would not choose, so unto each it happens!--
He who is rich must lose all that means nearest heirship,
I, the poor man, O God! stripped of my one possession!

Translation through the German by E. Irenaeus Stevenson.

CATULLUS

(84-54 B.C.?)

BY J. W. MACKAIL

[Illustration: VALERIUS CATULLUS]

The last thirty years of the Roman Republic are, alike in thought and
action, one of the high-water marks of the world's history. This is
the age of Cicero and of Julius Caesar. This brief period includes the
conquest of Gaul, the invasion of Britain, the annexation of the
Asiatic monarchies founded by Alexander's marshals; the final collapse
of the Roman oligarchy which had subdued the whole known world; the
development of the stateliest and most splendid prose that the world
has ever seen or is ever likely to see; and lastly, a social life
among the Roman upper classes so brilliant, so humane, so intimately
known to us from contemporary historians, poets, orators,
letter-writers, that we can live in it with as little stretch of
imagination as we can live in the England of Queen Anne. Among the
foremost figures of this wonderful period is Valerius Catullus, the
first of Latin lyric poets, and perhaps the third, alongside of Sappho
and Shelley, in the supreme rank of the lyric poets of the world.

He represents in his life and his genius the fine flower of his age
and country. He was born at Verona of a wealthy and distinguished
family, while Italy was convulsed by the civil wars of Marius and
Sulla; he died at the age of thirty, while Caesar was completing the
conquest of Gaul, and the Republic, though within a few days of its
extinction, still seemed full of the pride of life. The rush and
excitement of those thrilling years is mirrored fully in the life and
poetry of Catullus. Fashion, travel, politics, criticism, all the
thousandfold and ever-changing events and interests of the age, come
before us in their most vivid form and at their highest pressure, in
this brief volume of lyrics. But all come involved with and
overshadowed by a story wholly personal to himself and immortal in its
fascination: the story of an immense and ill-fated love that "fed its
life's flame with self-substantial fuel," and mounted in the morning
glories of sunrise only to go down in thunder and tempest before noon.

There are perhaps no love poems in the world like these. Of Sappho,
seemingly the greatest poet of her