C. Some critics have found the motive of the famous lines addressed to Cicero--

Disertissime Romuli nepotum Quot sunt quotque fuere, Marce Tulli--

in the speech delivered in the early part of 56 B.C., in defence of Caelius, of which, from the prominence given in it to the vices of Clodia, Catullus must have heard soon after his return to Rome. But the words of the poem hardly justify this inference. Catullus was not interested in the vindication of Caelius, who had proved false to him as a friend, and supplanted him as a rival. And he was himself so perfect a master of vituperation that he did not need to thank Cicero for his having done that office for him in regard to Clodia. Yet the reference to Cicero's eloquence, and to his supremacy in the law courts--,

Tanto pessimus omnium poeta Quanta tu optimus omnium patronus--

seems to point to some exercise of Cicero's special talent as an advocate, for which Catullus was grateful. The great orator and the great poet, who speaks so modestly of himself in the contrast he draws between them, may have been brought together in many ways. They had common friends and acquaintances--Hortensius, Manlius Torquatus, Sestius, Licinius Calvus, Memmius, etc.; and they heartily hated the same persons, Clodia, Vatinius, Piso, and others. The intimate a.s.sociates of Catullus shared the political views and sympathies which the orator had professed at least up to the year 55 B.C. Cicero, too, was naturally attracted to young men of promise and genius,--if they did not belong too prominently to the 'grex Catilinae';--and, like Dr.

Johnson in his relations to Beauclerk and Boswell, he may have valued their society more for their intellectual vivacity than their moral virtues[39].

The poems written in the last two years of the poet's life do not indicate any emanc.i.p.ation from the coa.r.s.er pa.s.sions and the fierce animosities of the period immediately preceding the Bithynian journey.

To this later time may be a.s.signed the famous lampoons on Julius Caesar and Mamurra, the poems referring to some of his Veronese amours, those addressed to Juventius, and the reckless, half-bantering, half-savage a.s.saults on 'Furius and Aurelius,' who were both the b.u.t.ts of his wit and the sharers of his least reputable pleasures. They seem to have been needy men, though of some social standing[40], probably of the cla.s.s of 'Scurrae,' who preyed on his purse and made loud professions of devotion to him, while they abused his confidence and his character behind his back. Some of the poems of his last years, however, are indicative of a more genial frame of mind and of happier relations with the world. It was at this time that he enjoyed the intimate friends.h.i.+p of Licinius Calvus[41], to whom he was united by similarity of taste and of genius, as well as by sympathy in their personal and political dislikes. Four poems--one certainly among the very last written by Catullus--are inspired by this friends.h.i.+p, and all clearly prove that at least this source of happiness was unalloyed by any taint of bitterness. Two other poems, the final repudiation of Lesbia, and the bright picture of the loves of Acme and Septimius, which, by their allusions to the invasion of Britain and to the excitement preceding the Parthian expedition of Cra.s.sus and the Egyptian expedition of Gabinius, show unmistakeably that they belong to the last year of his life, afford conclusive evidence that neither the exhausting pa.s.sions, the rancorous feuds, nor the deeper sorrows of his life had in any way impaired the vigour of his imagination or his sense of beauty. Perhaps the latest verses addressed by Catullus to any of his friends are those lines of tender complaint to Cornificius, in which he begs of him some little word of consolation--

Maestius lacrimis Simonideis.

The lines--

Malest, me hercule, et est laboriose, Et magis magis in dies et horas--

might well have been drawn from him by the rapid advance of his fatal illness, and the phrase 'lacrimis Simonideis' is suggestive of the antic.i.p.ation of death rather than of the misery of unfortunate love[42].

The length as well as the diction, rhythm, and structure of the 64th poem--

Peliaco quondam prognatae, etc.--

shows that it was a work of much greater labour and thought than any of those which sprang spontaneously out of the pa.s.sion or sentiment of the moment. Probably in the composition of this, which he must have regarded as the most serious and ambitious effort of his Muse, Catullus may have acted on the principle which he commends so warmly in his lines on the Zmyrna of Cinna--

Zmyrna mei Cinnae nonam post denique messem Quam coepta'st nonamque edita post hiemem,--

and have kept it by him for years, elaborating the unfamiliar poetic diction in which it is expressed, and enlarging its original plan by the insertion of the long Ariadne episode. It is the only poem of Catullus which produces the impression of the slow and reflective processes of art as distinct from the rapidly shaping power of immediate inspiration. From this circ.u.mstance alone we should regard it as a work on which his maturest faculty was employed. But it has been shown[43] that throughout the poem, and more especially in the episode of Ariadne, there are clear indications that Catullus had read and imitated the poem of Lucretius, which appeared about the end of 55 or the beginning of 54 B.C. We may therefore conclude that in the year 54 B.C.--the last of his life--Catullus was still engaged either in the original composition of his longest poem, or in giving to it the finis.h.i.+ng touches. The concluding lines of the poem--

Sed postquam tellus scelere est imbuta nefando, etc.--

which are written in a more serious spirit, and with a graver judgment on human life than anything else he has left, perhaps indicate the path which his maturer genius might have struck out for itself, if he had ever risen from the careless freedom of early youth to the reflective habits and steady labour of riper years.

But although longer life might have brought to Catullus a still higher rank among the poets of the world, the chief charm of the poems actually written by him arises from the strength and depth of his personal feelings, and the force, freshness, and grace with which he has expressed them. Other Roman poets have produced works of more elaborate composition, and have shown themselves greater interpreters of Nature and of human life: none have expressed so directly and truthfully the great elemental affections, or have uttered with such vital sincerity the happiness or the pain of the pa.s.sing hour.

He presents his own simple experience and emotions, uncoloured by idealising fancy or reflexion, and the world accepts this as among the truest of all records of human feeling. The 'spirat adhuc amor' is especially true of all the poems inspired by his love for Lesbia. It is by the union of the utmost fire of pa.s.sion with a heart capable of the utmost constancy of feeling that he transcends all other poets of love. We pa.s.s with him through every stage of his pa.s.sion, from the first rapture of admiration and the first happiness of possession to the biting words or scorn in which he announces to Lesbia his final renunciation of her. We witness the whole 'pageant of his bleeding heart,' from the fresh pain of the wound on first fully realising her unworthiness, through the various stages of superficial reconcilement,--the 'amoris integratio' following on the 'amantium irae[44],'--on to the state of torture described by him in the words 'Odi et amo[45],' till at last he obtains his emanc.i.p.ation by the growth of a savage rancour and loathing in the place of the pa.s.sionate love which had tried so long to sustain itself 'like a wild flower at the edge of the meadow[46].' Among the many poems, written through nearly the whole of his poetical career, and called forth by this, the most vital experience of his life, those of most charm and power are the two on the 'Sparrow of Lesbia' (ii and iii) written in tones of playful tenderness, not without some touch of the luxury of melancholy which accompanies and enhances pa.s.sion;--the two, v and vii,

Vivamus, mea Lesbia, atque amemus,