[In the following chapters from his Catullus, Tibullus, and Propertius, Davies offers a discursive reading of Catullus's most notable poems among the poet's epithalamia and alexandrines.]

[Catullus may be seen, at first glance] rather as the writer of passionate love-verses to Lesbia, or vers de societe to his friends, literary or light, as the case might be. There are yet two other and distinct aspects of his Muse. That which he borrowed from the Alexandrian school of poetry will [be considered later]; but in the present it will suffice to give some account of his famous epithalamia, the models of like composition for all time, and the loci classici of the ceremonial of Roman marriages, as well as exquisite pictures of the realisation of mutual affection. It [may be readily seen] how fully, notwithstanding his own blighted hopes, Catullus was able to conceive the life-bond between his friend Calvus and his helpmeet Quinctilia. A longer and more lively picture presents the ecstasy of Acme and Septimius in lines and words that seem to burn. The two doting lovers plight vows, and compare omens, and interchange embraces and kisses that inspire with passion the poet's hendecasyllables. The conclusion of the piece is all we can quote, and is given from a translation by the author of 'Lorna Doone,' but it may serve to show that Catullus was capable of picturing and conceiving the amount of devotion which his nuptial songs connect with happy and like-minded unions:—

Starting from such omen's cheer,
Hand in hand on love's career,
Heart to heart is true and dear.
Dotingly Septimius fond
Prizes Acme far beyond
All the realms of east and west—
Acme to Septimius true,
Keeps for him his only due,
Pet delights and loving jest.
Who hath known a happier pair,
Or a honeymoon so fair?

One image from the rest of the poem cannot pass unnoticed—that of Acme bending back her head in Septimius's embrace, to kiss with rosy mouth what Mr. Blackmore translates "eyes with passion's wine opprest"; but the whole piece deserves to the full the unstinted praise it has met with from critics and copyists.

The Epithalamium of Julia and Manlius, however, is a poem of more considerable proportions; and at the same time that it teems with poetic beauties, handles its subject with such skill and ritual knowledge as to supply a correct programme of the marriage ceremonial among the Romans. Strictly speaking, it is not so much a nuptial ode or hymn in the sense in which the playmates of Helen serenade her in Theocritus, as a series of pictures of the bridal procession and rites, from end to end. The subjects of this poem were a scion of the ancient patrician house of the Torquati, Lucius Manlius Torquatus, a great friend and patron of our poet, and Vinia, or Julia Aurunculeia, one of whose two names seems to have been adoptive, and as to whom the poet's silence seems to imply that her bridegroom's rank was enough to dignify both. It was not so long afterwards that Manlius sought our poet's assistance or solace in the shape of an elegy ["Poem lxviii"] on her untimely death; but in the present instance his services are taxed to do honour to her wedding: and it may be interesting to accompany him through the dioramic description which his stanzas illustrate. The poem opens with an invocation to Hymen, child of Urania, dwelling in his mother's Helicon, bidding him wreathe his brows with sweet marjoram or amaracus, fling round him a flame-coloured scarf, and bind saffron sandals to his feet, in token of going forth upon his proper function and errand. Other accompaniments of his progress are to be song, and dance, and pine-torch,—each of them appropriate in the evening fetching-home of the bride from her father's house; and his interest is bespoken in one who is fair, favoured, and fascinating as Ida's queen, when she condescended to the judgment of Paris:—

As the fragrant myrtle, found
Flourishing on Asian ground,
Thick with blossoms overspread,
By the Hamadryads fed,
For their sport, with honey-dew—
All so sweet is she to view.

It is this paragon, proceeds the ode, for whose sweet sake the god is besought to leave awhile his native grottos and pools, and lend his aid in binding soul to soul to her husband—yea, closer than clasping ivy twines meshy tendrils round its naked elm. To welcome her too, as well as to invite Hymeneus to his wonted office with the readier alacrity, are bidden the blameless maidens of the bride's train, with a series of inducements adapted to bespeak their sympathy—his interest in happy nuptials, his blessing so essential to the transfer of the maiden from one home and name to another, his influence on the prospects of an honoured progeny; and strong language is used, in vv. 71-75, of such nations as ignore the rites and ordinances of marriage.

And now the bride is bidden to come forth. The day is waning; the torch-flakes flicker bright in the gloaming; there is no time for tears of maidenly reluctance; the hour is at hand:—

Dry up thy tears! For well I trow,
No woman lovelier than thou,
Aurunculeia, shall behold
The day all panoplied in gold,
And rosy light uplift his head
Above the shimmering ocean's bed!

As in some rich man's garden-plot,
With flowers of every hue inwrought;
Stands peerless forth, with drooping brow,
The hyacinth, so standest thou!
Come, bride, come forth! No more delay!
The day is hurrying fast away!

Then follow encouragements to the bride to take the decisive step over the threshold, in the shape of substantial guarantees of her bridegroom's loyalty; and of course the elm and the ivy are pressed, for not the first time, into such service. More novel, save that the text of Catullus is here so corrupt that commentators have been left to patch it as they best may for coherence,—is the stanza to the bridal couch. All that Catullus has been allowed by the manuscripts to tell us is that its feet were of ivory, which is very appropriate; but if the render's mind is enlisted in the question of upholstery, it may be interested to know that collateral information enables one critic to surmise that the hangings were of silver-purple, and the timbers of the bedstead from Indian forests. But anon come the boys with the torches. Here is the veil or scarf of flame colour, or deep brilliant yellow, capacious enough, as we learn, to shroud the bride from head to foot, worn over the head during the ceremony, and retained so till she was unveiled by her husband. Coincidentally the link-bearers are chanting the hymenaeal song, and at intervals, especially near the bridegroom's door, the rude Fescennine banter is repeated; whilst the bridegroom, according to custom, flings nuts to the lads in attendance, much as at a Greek marriage it was customary to fling showers of sweetmeats. The so-called Fescennine jests were doubtless as broad as the occasion would suggest to a lively and joke-loving nation; and another part of the ceremonial at this point, as it would seem from Catullus, though some have argued that it belonged rather to the marriage-feast, was the popular song "Talassius" or "Talassio," said to have had its origin in an incident of the "Rape of the Sabine Women." Catullus represents the choruses at this point as instilling into the bride by the way all manner of good advice as to wifely duty and obedience, and auguring for her, if she takes their advice, a sure rule in the home which she goes to share. If she has tact, it will own her sway—

Till hoary age shall steal on thee,
With loitering step and trembling knee,
And palsied head, that, ever bent,
To all, in all things, nods assent.

In other words, a hint is given her that, though the bridegroom be the head of the house, she will be herself to blame if she be not the neck.

As the poem proceeds, another interesting ceremonial, which is attested by collateral information, is set graphically before the reader. Traditionally connected with the same legend of the carrying off of the Sabine women, but most probably arising out of a cautious avoidance of evil omens through a chance stumble on the threshold, was a custom that on reaching the bridegroom's door, the posts of which were wreathed in flowers and anointed with oil for her reception, the bride should be carried over the step by the pronubi—attendants or friends of the groom, who must be "husbands of one wife." This is expressed as follows in Theodore Martin's happy transcript of the passage of Catullus:—

Thy golden-sandalled feet do thou
Lift lightly o'er the threshold now!
Fair omen this! And pass between
The lintel-poet of polished sheen!
Hail, Hymen! Hymeneus hail!
Hail, Hymen, Hymenwus!

See where, within, thy lord is set
On Tyrian-tinctured coverlet—
His eyes upon the threshold bent,
And all his soul on thee intent!
Hail, Hyinen! Hymeneus, hail!
Hail, Hymen, Hymeneus!

By-and-by, one of the three pratexta-clad boys, who had escorted the bride from her father's home to her husband's, is bidden to let go the round arm he has been supporting; the blameless matrons (pronubw), of like qualification as their male counterparts, conduct the bride to the nuptial-couch in the atrium, and now there is no let or hindrance to the bridegroom's coming. Catullus has so wrought his bridal ode, that it culminates in stanzas of singular beauty and spirit. The bride, in her nuptial-chamber, is represented with a countenance like white parthenice (which one critic suggests may be the camomile blossom) or yellow poppy for beauty. And the bridegroom, of course, is worthy of her; and both worthy of his noble race, as well as meet to hand it on. The natural wishes follow:—

'Tis not meet so old a stem
Should be left ungraced by them,
To transmit its fame unshorn
Down through ages yet unborn.

The next lines of the original are so prettily turned by Mr. Cranstoun, that we forbear for the nonce to tax the charming version of Martin:—

May a young Torquatus soon
From his mother's bosom slip
Forth his tender hands, aim smile
Sweetly on lids sire the while
With tiny half-oped lip.

May each one a Manlius
In his infant features see,
And may every stranger trace,
Clearly graven on his face,
His mother's chastity.

Of parallels and imitations of this happy thought and aspiration, there is abundant choice. Theodore Martin's taste selects a graceful and expanded fancy of Herrick from his "Hesperides"; while Dunlop, in his 'History of Roman Literature,' quotes the following almost literal reproduction out of an epithalamium on the marriage of Lord Spencer by Sir William Jones, who pronounced Catullus's picture worthy the pencil of Domenichino:—

And soon to be completely blest,
Soon may a young Torquatus rise,
Who, hanging on his mother's breast,
To his known sire shall turn his eyes,
Outstretch his infant arms awhile,
Half-ope his little lips and smile.

The poem concludes with a prayer that mother and child may realise the fame and virtues of Penelope and Telemachus, and well deserves the credit it has ever enjoyed as a model in its kind.

Of the second of Catullus's Nuptial Songs—an hexameter poem in amcebaan or responsive strophes and antistrophes, supposed to be sung by the choirs of youths and maidens who attended the nuptials, and whom, in the former hymn, the poet had been exhorting to their duties, whereas here they come in turn to their proper function—no really trustworthy history is to be given, though one or two commentators propound that it was a sort of brief for the choruses, written to order on the same occasion for which the poet had written, on his own account, the former nuptial hymn. But the totally different style and structure forbid the probability of this, although both are remarkable poems of their kind. This one, certainly, has a ringing freshness about it, and seems to cleave the shades of nightfall with a reveille singularly rememberable. The youths of the bridegroom's company have left him at the rise of the evening star, and gone forth for the hymenwal chant from the tables at which they have been feasting. They recognise the bride's approach as a signal to strike up the hymenaal. Hereupon the maidens who have accompanied the bride, espying the male chorus, enter on a rivalry in argument and song as to the merits of Hesperus, whom they note as he shows his evening fires over (Eta—a sight which seems to have a connection; wish some myth as to the love of Hesper for a youth named Hymenaeus localised at (Eta, as the story of Diana and Endymion was at Latmos, to which Virgil alludes in his eighth eclogue. Both bevies gird themselves for a lively encounter of words, from their diverse points of view. First sing the virgins:—

Hesper, hath heaven more ruthless star than
  thine,
That canst from mother's arms her child
  untwine?
From mother's arms a clinging daughter part,
To dower a headstrong bridegroom's eager
  heart?
Wrong like to this do captured cities know?
Ho! Hymen; Hymen! Hymenaus, ho!
—D.

The band of youths reply in an antistrophe which negatives the averment of the maidens:—

Hesper, hath heaven more jocund star than
  thee,
Whose flame still crowns true lovers' unity
The troth that parents first, then lovers plight,
Nor deem complete till thou illum'st the
  night?
What hour more blissful do the gods bestow?
Hail! Hymen, Hymen! Hymenaus ho!
—D.

To judge of the next plea of the chorus of maidens by the fragmentary lines which remain of the original, it took the grave form of a charge of abduction against the incriminated evening star. If he were not a principal in the felonious act, at least he winked at it, when it was the express vocation of his rising to prevent, by publicity, such irregular proceedings. But now the youths wax bold in their retort, and wickedly insinuate that the fair combatants are not really so very wroth with Hesper for his slackness. After a couplet which seems to imply, though its sense is obscure and ambiguous, that the sort of thieves whom these maidens revile, and whose ill name is not confined to Roman literature (for in the Russian songs, as we learn from Mr. Ralston's entertaining volumes, the bridegroom is familiarly regarded as the "enemy," "that evil-thief," and "the Tartar"), speedily find their offences condoned, and are received into favour, they add a pretty plain charge against the complainants that—

Chide as they list in song's pretended ire,
Yet what they chide they in their souls desire.

This is such a home-thrust that the virgins change their tactics, and adduce an argument ad misericordiam, which is one of the most admired passages of Catullus, on the score of a simile often imitated from it. The following version will be found tolerably literal.—

As grows hid floweret in some garden closed,
Crushed by no ploughshare, to no beast
  exposed,
By zephyrs fondled, nursed up by the rain,
With kindly sun to strengthen and sustain:
To win its sweetness lads and lasses vie:
But let that floweret wither by-and-by,
Nipped by too light a hand, it dies alone.
Its lover lads and lasses all are flown!
E'en as that flower is lovely maiden's pride,
In her pure virgin home content to bide;
A husband wins her,—and her bloom is sere,
No more to lads a charm, or lasses dear!
—D.

The last line is undoubtedly borrowed from a fragment of the Greek erotic poet, Mimmermus; and the whole passage, as Theodore Martin shows, has had its influence upon an admired canto of Spenser's Faery Queen (B. ii. c. xii.).

Will the boys melt and give in, or will they show cause why they should not accept this sad showing of the mischief, for which Hymen and Hesper have the credit? Let us hear their antistrophe:—

As a lone vine on barren, naked field
Lifts ne'er a shoot, nor mellow grape can
  yield,
But bends top-heavy with its slender frame,
Till root and branch in level are the same:
Such vine, such field, in their forlorn estate
No peasants till, nor oxen cultivate.
Yet if the same vine with tall elm-tree wed,
Peasants will tend, and oxen till its bed.
So with the maid no lovers' arts engage,
She sinks unprized, unnoticed, into age;
But once let hour and man be duly found,
Her father's pride, her husband's love
  redound.
—D.

The epithalamium ends with an arithmetical calculation of the same special pleaders, which the maidens apparently find unanswerable, and which is of this nature—namely, that they are not their own property, except as regards a third share. As the other two shares belong to their parents respectively, and these have coalesced in transferring their votes to a son-in-law, it is obviously as futile as it is unmannerly to demur to the nuptial rites. And so the poem ends with the refrain of "Hymen, O Hymenae!" It has with much plausibility been conjectured by Professor Sellar to be an adaptation of Sappho or some other Greek poet to an occasion within Catullus's own experience. Certainly it does not exhibit like originality with the poem preceding it. It might be satisfactory, were it possible, to give, by way of sequel to the epithalamium of Julia and Manlius, trustworthy data of the young wife's speedy removal; but this is based upon sheer conjecture, and so much as we know has been already stated. If we might transfer to the elegiacs addressed to Manlius before noticed a portion of the story of Laodamia, which has sometimes been printed with them, but is now arranged with the verses to Manius Acilius Glabrio, we should be glad to conceive of Julia's wedded life as matching that of Laodamia, and offering a model for its portrayal.

Nor e'er was dove more loyal to her mate
That bird which, more than all, with clinging
  beak,
Kiss after kiss will pluck insatiate—
Though prone thy sex its joys in change to
  seek,

Than thou, Laodamia! Tame and cold
Was all their passion, all their love to shine:
When thou to thy enamoured breast didst fold
Thy blooming lord in ecstasy divine.

As fond, as fair, as thou, so came the maid,
Who is my life, and to my bosom clung;
While Cupid round her fluttering, arrayed
In saffron vest, a radiance o'er her flung.
—(C. lxviii.) M.

That portion of the poetry of Catullus which has been considered hitherto is doubtless the most genuine and original; but, with the exception of the two epithalamia, the poems now to be examined, as moulded on the Alexandrine form and subjects, are perhaps the more curious in a literary point of view. Contrasting with the rest of his poetry in their lack of "naturalism essentially Roman and republican," they savour undisguisedly of that Roman-Alexandrinism in poetry which first sprang up in earnest among the contemporaries of Cicero and Caesar, and grew with all the more rapidity owing to the frequent visits of the Romans to the Greek provinces, and the increasing influx of the Greek literati into Rome. Of the Alexandrine literature at its fountain-head it must be remembered that it was the substitute and successor on the ruin of the Hellenic nation, and the decline of its nationality, language, literature, and art of the former national and popular literature of Greece. But it was confined to a limited range. "It was," says Professor Mommsen, "only in a comparatively narrow circle, not of men of culture—for such, strictly speaking, did not exist—but of men of erudition, that the Greek literature was cherished even when dead; that the rich inheritance which it had left was inventoried with melancholy pleasure or arid refinement of research; and that the living sense of sympathy or the dead erudition was elevated into a semblance of productiveness. This posthumous productiveness constitutes the so-called Alexandrinism." Originality found a substitute in learned research. Multifarious learning, the result of deep draughts at the wells of criticism, grammar, mythology, and antiquities, gave an often cumbrous and pedantic character to laboured and voluminous epics, elegies, and hymnology (a point and smartness in epigram being the one exception in favour of this school), whilst the full genial spirit of Greek thought, coeval with Greek freedom, was exchanged for courtly compliment, more consistent with elaboration than freshness. Among the best of the Alexandrian poets proper—indeed, the best of all, if we except the original and genial Idyllist, Theocritus—was the learned Callimachus; and it is upon Callimachus especially that Catullus has drawn for his Roman-Alexandrine poems, one of them being in fact a translation of that poet's elegy "On the Hair of Queen Berenice"; whilst another, his "Nuptials of Peleus and Thetis," has been supposed by more than one critic to be a translation of Callimachus also. This is, indeed, problematical; but there is no doubt that for his mythologic details, scholarship, and other features savouring of ultra erudition, he owes to Callimachus characteristics which his intrinsic poetic gifts enabled him to dress out acceptably for the critics of his day. The singular and powerful poem of "Atys" belongs to the same class, by reason of its mythological subject. A recent French critic of Catullus, in a learned chapter on Alexandrinism, defines it as the absence of sincerity in poetry, and the exclusive preoccupation of form. "He," writes M. Couat, "who, instead of looking around him, or, better, within himself, parades over all countries and languages his adventurous curiosity, and prefers 1'esprit to l'ame—the new, the pretty, the fine, to the natural and simple—such an one, to whatever literature he belongs, is an Alexandrinist." Alexandrinism in excess is what in this writer's view is objectionable; and whilst we are disposed to think that few will demur to this moderate dogma, it is equally certain that none of the Roman cultivators of the Alexandrine school have handled it with more taste and less detriment to their natural gifts than Catullus. With him the elaborateness which, in its home, Alexandrinism exhibits as to metre and prosody, is exchanged for a natural and unforced power, quite consistent with simplicity. As is well observed by Professor Sellar, "His adaptation of the music of language to embody the feeling or passion by which he is possessed, is most vividly felt in the skylark ring of his great nuptial ode, in the wild hurrying agitation of the 'Atys,' in the stately calm of the 'Epithalamium of Peleus and Thetis'." Herein, as indeed in the tact and art evinced generally in these larger poems, we seem to find ground for dissent from the opinion of several—otherwise weighty critics of Catullus, that they were the earlier exercises of his poetic career—a subject upon which, as there is the scantiest inkling in either direction, it is admissible to take the negative view. As a work of art, no doubt the "Nuptials of Peleus and Thetis" are damaged by the introduction of the episode of Ariadne's desertion within the main poem—an offence obviously against strict epic unity. But it is not by any means sure that this is so much a sign of youthful work as of an independence consistent with poetic fancy, and certainly not amenable to the stigma of Alexandrinism, which must be en regle, if anything. It is with this largest, and in many respects finest, sample of Catullus's epic capacity, that we propose to deal at greatest length, reserving space for a glance or two at the "Atys" and the "Hair of Berenice." "The whole poem" ('Peleus and Thetis'), to quote Mr. Sellar once more, "is pervaded with that calm light of strange loveliness which spreads over the unawakened world in the early sunrise of a summer day." If here and there a suspicion of overwrought imagery and description carries back the mind to a remembrance of the poet's model, it must be allowed that, for the most part, this poem excels in variety, in pictorial effects, in force of fancy, and clever sustentation of the interest. It begins with the day on which, in the hoar distance of mythic ages, the Pelionborn Argo was first launched and manned, and the first sailor of all ever burst on the realm of Amphitrite—a statement which we must not criticise too closely, as the poet elsewhere in the poem tells of a fleet of Theseus prior to the Argonautic expedition:—

Soon as its prow the wind-vexed surface
  crave,
Soon as to oarsmen's harrow frothed the
  wave,
Forth from the eddying whiteness Nereids
  shone,
With faces set-strange sight to look upon.
Then, only then, might mortal vision rest
On naked sea-nymph, lifting rosy breast
High o'er the billows' foam. 'Twas then the
  flame
Of love for Thetis Peleus first o'ercame:
Then Thetis deigned a mortal spouse to wed,
Then Jove approved, and their high union
  sped.
—D.

The poet having thus introduced the betrothal, as it were, of the goddess and the hero, pauses, ere he plunges into his subject, to apostrophise heroes and heroines in general, and more especially the twain immediately concerned: Peleus, for whom the very susceptible father of the gods had waived his own penchant for Thetis; Peleus, the stay and champion of Thessaly; arid Thetis, most beautiful of ocean's daughters, and grandchild of earth-girding Tethys and her lord Oceanus—a fitting proem to the action of the poem, which commences with no further delay. We see all Thessaly come forth to do honour and guest-service to the nuptials, gifts in their hands, and joy and gladness in their countenances. Scyros and Phthia's Tempe, Cranon, and Larissa's towers are all deserted on that day, for the Pharsalian home where high festival and a goodly solemnity is kept. A lively description follows of the country and its occupations given over to complete rest and keeping holiday; and this is seemingly introduced by way of contrast to the stir and splendour and gorgeous preparations within the halls of Peleus. But the poet without delay presses on to one of his grand effects of description—the rich bridal couch, with frame of ivory and coverlet of sea-purples, on which was wrought the tale of Ariadne's desertion by Theseus. She has just awakened to her loss, and the picture is one of passionate fancy and force. To give a transcript of this is impossible; and though Mr. Martin's handling of the whole passage is admirably finished, yet where the best comes far short of the original, it seems justifiable to introduce a distillation of its spirit, without attempting metrical likeness. The following version is by the Rev. A. C. Auchmuty ["Poem LXIX," vv. 52-75):—

There, upon Dia's ever-echoing shore,
Sweet Ariadne stood, in fond dismay,
With wild eyes watching the swift fleet, that
  bore

              Her loved one far away.
And still she gazed incredulous; and still,
Like one awaking from beguiling sleep,
Found herself standing on the beachy hill,
              Left there alone to weep.
But the quick oars upon the waters flashed,
And Theseus fled, and not a thought behind
He left; but all his promises were dashed
              Into the wandering wind.
Far off she strains her melancholy eyes;
And like a Maenad sculptured there in stone
Stands as in act to shout, for she espies
              Him she once called her own
Dark waves of care swayed o'er her tender
  soul
The fine-wove turban from her golden hair
Had fallen; the light robe no longer stole
              Over her bosom bare.
Loose dropped the well-wrought girdle from
  her breast,
That wildly struggled to be free: they lay
About her feet, and many a briny crest
              Kissed them in careless play.
But nought she reeked of turban then, and
  nought

Of silken garments flowing gracefully.
O Theseus! far away in heart and thought
              And soul, she hung on thee!
Ay me! that hour did cruel love prepare
A never-ending thread of wildering woe
And twining round that heart rude briars of
  care,

              Bade them take root and grow;
What time, from old Piraeus' curved strand
A ship put forth towards the south to bring
Chivalrous-hearted Theseus to the land
              Of the unrighteous king.

A comparison of the above with the Latin text will show that, as in the italicised passages, the translator has been careful to preserve, as much as might be, the expressions, metaphors, and similes of the author. That author proceeds from this point to explain the causes of Theseus's visit to the home of Minos, and to unfold the legend of the monster, the labyrinth, the clue to it supplied by Ariadne, and the treachery of Theseus, who, when he had vanquished the monster, and led the princess to give up all for him, forsook her as she lay asleep in Dia's sea-girt isle. The lament of Ariadne on discovering her desolation is a triumph of true poetic art in its accommodation of the measure to the matter in hand; the change from calm description to rapid movement and utterance, as, climbing mountain-top, or rushing forth to face the surges upplashing over the bench to meet her, she utters outbursts of agony and passion intended to form a consummate contrast to the ideal happiness of them on whose coverlet this pathetic story was broidered. Two stanzas from Martin's beautiful and ballad-like version must represent tile touching character of this lament, in which, by the way, are several turns of thought and expression which Virgil seems to have had in mind for the 4th Book of the 'Æneis':—

Lost, lost! where shall I turn me? Oh, ye
  pleasant hills of home,
How shall I fly to thee across this gulf of
  angry foam?
How meet my father's gaze, a thing so doubly
  steeped in guilt,
The leman of a lover, who a brother's blood
  kind spilt?

A lover! gods! a lover! And alone he cleaves
  the deep,
And leaves me here to perish on this savage
  ocean steep.
No hope, no succour, no escape! None, none
  to hear my prayer!
All dark, and drear, and desolate; and death,
  death everywhere!
—(C. lxiv. vv. 177-187.)

The lines in which she declares that, had Ægeus objected to her for a daughter-in-law, she would have been his to spread his couch and lave his feet, have more than one echo in English poetry; and the climax of the lament, in a deep and sweeping curse on her betrayer, is a passage of terribly realistic earnestness:—

Yet ere these sad and streaming eyes on earth
  have looked their last,
Or ere this heart has ceased to heat, I to the
  gods will cast
One burning prayer for vengeance on the man
  who foully broke
The vows which, pledged in their dread
  names, in my fond ear he spoke.

Come, ye that wreak on man his guilt with
  retribution dire,
Ye maids, whose snake-wreathed brows
  bespeak your bosom's vengeful ire!
Come ye, and hearken to the curse which I, of
  sense forlorn,
Hurl from the ruins of a heart with mighty
  anguish torn!

Though there be fury in my words, and
  madness in my brain,
Let not my cry of woe and wrong assail your
  ears in vain!
Urge the false heart that left me here still on
  with headlong chase,
From ill to worse, till Theseus curse himself
  and all his race!
—M.

It is not to be denied that it would have been more artistic had the poet here dismissed the legend of Theseus and his misdemeanors, or, if not this, had he at least omitted the lesson of divine retribution conveyed in his sire's death as he crossed the home threshold, and contented himself with the spirited presentment of Bacchus and his attendant Satyrs and Sileni in quest of Ariadne, on another compartment of the coverlet. So far, the reader of the poem has represented one of the crowd gazing at the triumphs of needlework and tapestry in the bridal chambers. Now, place must be made for the divine and heroic guests, and their wedding-presents: Chiron, with the choicest meadow, alpine, and aquatic flowers of his land of meadows, rocks, and rivers; Peneius, with beech, bay, plane, and cypress—to plant for shade and verdure in front of the palace; Prometheus, still scarred with the jutting crags of his rocky prison; and all the gods and goddesses, save only Phoebus and his twin sister, absent from some cause of grudge which we know not, but which the researches of Alexandrine mythologists no doubt supplied to the poet. Anon, when the divine guests are seated at the groaning tables, the weird and age-withered Parcae, as they spin the threads of destiny, in shrill strong voices pour forth an alternating song with apt and mystic refrain, prophetic of the bliss that shall follow this union, and the glory to be achieved in its offspring. Here are two quatrains for a sample, relating to Achilles the offspring of the union:—

His peerless valour and his glorious deeds
Shall mothers o'er their stricken sons confess,
As smit with feeble hand each bosom bleeds,
And dust distains each grey dishevelled tress.

Run, spindles, run, and trail the fateful
  threads.

For as the reaper mows the thickset ears,
In golden corn-lands 'neath a burning sun,
E'en so, behold, Pelides' falchion shears
The life of Troy, and swift its course is run.

Run, spindles, run, and trail the fateful
  threads.
—D.

At the close of this chant of the fatal sisters, Catullus draws a happy picture, such as Hesiod had drawn before him, of the blissful and innocent age when the gods walked on earth, and mixed with men as friend with friend, before the advent of the iron age, when sin and death broke up family ties, and so disgusted the minds of the just Immortals that thenceforth there was no longer any "open vision"—

Hence from earth's daylight gods their forms
  refrain,
Nor longer men's abodes to visit deign.

It is by no means so easy to give any adequate idea of the "Atys," which is incomparably tile most remarkable poem of Catullus in point of metrical effects, of flow and ebb of passion, and of intensely real and heart-studied pathos. The subject, however, is one which, despite the praises Gibbon and others have bestowed on Catullus's handling of it, is unmeet for presentment in extenso before English readers. The sensible and correctly judging Dunlop did not err in his remark that a fable, unexampled except in the various poems on the fate of Abelard, was somewhat unpromising and peculiar as a subject for poetry. In a metre named, from the priests of Cybele, Galliambic, Catullus represents—it may be from his experience and research in Asia Minor—the contrasts of enthusiasm and repentant dejection of one who, for the great goddess's sake, has become a victim of his own frenzy. A Greek youth, leaving home and parents for Phrygia, vows himself to the service and grove of Cybele, and, after terrible initiation, snatches up the musical instruments of the guild, and incites his fellow-votaries to the fanatical orgies. Wildly traversing woodlands and mountains, he falls asleep with exhaustion at the temple of his mistress, and awakes, after a night's repose, to a sense of his rash deed and marred life. The complaint which ensues is unique in originality and pathos. "No other writer"—thus remarks Professor Sellar—"has presented so real an image of the frantic exultation and fierce self-sacrificing spirit of an inhuman fanaticism; and again, of the horror and sense of desolation which a natural man, and more especially a Greek or Roman, would feel in the midst of the wild and strange scenes described in the poem, and when restored to the consciousness of his voluntary bondage, and of the forfeiture of his country and parents and the free social, life of former days." The same writer acutely notes the contrast betwixt "the false excitement and noisy tumult of the evening and the terrible reality and blank despair of the morning," which, with "the pictorial environments," are the characteristic effects of this poem. In the original, no doubt these effects are enhanced by the singular impetuosity of the metre, which, it is well known, Mr. Tennyson, amongst others, has attempted to reproduce in his experiments upon classical metres. Such attempts can achieve only a fitful and limited success. English Galliambics can never, in the nature of things or measures, be popular. And even supposing the metre were more promising, it is undeniably against the dictates of good taste to make the revolting legend of Atys a familiar story to English readers of the ancient classics.

Curiosity, however, would dictate more acquaintance with "Berenice's Lock of Hair," a poem sent, as has been already stated, by Catullus to Hortalus, and purporting to be the poet's translation of a court poem of his favourite model, the Alexandrian poet Callimachus. The metre of both is elegiac; but of the original only two brief fragments remain so brief, indeed, that they fail to test the faithfulness of the translator. The subject, it should seem, was the fate of a tress which Berenice, according to Egyptian tables of affinity the lawful wife and queen of Ptolemy Euergetes, king of Egypt, although she was his sister, dedicated to Venus Zephyritis as an offering for the safety of her liege lord upon an expedition to which he was summoned against the Assyrians, and, which sadly interfered with his honeymoon. On his return the vow was paid in due course: the lock, however, shortly disappeared from the temple; and thereupon Conon, the court astronomer (of whom Virgil speaks in his third eclogue as one of the two most famous mathematicians of his time), invented the flattering account that it had been changed into a constellation. So extravagant a compliment would naturally kindle the rivalry of the courtly and erudite Alexandrian poet; and the result was soon forthcoming in an elegiac poem, supposed to be addressed to her mistress by the new constellation itself, in explanation of her abduction. To judge by the fragments which are extant, Catullus appears to have paraphrased rather than closely translated the original of Callimachus, though how far he has improved upon or embellished his model it is of course impossible to say. In some degree this detracts from the interest of the poem—at any rate, when viewed in connection with the genius of Catullus. Still, it deserves a passing notice: for its art and ingenuity, as employed after Catullus's manner, in blending beauty and passion with truth and constancy. It is curious, too, for its suggestive hints for Pope's "Rape of the Lock." The strain of compliment is obviously more Alexandrian than Roman; and readers of Theocritus will be prepared for a good deal in the shape of excessive compliment to the Ptolemys. But even in the compliment and its extravagance there is a considerable charm; and it is by no means uninteresting to possess, through the medium of an accomplished Latin poet, our only traces of a court poem much admired in its day. If, after all, the reception of Berenice's hair among the constellations forming the group of seven stars in Leo's tail, by the Alexandrian astronomers, is a matter of some doubt, it is at least clear that Callimachus did his best to back up Conon's averment of it, and that it suited Catullus to second his assertion so effectually, that it has befallen his muse to transmit the poetic tradition. The argument of the poem may be summarised. The Lock tells how, after its dedication by Berenice, if she received her lord from the wars safe and sound, Conon discovered it a constellation in the firmament. He had returned victorious; the lock had been reft from its mistress's head with that resistless steel to which ere then far sturdier powers had succumbed—

But what can stand against the might of steel?
'Twas that which made the proudest mountain
  reel,
Of all by Thia's radiant son surveyed,
What time the Mede a new Ægean made,
And hosts barbaric steered their galleys tall
Through rifted Athos' adamantine wall.
When things like these the power of steel
  confess,
What help or refuge for a woman's tress?
—(42-47.) M.

Need we suggest the parallel form Pope?—

What time could spare from steel receives its
  date,
And monuments, like men, submit to fate.
Steel could the labours of the gods destroy,
And strike to dust the imperial towers of
  Troy;
Steel could the works of mortal pride
  confound,
And hew triumphal arches to the ground.
What wonder then, fair nymph, thine hairs
  should feel
The conquering force of unresisted steel?

The tress proceeds to describe her passage through the air, and her eventual accession to the breast of Venus, thence to be transferred to an assigned position among the stars. A high destination, as the poem makes Berenice's hair admit, yet one (and here adulation takes its finest flight) which it would cheerfully forego to beonce more lying on its mistress's head:—

My state so glads me not, but I deplore
I ne'er may grace my mistress's forehead
  more,
With whom consorting in her virgin bloom,
I bathed in sweets, and quaffed the rich
  perfume.

In conclusion, the personified and constellated lock, with a happy thought, claims a toll on all maids and matrons happy in their love and nuptials, of an onyx box of perfume on the attainment of each heart's desire; and this claim it extends, foremost and first, to its mistress. Yet even this is a poor compensation for the loss of its once far prouder position, to recover which, and play again on Berenice's queenly brow, it would be well content if all the stars in the firmament should clash in a blind and chaotic collision:—

   Grant this, and then Aquarius may
Next to Orion blaze, and all the world
Of starry orbs be into chaos whirled.
—M.

After a survey of the larger poems … it would be especially out of place to attempt the barest notice of all that remains—a few very scurrilous and indelicate epigrams, having for their object the violent attacking of Casar, Mamurra, Gellius, and other less notable names obnoxious to our poet. By far the most part of these are so coarse, that, from their very nature, they are best left in their native language; and in this opinion we suspect we are supported by the best translators of Catullus, who deal with them sparingly and gingerly. Here and there, as in Epigram or Poem "84," Catullus quits this uninviting vein for one of purer satire in every sense, the sting of it being of philological interest. Arrius, its subject; like some of our own countrymen, seems to have sought to atone for clipping his h's by an equally ill-judged principle of compensation. He used the aspirate where it was wrong as well as where it was right. The authors of a recent volume already alluded to—'Lays from Latin Lyres'—have so expressed the spirit and flavour of Catullus's six couplets on this Arrius, that their version nay well stand for a sample of one of the most amusing and least offensive of his skits of this nature. It is, of course, something in the nature of a parody:—

Whenever 'Arry tried to sound
An H, his care was unavailing;
He always spoke of 'orse and 'ound,
And all his kinsfolk had that failing.

Peace to our ears. He went from home;
But tidings came that grieved us bitterly
That 'Arry, while he stayed at Rome,
Enjoyed his 'oliday in Hitaly.

And so we bid adieu to a poet who, with all his faults, has the highest claims upon us as a bard of nature and passion, and who was beyond question the first and greatest lyric poet of Italy.