. The grandeur that was Rome; a survey of Roman culture and civilisation:. ants, though Catullus himself, like all Romans, thought fitoccasionally to adopt the classical pose, and fill his verses withlearned allusions. If it were not for the influence of the school-room, to which most of Catulluss work is for the best of reasonsunknown, he would be recognised as possessing far more of thevital spark of poetry than Horace. Roman culture, being mainlysecond-hand, is almost entirely lacking in the quality of freshyouth which we enjoy in such writers as Chaucer and the earlyElizabethan singers. Ca
. The grandeur that was Rome; a survey of Roman culture and civilisation:. ants, though Catullus himself, like all Romans, thought fitoccasionally to adopt the classical pose, and fill his verses withlearned allusions. If it were not for the influence of the school-room, to which most of Catulluss work is for the best of reasonsunknown, he would be recognised as possessing far more of thevital spark of poetry than Horace. Roman culture, being mainlysecond-hand, is almost entirely lacking in the quality of freshyouth which we enjoy in such writers as Chaucer and the earlyElizabethan singers. Catullus, therefore, the earliest importantlyric poet of Rome, is by no means unsophisticated. On thecontrary, he is a clever son of the forum—a boulevardier, onemight say—with a pretty but savage wit in reviling democratslike CEesar and Mamurra. But, with his truly Italian scurrility,he combines the quintessence of Italian charm. When the in-spiration takes him he is simple, direct, and natural. Indeed,the shorter poems of Catullus seem to me to reveal more of the142. Plate 22. COIN PLATE, I(See pp. 103, 122, 155, 157 8) LAST CENTURY OF THE REPUBLIC essential Roman than all the rest of Roman literature puttogether. We have the innocent pleading of the April lover in: soles occidere et redire possunt: nobis cum semel occidit breuis lux nox est perpetua una dormienda. da mi basia mille, deinde centum, dein mille altera, dein secunda centum, deinde usque altera mille, deinde centum.* and the awful simplicity of his wrath at betrayal: Cseli, Lesbia nostra, Lesbia ilia,ilia Lesbia, quam Catullus unamplus quam se atque suos amavit omnes,nunc in quadriuiis et angiportisglubit magnanimos Remi nepotes. We have a more genuine-sounding love of nature in his praisesof Sirmio, and a more natural pathos in the famous lament forhis brother, than any other Latin poet can give us. In onespecies of composition, the Epithalamiuin, he is supreme. Forexample: flere desine, non tibi Au- runculeia
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