animosity as of
his love and affection. It was, unfortunately, the fashion of the time
to employ in the expression of these animosities a licence of speech and
of imputation which it is difficult for men living under different
social conditions to understand, still more difficult to tolerate. Munro
has examined the 29th poem--

"Quis hoc potest videre, quis potest pati,"

the longest and most important of the lampoons on Caesar and Mamurra,
and shown with much learning and acuteness the motives and intention of
Catullus in writing them. Had Julius Caesar really believed, as
Suetonius, writing two hundred years afterwards, says he did, that "an
eternal stigma had been cast upon him by the verses concerning Mamurra,"
we should scarcely apply the word magnanimity to his condonation of the
offence. But these verses survive as a memorial not of any scandal
affecting Julius Caesar which could possibly have been believed by his
contemporaries, but of the licence of speech which was then indulged in,
of the jealousy with which the younger members of the Roman aristocracy,
who a little later fought on the side of Pompey, at that time regarded
the ascendancy both of the "father-in-law and the son-in-law," and the
social elevation of some of their instruments, and also, to a certain
extent, of the deterioration which the frank and generous nature of
Catullus underwent from the passions which wasted, and the faithlessness
which marred his life.

The great age of Latin poetry extends from about the year 60 B.C. till
the death of Ovid in 17 A.D. There are three marked divisions in this
period, each with a distinct character of its own: the first represented
by Lucretius and Catullus, the second by Virgil and Horace, the last by
Ovid. Force and sincerity are the great characteristics of the first
period, maturity of art of the second, facility of the last. The
educating influence of Greek art on the Roman mind was first fully
experienced in the Ciceronian age, and none of his contemporaries was so
susceptible of that influence as Catullus. With the susceptibility to
art he combined a large share of the vigorous and genial qualities of
the Italian race. Like most of his younger contemporaries, he studied in
the school of the Alexandrine poets, with whom the favourite subjects of
art were the passion of love, and stories from the Greek mythology,
which admitted of being treated in a spirit similar to that in which
they celebrated