The Roman Poets of the Republic Part 49

and

Quaeris, quot mihi basiationes, etc.,--

written in the very height of his short-lived happiness, in the wildest tumult and most reckless abandonment of pa.s.sion, when the immediate joy is felt as the only thing of any moment in life; the 8th poem--

Miser, Catulle, desinas ineptire--

in which he recalls the bright days of the past--

Fulsere quondam candidi tibi soles,--

and steels his heart against useless regret:--and another poem written in a different metre, in the same mood, and apparently after the wounds, which had been partially healed, had broken out afresh,--

Si qua recordanti benefacta priora voluptas, etc.[47];

in which he prays for a deliverance from his pa.s.sion as from a foul disease, or a kind of madness;--and lastly, the final renunciation (xi),--

Furi et Aureli comites Catullo,--

in which scornful irony is combined with an imaginative power and creative force of expression which he has only equalled or surpa.s.sed in one or two other of his greatest works,--such as the 'Attis' and the Epithalamium of Manlius. Other tales of love told by poets have been more beautiful in their course, or more pathetic in their issue; none have been told with more truthful realism, or more desperate intensity of feeling.

The fame of Catullus, as alone among ancient poets of love rivalling the traditional glory of Sappho, does not rest only on those poems which record the varying vicissitudes of his own experience. His longer and more artistic poems are all concerned with some phase of this pa.s.sion, either in its more beautiful and pathetic aspects, or in its perversion and corruption. Thus he not only selects from Greek legends the story of the desertion of Ariadne, of the brief union of Protesilaus and Laodamia, of the glory and blessedness of Peleus and Thetis, but he makes the tragic deed of Attis, instigated by the fanatical hatred of love,--'Veneris nimio odio,'--the subject of his art. Others of his poems are inspired by sympathy with the happiness of his friends in the enjoyment of their love, and with their sorrow when that love is interrupted by death. The most charming of all his longer poems is the Epithalamium which celebrates the union of Manlius with his bride. No truer picture of the pa.s.sionate devotion of lovers has ever been painted than that presented in the few playful and tender but burning lines of the 'Acme and Septimius.' His own experience did not teach him the lessons of cynicism. At the close as at the beginning of his career, he finds in the union of pa.s.sion with truth and constancy the most real source of happiness. The elegiac lines in which he comforts his friend Calvus for the loss of Quintilia bear witness to the strength and delicacy of his friendship, and, along with others of his poems, make us feel that the life of pleasure in that age was not only brightened by genius and culture, but also elevated by pure affection and sympathy,--

Si quicquam mutis gratum acceptumque sepulchris Accidere a nostro Calve dolore potest, Quo desiderio veteres renovamus amores Atque olim missas flemus amicitias Certe non tanto mors immatura dolori est Quintiliae, quantum gaudet amore tuo[48].

The most attractive feature in the character of Catullus is the warmth of his affection. No ancient poet has left so pleasant a record of the genial intercourse of friends, or has given such proof of his own dependence on human attachment and of his readiness to meet all the claims which others have on such attachment. In his gayest hours and his greatest sorrow, amid his pleasures and his studies, he shows his thoughtful consideration for others, his grateful recollection of past kindness, and his own extreme need of sympathy. Perhaps he expects too much from friendship, and, in addressing his comrades, is too ready to a.s.sume that whatever gives momentary pleasure or pain to 'their own Catullus' must be of equal importance to them. No poet makes such use of terms of endearment and affectionate diminutives in writing both to and of his friends, and of himself in his relation to them. But if he expected much from the sympathy of his a.s.sociates, he possessed in no ordinary measure the capacity of feeling with and of heartily loving and admiring them. He often expresses honest and delicate appreciation of the works, or of the wit, taste, and genius of his friends. The dedication of his volume to Cornelius Nepos, the lines addressed to Cicero, the invitation to Caecilius--

Poetae tenero, meo sodali Velim Caecilio papyre dicas,--

the poem in which he recalls to Licinius Calvus a day pa.s.sed together in witty talk and the interchange of verses over their wine, the contrast which he draws between the doom of speedy oblivion which he p.r.o.nounces on the 'Annals of Volusius,' and the immortality which he confidently antic.i.p.ates for the 'Zmyrna' of Cinna,--all show that, though fastidious in his judgments, he was without a single touch of literary jealousy, and that he felt a generous pride in the fame and accomplishments of men of established reputation as well as of his own younger compeers. Nor was his affection limited by literary sympathy.

Of none of his a.s.sociates does he write more heartily than of Veranius and Fabullus, young men, apparently enjoying their youth, and trying to better their fortunes by serving on the staff of some Praetor or Proconsul in his province. The language of affection could not be uttered with more cordiality, simplicity, and grace than in the poem of ten or eleven lines welcoming Veranius on his return from Spain,--

Venistine domum ad tuos Penates Fratresque unanimos anumque matrem?

Venisti. O mihi nuntii beati.

There is not a word in the poem wasted; not one that does not come straight and strong from the heart. The 'Invitation to Fabullus' is in a lighter strain, and is written with the freedom and humour which he could use to add a charm to his friendly intercourse[49], and a sting to his less congenial relations. Yet through the playful banter of this poem his delicate and kindly nature betrays itself in the words 'venuste noster,' and in those lines of true feeling,--

Sed contra accipies meros amores Seu quid suavius elegantiusve.

His affection for both comes out incidentally in his remonstrance with Marrucinus Asinius[50] for having filched after dinner, 'in ioco atque vino,' one of his napkins, which he valued as memorials of the friends who had sent them to him, and which he endows with some share of the love he felt for them,--

Haec amem necessest Ut Veraniolum meum et Fabullum.

The lampoons on Piso and his favourites, Porcius and Socration, show that those who wronged his friends could rouse in him as generous indignation as those who wronged himself.

Other poems express the pain and disappointment of a very sensitive nature, which expects more active and disinterested sympathy from others than ordinary men care either to give or to receive. Of this sort are his complaint to Cornificius[51],--

Malest, Cornifici, tuo Catullo--

and the affectionate reproach which he addresses to Alphenus (x.x.x):--

Certe tute iubebas animam tradere, inique, me Inducens in amorem, quasi tuta omnia mi forent.

Inde nunc retrahis te ac tua dicta omnia factaque Ventos irrita ferre ac nebulas aerias sinis.

These, and other poems, show that Catullus was quick to feel any coldness or neglect on the part of his friends, and exceedingly dependent for his happiness on their sympathy. But the tone of these poems is quite different from the resentment which he feels and expresses against those from whom he had experienced malice or treachery. It does great injustice to his n.o.blest qualities, to think of him as one who wantonly attacked or lightly turned against his friends. No instance of such levity of feeling can be adduced from his writings. It has been conclusively shown[52] that in the third line of the 95th poem there can be no reference to Hortensius, who, under the name of Hortalus, is addressed by Catullus in his 65th poem with courteous consideration: and if 'Furius and Aurelius' are to be regarded, on the strength of the opening lines of the 11th poem, as having ever ranked among his devoted friends, then the poem, instead of being a magnificent outburst of scornful irony, becomes a mere specimen of bathos. Nothing, on the other hand, can be more in keeping with the feeling of contemptuous tolerance which Catullus expresses in his other poems relating to them, than the pointed contrast between their hollow professions of enthusiasm and the degrading office which he a.s.signs to them,--

Pauca nuntiate meae puellae Non bona dicta.

Catullus could pa.s.s from friendship or love to a state of permanent enmity and hatred, when he believed that those in whom he had trusted had acted falsely and heartlessly towards him: and then he did not spare them. But the duties of loyal friendship and affection are to him a kind of religion. Perfidy and falsehood are regarded by him not only as the worst offences against honour in man, but as sins against the G.o.ds. He lays claim to a good conscience and to the character of piety, on the ground that he had neither failed in acts of kindness nor violated his word or his oath in any of his human dealings:--

Si qua recordanti benefacta priora voluptas Est homini, c.u.m se cogitat esse pium, Nec sanctam viola.s.se fidem, nec foedere in ullo Divum ad fallendos numine abusum homines, etc.[53]

That he possessed no ordinary share of 'piety,' in the Roman sense of the word, appears from the poems which express his grief for his brother's death. He died in the Troad; and we have seen how, some years after the event, Catullus turned aside from his pleasant voyage among the Isles of Greece and coasts of Asia, to visit his tomb and to offer upon it the customary funeral gifts. His words in reference to this great sorrow, in all the poems in which he speaks of it, are full of deep and simple human feeling. He does not venture to comfort himself with the hope which he suggests to Calvus, in the lines on the death of Quintilia, of a conscious existence after death; but he resolves that his love shall still endure even after the eternal separation from its object. Yet while yielding to the first shock of this affliction, so as to become for the time indifferent to the pa.s.sion which had swayed his life, and to the delight which he had taken in the works of ancient poets and the exercise of his art, he does not allow himself to forget what was due to living friends. It is characteristic of his frank affectionate nature, that, while dead to his old interests in life and literature, he finds his chief comfort in unburthening his heart to his friends and in writing to them words of delicate consideration. He cannot bear that, even in a trifling matter, Hortalus should find him forgetful of a promise: and he longs to lighten the sorrow of his friend Manlius, who had written to him in some sudden affliction,--probably the loss of the bride in whose honour Catullus had, a short time previously, composed his great Nuptial Ode. Though all other feelings were dead, and neither love could distract nor poetry heal his grief, his heart was alive to the memory of former kindness[54], to the natural craving for sympathy, and to the duty of thinking of others.

Another, and less admirable, side of the nature of Catullus is reflected in his short satirical poems. These have nothing in common with the ethical and reflective satire of Lucilius and Horace: and although the objects of some of them are the most prominent personages in the State, yet their motive cannot, in any case, be called purely political. They are like the lampoons of Archilochus and the early Greek Iambic writers, purely personal in their object. They are either the virulent expression of his antipathies, jealousies, and rancours, or they are inspired by his lively sense of the ridiculous and by his extreme fastidiousness of taste. The most famous, most incisive, and least justifiable of these lampoons are the attacks on Julius Caesar, especially that contained in the 29th poem,--

Quis hoc potest videre, quis potest pati, Nisi impudicus et vorax et alco, etc.--

and in the less vigorous but much more offensive 57th poem.

Catullus in these poems expresses the animosity which the 'boni'

generally entertained towards the chiefs of the popular party: and his intimacy at this time with Calvus, who was a member of the Senatorian party, and who lampooned Caesar and Pompey in the same spirit, may have given some political edge to his Satire. He was moved also by a feeling of disgust towards the habits and manners of some of Caesar's instruments and creatures,--such as Vatinius, Libo, Mamurra, etc. But the chief motive both of the 29th and the 57th,--the two poems which Suetonius regarded as attaching an 'everlasting stigma' to the name of Caesar--is the jealousy of Mamurra,--the object also of many separate satires,--who, through the favour of the Proconsul and the fortune which he thereby acquired, was a successful rival of Catullus in his provincial love affairs. The indignation of Cicero was roused against the riches of Mamurra on political grounds[55]: that of Catullus on the ground that they gave their possessor an unfair advantage in the race of pleasure:--

Et ille nunc superbus et superfluens Perambulabit omnium cubilia, etc.

Suetonius tells the story, confirmed by the lines in a later poem of Catullus--

Irascere iterum meis iambis Inmerentibus, unice imperator,--

that Caesar, while staying at his father's house at Verona, accepted the poet's apology for his libellous verses, and admitted him the same day to his dinner-table. Had he attached the meaning to the imputations contained in them, which Suetonius did two hundred years afterwards, even his magnanimous clemency could not well have tolerated them. But, as Cicero tells us in his defence of Caelius, such charges were in those days regarded as a mere 'facon de parler,'

which if made coa.r.s.ely were regarded as 'rudeness' ('petulantia'), if done wittily, as 'polite banter' ('urbanitas'). Caesar must have looked upon the imputations of the 57th poem as a mere angry ebullition of boyish petulance: and he showed the same disregard for imputations made by Calvus, which, though as unfounded, were not so absolutely incredible and unmeaning. His clemency to Catullus met with a return similar to that which it met with at a later time from other recipients of his generosity. Catullus, though the 'truest friend,'

was certainly not the 'n.o.blest foe.' The coa.r.s.eness of his attack may be partly palliated by the manners of the age: but the spirit in which he returns to the attack in the 54th poem leaves a more serious stain on his character. He was too completely in the wrong to be able frankly to forgive Caesar for his gracious and magnanimous treatment.

Many of his personal satires are directed against the licentiousness of the men and women with whom he quarrelled. Notwithstanding the evidence of his own frequent confessions, he lays a claim to purity of life in the phrase, 'si vitam puriter egi[56],' and in his strange apology for the freedom of his verses,--

Nam castum esse decet pium poetam Ipsum, versiculos nihil necesse est[57].

He is absolutely unrestrained both in regard to the imputations which he makes, and to the choice of the language in which he conveys them; and in these imputations he spares neither rank nor s.e.x. It is one of the strangest paradoxes to find a poet like Catullus, endowed with the purest sense of beauty, and yet capable of turning all his vigorous force of expression to the vilest uses. He is coa.r.s.er in his language than any of the older poets, and than any of those of the Augustan age. In the time of the former the traditional severity of the old Roman life,--'tetrica ac tristis disciplina Sabinorum,'--had not altogether lost its influence. In the Augustan age, if there was as much immorality as in the age preceding it, there was more outward decorum. The licentiousness of that age expresses itself in tones of refinement; it a.s.sociates itself with sentimentalism in literature; it was reduced to system and carried out as the serious business of life.

The coa.r.s.eness of Catullus is symptomatic rather of more recklessness than of greater corruption in society. Impurity is less destructive to human nature when it vents itself in bantering or virulent abuse, than when it clings to the imagination, a.s.sociates itself with the sense of beauty, and expresses itself in the language of pa.s.sion. Though, in his n.o.bler poetry, Catullus is ardent and impa.s.sioned, he is much more free from this taint than Ovid or Propertius. The errors of his life did not deaden his sensibility, harden his heart, or corrupt his imagination. It is only in his careless moods, when he looks on life in the spirit of a humorist, or in moods of bitterness when his antipathies are roused, or in fits of savage indignation against some violation of natural feeling or some prosperous villainy, that he disregards the restraints imposed by the better instincts of men on the use of language.

Many of his Satires, however, are written in a more genial vein, and are not much disfigured by coa.r.s.eness or indelicacy of expression. As he especially valued good taste and courtesy, wit, and liveliness of mind in his a.s.sociates, so he is intolerant of all mean and sordid ways of living, of all stupidity, affectation, and pedantry. The pieces in which these characteristics are exposed are marked by keen observation, a lively sense of absurdity, and sometimes by a boisterous spirit of fun. They are expressed with vigour and directness; but they want the subtle irony which pervades the Satires, Epistles, and Odes of Horace. Among the best of his lighter satires is the poem numbered xvii:--

O Colonia, quae cupis ponte ludere magno,--

which has some touches of graceful poetry as well as of humorous extravagance. It is directed against the dulness and stolid indifference of one of his fellow-townsmen, who, being married to a young and beautiful girl,--

Quoi c.u.m sit viridissimo nupta flore puella (Et puella tenellulo delicatior haedo, a.s.servanda nigerrimis diligentius uvis),--