On all these passages it is to be remarked, in the words of Ellis, 'that Catullus, even when he translates most literally, transfuses his own nature into the words, and remains as Italian as before."

QUAESTIO II.

CATULLUS' POSITION IN LATIN

LITERATURE.

'Lepidum novum libellum.'

EARLIER Roman poetry, as we have seen, failed for the most part for lack of form. It was also confined in subject, and attempted only the epos, the drama, satire, and (in a limited sense) the epigram. In the age of Catullus, better directed study resulted in a truer and larger sense of the various forms of literary composition; and the lyric, the idyll, and the elegy were added to Roman literature. This new birth of Latin poetry is represented to us by Catullus alone. The works of all the other writers of his time have been lost; and the same irony of fate, which gave us Hesiod in place of Archilochus and the Greek lyrists, has preserved Cicero's translation of Aratus, instead of the works of Bibaculus and Calvus. Catullus was, however, as far as we can learn, far greater than the rest of his contemporaries; and should be regarded, therefore, as the first in time, as well as in genius, of Roman lyric, elegiac, idyllic, and epigrammatic poets.

That he should have shown much literary resemblance to the more ancient Roman verse-writers is, therefore, as unlikely in itself as it is disproved by his writings. But he shared their native boldness and in dependence of spirit; and his wide reading did not leave him ignorant of what they had done. With LXIV. 163 compare PACUVIUS' Niptra; with LXIV. 191 compare PACUVIUS Il. fr. ix.; with LXIV. 291 compare Ennius, quoted by Gellius, N. A. xIII. xx. 13.

With PLAUTUS and TERENCE Catullus had more in common. Like them (but without their archaic colour) he employed the idiom of ordinary life, which, with but little change, he elevated into the language of poetry. Parallelisms are—

LUCRETIUS, between whom and Catullus there are parallelisms which cannot have been accidental, died less than a year before the younger poet, and his poem

P

"could not have been published in the author's lifetime" (Munro): Yet Munro affirms that Catullus imitated Lucretius. Before this view can be accepted we must believe that in the course of a few months, and during the illness which proved fatal to Catullus (unless he died a violent death, for which there is no evidence), he studied Lucretius' great philosophical work throughout-for the parallelisms are found in every book of that work—and then wrote his longest and most elaborated poem1, the 'Peleus and Thetis,' if not also XXXIV. and (this would be incredible) LXI. Munro admits that the philosopher Cicero himself could not have read the "De Natura four months after the death of Lucretius,' if he had not had anything to do with preparing it for publication.' Catullus, too, shows no taste for philosophy, no liking for the more archaic Roman poetry. Still further, there is no reason to think that he wrote his idyll last of all his writings; it was quite as probably one of his earliest creations. Munro himself admits that' many of Catullus' occasional poems on the other hand had in all likelihood been seen by Lucretius.' Most probably, then, Catullus never read Lucretius; who, it must also be remarked, if he imitated Catullus at all, would be most likely to confine himself chiefly to the hexameter poem. The parallelisms are given below:

1 Or, at least, the Ariadne' episode, which could not have been at all suggested by Lucretius, and (see LXIV. introduction) is not as much out of place as is generally supposed.

The relative position of HORACE and Catullus in Latin lyrical poetry has, in recent discussions, been made one of rivalry for the first place. That Horace was strongly adverse to the Alexandrine school, of which no imitative trace is found in him, cannot be doubted. But (Epist. 1. i.) it is equally certain that he was at least as strongly adverse to the earlier and untutored Latin poetry. In his literary criticisms and in his odes he omitted to mention Catullus with honour as a lyric poet, partly because Catullus was a Republican, partly because the elder poet wrote mostly in metres unused by the Augustan; chiefly because Horace 1 devoted himself specially to imitation of the older Greek lyrics. Catullus, however, was of infinitely higher lyrical genius than Horace, and this is shown in the conscious imitations by the latter exhibited in the following table.

1 It is, however, curious that Horace, the anti-Alexandrine, was more Alexandrine in his artificial, unreal and elaborate lyrics than Catullus, the student of Alexandria. See Munro 'Elucidations of C.' ad fin., for a comparative criticism of the two poets.