Nicomedes non triumphat, qui subegit Caesarem.

v. 13. _Defututa Mentula_ = a worn-out voluptuary. Mentula is a cant term
which Catullus frequently uses for a libidinous person, and particularly
for Mamurra.

v. 24. Pompey married Caesar's daughter, Julia, and is commonly supposed to
be the "son-in-law" here meant; but Vossius argues with some force, that
_socer_ and _gener_ apply, not to Caesar and Pompey, but to Caesar and
Mamurra. Those words, and the corresponding terms in Greek, were often used
in an unnatural sense, as for instance in an epigram on Noctuinus,
attributed to Calvus, in which occurs this very line, _Gener socerque
perdidistis omnia_.

C. xxxi. v. 1. As the Venice-Trieste railway runs along the southern bar of
the pyriform narrow, Lago di Garda, with its towering mountains, whose
heads are usually in the storm-clouds, and whose feet sink into the nearest
vineyards, the traveller catches a sight of the Sirmio Spit, long and
sandy. It is a narrow ridge boldly projecting into the lake (once called
Benacus) which was formerly a marsh, but now made into an island by the
simple process of ditch cutting: at the southern end is the Sermione hill
and its picturesque Scottish-German Castle. To the north are some ruins
supposed to be the old Villa of Catullus, but they seem too extensive to
serve for the purpose.--_R. F. B._

C. xxxii. v. 11. Pezay, a French translator, strangely mistakes the meaning
of the passage, as if it amounted to this, "I have gorged till I am ready
to burst;" and he quotes the remark of "une femme charmante," who said that
her only reply to such a billet-doux would have been to send the writer an
emetic. But the lady might have prescribed a different remedy if she had
been acquainted with Martial's line:

O quoties rigida pulsabis pallia vena!

or with this quatrain of an old French poet:

Ainsi depuis une semaine
La longue roideur de ma veine,
Pour neant rouge et bien en point,
Bat ma chemise et mon pourpoint.

C. xxxvii. v. 1. Taverns and Wine-shops in Rome were distinguished by
pillars projecting into the streets, the better to catch the eye of the
passenger, as sign-posts of inns do with us now; the tavern in question was
a house of ill-fame, and we are told it was the ninth column or sign-post
from the Temple of Castor and Pollux.

v. 2. It was customary to display on the fronts of brothels the names of
the inmates, just as shopkeepers' names were inscribed over