[sect. 11]
Friends and foes.
[55]
55. A few of the persons distinguished by the love or by the hatred of
Catullus may conveniently be mentioned here. Some such persons,
however, as Caesar, Cicero, and Clodius, are so well known otherwise
to the ordinary reader as to need no biographical notice in a work of
this sort. Others, like Lesbia, nave been sufficiently noticed in
previous paragraphs of this Introduction. Still others are of so
little present importance, or are so little known to us outside
the mention of them by Catullus, that the brief references to them in
the commentary on the individual poems may suffice. The names of all
these, with references to the poems in which they are addressed or
mentioned, may be found in the Index of Proper Names at the end of
this volume.
[56]
56. It is a temptation to identify the Alfenus to whom the
remonstrance of c. 30 is addressed with P. Alfenus Varus,
consul suffectus 39
B.C., especially if he, in turn, can be identified with the
Alfenus Varus who protected Vergil's property at Mantua
(Ecl. 1, 6,
9), who was perhaps a native of Cremona
(though falsely identified by the scholiasts on Horace with
Alfenus vafer of
Sat. 1.3.130). For if Varus was at
Cremona during the winter and spring of 55-54 B.C., while Catullus was at Verona (cf. 40), we perhaps have a key to the
difference in tone between c. 30 and
c. 38. From Cornificius at Rome the poet could expect in
his growing illness only written comfort, and that is all he
asks. Alfenus Varus at Cremona was within easy reaching distance of
Verona by a direct highway, the Via Postumia, and might have visited
Catullus in person, but did not. Hence the deeper feeling of slight
with which Catullus addresses him.
[57]
57. The 'Pollio frater' of
c. 12.6 is very likely the only Pollio known to us from
this period, C. Asinius, Cn. f. (born 75 B.C.,
died 5 A.D.), who became praetor in 45 B.C. and consul in 40, in
which year he gained a triumph over the Parthini. At first a
Caesarian, he might have been won over to the senatorial party after
Caesar's death, but finally cast in his lot with Antonius, from whom,
however, he became alienated, but without entering the circle of the
intimate friends of Augustus. As orator, dramatic and lyric poet,
historian of the first triumvirate, and literary critic, he gained
lasting fame, and is frequently quoted by succeeding writers. Among
his intimate friends were Vergil and Horace;
cf. Verg. Ecl. 3.84; 4;
8.6;
Hor. Carm. II. 1;
Sat. 1.10.42, 85.
[58]
58. Nothing further is known of the older brother of Pollio addressed
in c. 12. The family of the Asinii sprang from Teate, the
capital of the Marrucini, but it is doubtful whether Marrucine in c. 12.1 is simply a
distinguishing epithet. C. Asinius Pollio is the first of the family
known to bear a cognomen, and perhaps that custom was introduced in
his generation, his elder brother taking the cognomen Marrucinus from
the seat of the family.
[59]
59. The Caelius of c. 58 is probably identical with
the Caelius of cc. 82 and
100, and with the Rufus of
cc. 69 and 77
(and also cc. 73 and 59?), the
names and circumstances suggesting M. Caelius Rufus, born, according
to Pliny (N.H 7.165), on the same
day with C. Licinius Calvus, May 28, 82 B.C.
(though perhaps this date is too late, by a few years, for the birth of
Caelius). Caelius is well known as an ambitious politician and an
orator (Cic. Brut. 79.273;
Quint. Inst. VI. 3.69;
X. 1. 115;
2.25;
Tac. Dial. 18, 21,
25). He was
at first a partisan of the optimates; but after filling the offices of
tribune (52 B.C.), quaestor, and curule aedile
(50 B.C.), and contracting immense debts by his
extravagant life, he became a follower of Caesar, and was by him made
praetor for the year 48. But being shortly
thereafter deposed for attempts at revolutionary legislation, he tried
to seduce certain of Caesar's troops, and was finally killed under the
walls of Thurii. He was an active and interesting correspondent of
Cicero, by whom he was defended (56 B.C.) in
the famous speech pro Caelio
against the charge of attempted poisoning brought by Clodia (Lesbia),
whose favored lover he had been. He himself appears to have broken
this connection, and perhaps to have opened the eyes of Catullus to
Lesbia's real character, after which the friend-ship was again cemented
between him and Catullus which had been severed by their rivalry
(cf. 25, 26). The poems
addressed to him were apparently written in about the following
order: cc. 100, 82,
77, (73),
69, (59),
58
[60]
60. C. Licinius Macer Calvus, apparently the most intimate friend
of Catullus, was the son of the annalist, Licinius Macer and was born
May 28, 82 B.C. (cf.
Plin. l.c.). He died in, or not very long
before, the year 47 B.C. (cf.
Cic. Fam. XV. 21.4). He was renowned as a
most able and skilful orator, though of low stature (cf. 53.5;
Sen. Contr. VII. 4.7;
Ov. Trist. II.431),
and as a writer of epic, lyric, and epigram (cf.
Cic. Brut. 279,
283; Tac. Dial.18;
Quint. Inst. 10.1.115;
Plin. Ep. I. 16. 5;
Gell. XIX. 9.7;
Serv. on Verg. Ecl. 6.47;
8.4) - On account of his intimacy with Catullus and the
similarity of their political principles
(cf. Suet. Iul. 73) and of their writings they are often
named together (cf. with above Hor. Sat. I. 10. 19, and
indexes to Propertius and Ovid). The few extant fragments of his works
are appended to the editions of Catullus by Lachmann and
L. Muiller. The death of Quintilia, apparently from the tone of
c.96 the wife of Calvus, gave occasion for one of the
finest and most touching of the briefer poems of Catullus.
[61]
61. The Cornificius to whom Catullus addressed the pathetic appeal
of c. 38 was a poet (cf. vv. 7 and 8), and is doubtless
to be identified with the Cornificius mentioned by Ovid
(Trist. II.436) in connection with other verse-writers of
the period of Catullus. It is not so clear, though quite possible,
that he is the Q. Cornificius to whom Cicero wrote friendly letters
(Fam. XII. 17-30), dated between 45 and 43 B.C. This Cornificius was an
active officer of Julius Caesar, a member of the college of augurs,
and later governor of the province of Africa, which he endeavored to
hold against T. Sextius, the general of the second triumvirate. His
death is mentioned by Jerome under date of 41
B.C.: Cornificius poeta a militibus
desertus interiit, quos saepe fugientes 'galeatos lepores'
adpellarat.Jerome If this be the friend of
Catullus, he may perhaps be counted as another of the group of young
writers won over by Caesar from the ranks of his political foes. His
interest and activity in rhetorical studies are distinctly indicated
by Cicero, and there seems to be no good reason to doubt that he is
the Cornificius rhetor not infrequently quoted
by Quintilian. With but slightly less probability may be attributed to
him the work on the derivation of the names of the gods ascribed by
Macrobius and Priscian to an author of his name: but the verse in
criticism of a grammatical point in Vergil attributed by Cledonius
(V. 43.2) to Cornificius Gallus
may have been written, as some have thought, by Cornelius Gallus.
Only two fragments of the verses of Cornificius have been preserved,
one a hendecasyllabic (Macr. VI. 4. 12),
and the other the latter part of a hexameter from his Glaucus
(Macr. VI. 5. 13). They are
appended by L. Mller to his edition of Catullus.
[62]
62. The Cato to whom c. 56 is addressed was probably
not that pattern of ancient Roman strictness, M. Porcius Cato, later
called Uticensis, but the grammarian, Valenus Cato, who was a
countryman of Catullus (Suet. Gram. I i), and whose
amatory poems are mentioned by Ovid (Trist. II.436) in
connection with those of Cinna (cf. 63),
Cornificius (cf. 61), and Anser.
[63]
63. C. Helvius Cinna, a companion of Catullus on the staff of Memmius
(cf. c. 10.30 and 30), whose epic poem,
the Zmyrna, is praised in c. 95, was probably the
Caesarian tribune mistaken for L. Cornelius Cinna, the anti-Caesarian,
in the riots attending the funeral of Julius Caesar, and killed by the
populace (Plut. Brut. 20,
Iul.68;
Suet. Iul.85; cf.
Shakspere Jul. Caes.III. 3).
The insignificant extant fragments of his
poems are appended by L. Müller to his edition of
Catullus.
[64]
64. The Cornelius of c. 1.1 seems to be Cornelius Nepos,
the historian; witness Ausonius, who says
(XXIII. 1-3)
'Cui ... libellum'
Veronensis ait poeta quondam,
inventoque dedit statim Nepoti
.
Nepos (circ. 94-24 B.C.) was certainly a
provincial from Cisalpine Gaul (Plin. N. H. 3.127
Nepos Padi accola), and probably a native
of Ticinum (Plin. Ep. IV. 28.1; Mommsen in
Hermes III. p.62). His acquaintance with
Catullus, though nothing certain can be traced concerning it was
doubtless fostered by their similarity of origin (cf.
12). Nepos was author not only of the work De Viris Illustribus, of which a part, with lives
of Cato and of Atticus, is still extant, but also of other historical
works (cf. c. 1.6 n.) and of poems
(Plin. Ep. V. 3. 6).
[65]
65. Q. Hortensius Ortulus (114-50 B.C.), Cicero's greatest rival as an
orator, was also somewhat of a historian
(Vell. II. 16. 3), and wrote erotic poems
(Ov. Trist. II.441;
Plin. Ep. V. 3. 5),
which the Greeks at the banquet of Antonius Julianus
(Gell. XIX. 9.7) characterized as invenusta, though they admitted that Catullus and
Calvus wrote some verses comparable with those of Anacreon. Presuming,
perhaps, upon his own gifts as a poet, Hortensius asked Catullus for a
poem (c. 65.18-19), and the poet complied with the
request, though with an absence of compliment that indicates no
intimate friendship with his petitioner, whose much greater age and
high position gave him, however, the power to become an influential
patron. That the friendship made no progress seems to be indicated by
the uncomplimentary allusion to the verses of Hortensius in
c. 95.3 (cf. however 25 ad fin.).
[66]
66. The Varus of c. 10 is apparently identical with
the Varus of c. 22, who is a friend of Catullus and a
critic of poetry, if not a poet himself. This may well be the
distinguished Quintilius Varus, the Augustan critic
(Hor. AP. 438 ff.) and poet (Acro and
Comm. Cruq. on l.c.). He is called a native of Cremona; and
his death in 23 B.C. (according to Jerome) drew
from Horace a touching address of sympathy to Vergil
(Carm. 1.24). Judged from the tone of
the passage in the Ars
Poetica, Quintilius must have
been somewhat older than Horace, while yet he could hardly have been
born long, if at all, before Catullus. The attempt to identify the
Varus of c. 10 and c. 2 with Alfenus Varus
of c. 30 is unsatisfactory.
[67]
67. The Manlius Torquatus, whose marriage with Vinia Aurunculeia
is celebrated in c. 61, was perhaps the L. Manlius
Torquatus whose father was consul in 65 B.C.
(cf. Hor. Carm. III.21.,
Epod. 13.6), and
who was himself praetor in 49. He allied
himself with the Pompeians, and was killed in Africa in 47 (cf. Bell. Afr. 96). In 62 B.C. Manlius prosecuted P. Cornelius Sulla on the
charge of conspiracy with Catiline. Cicero and Hortensius appeared for
the defence and secured an acquittal. In Cicero's speech on that
occasion (Pro Sulla), and especially in his
Brutus (76. 265),
Manlius is highly praised.
[68]
68. A certain Veranius is mentioned in cc. 12,
28, and 47
in connection with a Fabullus, evidently an intimate friend
of his, as both were of Catullus. Beside these three references to
them jointly, c. 9 is addressed to Veranius alone, and
c. 13 to Fabullus alone, the equal recognition thus
scrupulously given them by Catullus suggesting the existence of a
close bond of intimacy between the two friends. Nothing more is known
of them than can be gathered from Catullus himself. Veranius has in
c. 9 just returned from a residence in Spain, and in
c. 12 the presence there of Fabullus also is noted. The
13th poem, too, a jesting reference to a prospective
dinner offered Fabullus, appears to have been written while Fabullus
was absent somewhere, or had just returned, and may well refer to the
same occasion as c. 9, the different tone of the
individual poems, one sportive, and one affectionate, corresponding to
characteristic differences in the dispositions of the two friends. In
cc. 28 and 47
Veranius and Fabullus have been away from
Rome as members of the retinue of a certain Piso, a provincial
governor. They returned to Rome apparently not long after the time of
the return of Catullus himself from Bithynia (56
B.C.; cf. 31 ff.).
[69]
69. If, then, there be such a connection as indicated between
cc. 9 and 13,
the absence in Spain cannot have been that
with Piso, and must have preceded it by several years; for the
reference to Lesbia in c. 13.11 clearly antedates the
break of Catullus with her, and that occurred before his journey to
Bithynia. But it is not incredible that two friends so intimately
connected as Veranius and Fabullus should have been together on more
than one journey after fortune; and the journey to Spain like the
later one with Piso (cf. 70) may well
have been on the staff of a provincial governor, - probably about
60 B.C., as the reference to Lesbia indicates
(cf c. 13.11 n.).
[70]
70. The Piso unfavorably commented upon in cc. 28
and 47 (cf. 68) is probably
L. Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus, consul in 58 B.C.
(the year of Cicero's exile), and in 57-55 governor of Macedonia, where he made an
honorable record. After his return to Rome in 55
B.C. he attempted to reply to certain strictures of Cicero
uttered in his absence, and drew down upon himself the overwhelming
invective power of his adversary in the famous speech In Pisonem, in which the whole life, character, and
actions of Piso were held up to undeserved obloquy.
[71]
71. The service of Catullus on the staff of C. Memmius, governor
of Bithynia, has already been discussed ( 29
ff.). Concerning Memmius himself we may add further that
neither his political nor his personal character was above
reproach. He was in 54 B.C. party to a most
barefaced attempt to secure the consulship by bribing the consuls of
that year (Cic. Att. IV. 18. 2),
and was charged with the seduction of the wives of Lucullus
(Cic. Att. I. 18. 3) and Pompey
(Suet. Gram 14). He appears to better
advantage as a scholar and the patron of literary men, especially of
Lucretius, who dedicated his great poem to him. Cicero
(Brut. 70.247) speaks well of
his Greek scholarship, and of his ability in oratory, though blaming
him for lack of application. Accused of ambitus
in 53 B.C., on account of the operations of
the preceding year, he went into exile
in Greece (cf. Cic. Fam. XIII.1), where he died about the
year 49.
[72]
72. Prominent among the invective poems of Catullus is a group
directed against a certain Gellius. This comprises cc. 74,
80, 88,
89, 90,
91, 116,
but the poems are not arranged in chronological order. Apparently
the earliest in composition is c. 16,
and the second c. 91,-- the first
indicating that Catullus had tried to avert the hostility of Gellius
by sending him translations from Callimachus, but declaring from that
time open war, while the second asserts that Gellius had broken the
bond of friendship with Catullus by becoming a lover of Lesbia. In
c. 80.1 the youth of Gellius is indicated, and in all the
series except c. 116 he is charged with various abhorrent
crimes. The most acceptable suggestion of his identity was originally
made by Pantagathus ( 1578), who judged him to be that son of
L. Gellius Publicola (consul 72 B.C.) who is
said by Valerius Maximus (V. 9.1)
to have been accused before the senate of in novercam
(cf. c. 88.1, etc.) commissum stuprum et
parricidium cogitatum. This younger Gellius was himself
consul in 36 B.C., and his age therefore also
accords with the intimations of Catullus. The patruus of c. 74 is identified by some
critics with the Gellius Publicola attacked by Cicero in
Pro Sestio 51. 110, while
yet others have supposed, but with no sufficient reason, that
this Gellius, and not the one of Valerius
Maximus, is the Gellius assailed by Catullus.
[73]
73. The attacks of Catullus upon Mamurra have already been
mentioned ( 38). That he is identical
with the 'Mentula' of cc. 94,
105, 114,
and 115 we may
be tolerably certain on noting the use of that name for Mamurra in
c. 29.13, and on comparing the wealth
and extravagance of the two men (cc. 114
and 115 with cc. 29,
41, and 43),
their literary pretensions (c. 105 with
c. 57.7), and their licentiousness
(cc. 94 and 115.7-8
with cc. 29.7-8 and
57) - These latter indications, however, but
support that of c. 29.13, and would not independently
establish the identity.
[74]
74. A sufficient biography of Mamurra is given by Pliny
(N. H. XXXVI. 6.48), who says
he was an eques of Formiae and
praefectus fabrum of Caesar in Gaul,
and quotes Nepos as authority for
the statement that Mamurra first of the Romans incrusted the entire
walls of his house on the Caelian with marble, and had within it none
but solid marble columns. Cicero, too, mentions Mamurra's ill-gotten
wealth (Att. VII. 7.6), and in
Att.XIII. 52. 1 (written in
45 B.C.) refers to the calm way in which
Caesar received news of his death (so Nipperdey interprets the
allusion). The connection of Mamurra with the provincial Ameana
(cc. 41, 43)
may be assigned to the time when he was
in attendance upon Caesar in his winter journeys to the nearer province.
[75]
75. The poet Volusius of cc. 36
and 95 is probably not to
be identified with Tanusius Geminus, as Muretus and other later
writers would have it. The only ground for such identification is a
remark made by Seneca (Ep. 93.11
annales Tanusii scis quam ponderosi sint et quid
vocentur). But of all the names that appear in Catullus,
Lesbia and Lesbius are the only ones known to be pseudonyms (for
Mentula is hardly a name, but an easily recognized epithet). And the
quid vocentur of Seneca may readily refer to
some other popular characterization of the work of the annalist, and
not to the cacata charta of
c. 36.1.