Catullus proceeds with a much closer imitation of Euripides—

which is almost translated from the Medea—

The grief and repentance of Ariadne are at length followed by a sense of personal danger and hardship; and her pathetic [pg 308]soliloquy terminates with execrations on the author of her misfortunes, to which—

The desertion of Olimpia by Bireno, related in the tenth canto of the Orlando Furioso, has, in its incidents at least, a [pg 309]strong resemblance to the poem of Catullus. Bireno, Duke of Zealand, while on a voyage from Holland to his own country, touches on Frisia; and, being smit with love for Olimpia, daughter of the king, carries her off with him; but, in the farther progress of the voyage, he lands on a desert island, and, while Olimpia is asleep, he leaves her, and sets sail in the darkness of night. Olimpia awakes, and, finding herself alone, hurries to the beach, and then ascends a rock, whence she descries, by light of the moon, the departing sail of her lover. Here, and afterwards while in her tent, she pours forth her plaints against the treachery of Bireno. In the details of this story, Ariosto has chiefly copied from Ovid; but he has also availed himself of several passages in Catullus. As Ariosto, in his story of Olimpia, principally chose Ovid for his model, so Tasso, in that of Armida, seems chiefly to have kept his eye on Virgil and Catullus. But Armida is not like Ariadne, an injured and innocent maid, nor a stately queen, like Dido; but a voluptuous and artful magician,

Matters were in this state in the age of Mimnermus, who was contemporary with Solon, and was the most celebrated elegiac [pg 310]poet of the Greeks. Hence, from his time every poem in that measure, whatever was the subject, came to be denominated elegy. The mixed species of verse, however, was always considered essential, so that the complaint of Bion on the death of Adonis, or that of Moschus on the loss of Bion, is hardly accounted such, being written in a different sort of measure. In the strict acceptation of the term, scarcely any Greek elegy has descended to us entire, except perhaps a few lines by Callimachus on the death of Heraclitus.

This simile has been beautifully varied and adorned by Moschus504 and Quintus Calaber505, among the Greeks; and among the modern Italians by Petrarch, in his exquisite sonnet on the death of Laura:—

and by Naugerius, in his ode Ad Auroram,

66. De Coma Berenices, is the poem alluded to in the former elegy: it is translated from a production of Callimachus, of which only two distichs remain, one preserved by Theon, a scholiast, on Aratus, and the other in the Scholia on Apollonius Rhodius506.

Callimachus was esteemed by all antiquity as the finest elegiac poet of Greece, or at least as next in merit to Mimnermus. He belonged to the poetic school which flourished at Alexandria from the time of Ptolemy Philadelphus to that of Ptolemy Physcon, and which still sheds a lustre over the dynasty of the Lagides, in spite of the crimes and personal deformities with which their names have been sarcastically associated.

After the partition of the Greek empire among the successors of Alexander, the city to which he had given name became the capital of the literary world; and arts and learning long continued to be protected even by the most degenerate of the Ptolemies. But the school which subsisted at Alexandria was of a very different taste and description from that which had flourished at Athens in the age of Pericles. In Egypt the Greeks became a more learned, and perhaps a more philosophical people, than they had been in the days of their ancient glory at home; but they were no longer a nation, and with their freedom their whole strength of feeling, and peculiar tone of mind, were lost. Servitude and royal munificence, with the consequent spirit of flattery which crept in, and even the enormous library of Alexandria, were injurious to the elastic and native spring of poetic fancy. The Egyptian court was crowded with men of erudition, instead of such men of genius as had thronged the theatre and Agora of Athens. The courtly literati, the academicians, and the librarians of Alexandria, were distinguished as critics, grammarians, geographers, or geometricians. With them poetry became a matter of study, not of original genius or invention, and consequently never reached its highest flights. Though not without amenity and grace, they wanted that boldness, sublimity, and poetic enthusiasm by which the bards of the Greek republics were inspired. When, like Apollonius Rhodius, they attempted poetry of the highest class, they rose not above an elegant mediocrity; or when they attained perfection, as in the instance of Theocritus, it was in the inferior and more delicate branches of the art. Accordingly, these erudite and ornate poets chiefly selected as the subjects of their muse didactic topics of astronomy and physics, or ob[pg 312]scure traditions derived from ancient fable. Lycophron immersed himself in such a sea of fabulous learning, that he became nearly unintelligible, and all of them were marked with the blemishes of affectation and obscurity, into which learned poets are most apt to fall. Among the pleiad of Alexandrian poets, none had so many of the faults and beauties of the school to which he belonged as Callimachus. He was conspicuous for his profound knowledge of the ancient traditions of Greece, for his poetic art and elegant versification, but he was also noted for deficiency of invention and original genius:—

The poem of Catullus has some faults, which may be fairly attributed to his pedantic model—a certain obscurity in point of diction, and that ostentatious display of erudition, which characterized the works of the Alexandrian poets. The Greek original, however, being lost, except two distichs, it is impossible to institute an accurate comparison; but the Latin appears to be considerably more diffuse than the Greek. One distich, which is still extant in the Scholia on Apollonius, has been expanded by Catullus into three lines; and the following preserved by Theon has been dilated into four:—

Here the three words τον Βερενικης βοστρυχον have been extended into “E Bereniceo vertice cæsariem fulgentem,” and the single word ἐθηκε has formed a whole Latin line,

The Latin poem, like its Greek original, is in elegiac verse, and is supposed to be spoken by the constellation called Coma Berenices. It relates how Berenice, the queen and sister of Ptolemy, (Euergetes,) vowed the consecration of her [pg 313]locks to the immortals, provided her husband was restored to her, safe and successful, from a military expedition on which he had proceeded against the Assyrians. The king having returned according to her wish, and her shorn locks having disappeared, it is supposed by one of those fictions which poetry alone can admit, that Zephyrus, the son of Aurora, and brother of Memnon, had carried them up to heaven, and thrown them into the lap of Venus, by whom they were set in the sky, and were soon afterwards discovered among the constellations by Conon, a court astronomer. In order to relish this poem, or to enter into its spirit, we must read it imbued as it were with the belief and manners of the ancient Egyptians. The locks of Berenice might be allowed to speak and desire, because they had been converted into stars, which, by an ancient philosophic system, were supposed to be possessed of animation and intelligence. Similar honours had been conferred on the crown of Ariadne and the ship of Isis, and the belief in such transformations was at least of that popular or traditionary nature which fitted them for the purposes of poetry. The race, too, of the Egyptian Ptolemies, traced their lineage to Jupiter, which would doubtless facilitate the reception of the locks of Berenice among the heavenly orbs. Adulation, however, it must be confessed, could not be carried higher; the beautiful locks of Berenice, though metamorphosed into stars, are represented as regretting their former happy situation, and prefer adorning the brow of Berenice, to blazing by night in the front of heaven, under the steps of immortals, or reposing by day in the bosom of Tethys:—

The Coma Earini of Statius510, is a poem of the same description as the Coma Berenices. It is written in a style of sufficiently elegant versification; but what in Callimachus is a courtly, though perhaps rather extravagant compliment, is in Statius a servile and disgusting adulation of the loathsome monster, whose vices he so disgracefully flattered. Antonio Sebastiani, a Latin poet of modern Italy, has imitated Catullus, by celebrating the locks of a princess of San-Severino. The beauty and virtues of his heroine had excited the admiration of earth, and the love of the gods, but with these the jealousy of the goddesses. By their influence, a malady evoked from Styx threatens the life of the princess, and occasions the loss of her hair. The gods, indignant at this base conspiracy, commission Iris to convey the fallen locks to the sky, and to restore to the princess, along with health, her former freshness and beauty.

68. Ad Manlium. The principal subject of this elegy, is the story of Laodamia: The best parts, however, are those lines in which the poet laments his brother, which are truly elegiac—

Catullus seems to have entertained a sincere affection for his brother, and to have deeply deplored his loss; hence he generally writes well when touching on this tender topic. Indeed, the only remaining elegy of Catullus worth mentioning, is that entitled Inferiæ ad Fratris Tumulum, which is another beautiful and affectionate tribute to the memory of this beloved youth. Vulpius had said, in a commentary on Catullus, that his brother died while accompanying him in his expedition with Memmius to Bithynia. This, however, is denied by Ginguené, who quotes two lines from the Inferiæ—

None of the remaining poems of Catullus, though written in elegiac verse, are at all of the description to which we now give the name of elegy. They are usually termed epigrams, and contain the most violent invectives on living characters, for the vices in which they indulged, and satire the most unrestrained on their personal deformities; but few of them are epigrams in the modern acceptation of the word. An epigram, as is well known, was originally what we now call a device or inscription, and the term remained, though the thing itself was changed511. A Greek anthology consisting of poems which expressed a simple idea—a sentiment, regret, or wish, without point or double meaning, had been compiled by Meleager before the time of Catullus; and hence he had an opportunity of imitating the style of the Greek epigrams, and occasionally borrowing their expressions, though generally with application to some of his enemies at Rome, whom he wished to hold up to the derision or hatred of his countrymen. Most of these poems were called forth by real occurrences, and express, without disguise, his genuine feelings at the time: His contempt, dislike, and resentment, all burst out in poetry. So little is known concerning the circumstances of his life, or the history of his enmities or friendships, that some of the lighter productions of Catullus are nearly unintelligible, while others appear flat and obscure; and in none can we fully relish the felicity of expression or allusion.

These epigrams of Catullus are chiefly curious and valuable, when considered as occasional or extemporary productions, which paint the manners, as well as echo the tone of thought and feeling, which at the time prevailed in fashionable society at Rome. What chiefly obtrudes itself on our attention, is the gross personal invective, and indecency of these compositions, so foreign from anything that would be tolerated in modern times. The art of rendering others satisfied with themselves, and consequently with us—the practice of dissembling our feelings, at first to please, and then by habit,—the custom, if not of flattering our foes, at least of meeting those we dislike, without reviling them, were talents unknown in the ancient [pg 316]republic of Rome. The freedom of the times was accompanied by a frankness and sincerity of language, which we would consider as rude. Even the best friends attacked each other in the Senate, and before the various tribunals of justice, in the harshest and most unmeasured terms of abuse. Philip of Macedon, in an amicable interview with the Roman general Flaminius, who was accounted the most polite man of his day, apologized for not having returned an immediate answer to some proposition which had been made to him, on the ground that none of those friends, with whom he was in the habit of consulting, were at hand when he received it; to which Flaminius replied, that the reason he had no friends near him was, that he had assassinated them all. Matters were little better in the days of Catullus. At the time he flourished, everything was made subservient to political advancement; and what we should consider as the most inexpiable offences, were forgotten, or at least forgiven, as soon as the interests of ambition required. Accordingly, no person seems to have blamed the bitter invectives of Catullus; and none of his contemporaries were surprised or shocked at the unbridled freedom with which he reviled his enemies. He was merely considered as availing himself of a privilege, which every one was entitled to exercise. In his days, ridicule and raillery were oftener directed by malice than by wit: But the Romans thought no terms unseemly, which expressed the utmost bitterness of private or political animosity, and an excess of malevolence was received as sufficient compensation for deficiency in liveliness or humour. As little were the Romans offended by the obscene images and expressions which Catullus so frequently employed. Such had not yet been proscribed in the conversation of the best company. “Among the ancients,” says Porson, in his review of Brunck’s Aristophanes512, “plain speaking was the fashion; nor was that ceremonious delicacy introduced, which has taught men to abuse each other with the utmost politeness, and express the most indecent ideas in the most modest language. The ancients had little of this: They were accustomed to call a spade, a spade—to give everything its proper name. There is another sort of indecency which is infinitely more dangerous, which corrupts the heart without offending the ear.” Hence the Muse of light poetry thought not of having recourse to the circumlocutions or suggestions of modern times. Nor did Catullus suffer in his reputation, either as an author or man of fashion, from the impurities by which his poems [pg 317]were poisoned. All this would have been less remarkable in the first age of Roman literature, as indelicacy of expression is characteristic of the early poetry of almost every nation. The French epigrams of Regnier, and his contemporaries Motin and Berthelot, are nearly as gross as those of Catullus; but at the close of the Roman republic, literature was far advanced; and if it be true, that as a nation grows corrupted its language becomes pure, the words and expressions of the Romans, in these last days of liberty, should have been sufficiently chaste. The obscenities of Catullus, however, it must be admitted, are oftener the sport of satire, than the ebullitions of a voluptuous imagination. His sarcastic account of the debaucheries of Lesbia, is more impure than the pictures of his enjoyment of her love.

Lesbia, as formerly mentioned, is universally allowed to be Clodia, the sister of the turbulent Clodius; but there has been a great deal of discussion and dispute, with regard to the identity of the other individuals against whom the epigrams are directed. Justus Lipsius513 has written a dissertation with regard to Vettius and Cominius. The former he supposes to be the person mentioned in Cicero’s Letters to Atticus, and [pg 318]by Suetonius, as having been suborned by Cæsar, to allow himself to be seized with a weapon on his person, and to confess that he had been employed by the Chiefs of the Senate to assassinate Pompey—a device contrived by Cæsar, in order to set Pompey and the Senate at variance. Cominius was an accuser by profession, and impeached C. Cornelius, whom Cicero defended514. Lipsius believes Alphenus to be Pompey, and thinks that the epigram, directed against him, is supposed to be written in the person of Cicero. He is of opinion that the poet durst not venture to mention Pompey’s name, and therefore designed him by an assumed one; but the epigrams on Julius Cæsar prove that Catullus was neither so scrupulous nor timid. The greatest number, however, and the most cutting of the epigrams, are aimed at Gellius, his successful rival in the affections of Lesbia—

There were two persons of this name at Rome in the time of Catullus—an uncle and nephew. The first was a notorious profligate, who had wasted his patrimony, and afterwards headed mobs in the Forum for hire515. The nephew was equally dissolute. After the death of Cæsar, he conspired to assassinate Cassius in the midst of his army, and, having been pardoned, deserted to Antony. One of the various crimes of which he was suspected, identifies him as the Gellius branded by our poet, and whose vices were so great—

This idea, by the way, of crimes of such crimson dye that they cannot be washed out by the wide world of waters, seems to have been originally derived from some verses of the chorus in the Choephoræ of Æschylus—

The great successor of Æschylus expressed the same idea, in different language, in the Œdipus Tyrannus—