into personal contact with all that was most noted in the society of the province, military as well as civil.* As we scan the varied features of the surrounding country, we can well believe that its singular loveliness could not be without some formative influence in fostering that appreciation of natural beauty, which, like a golden thread, runs through the poetry of Catullus. In thought we follow him to Rome where, as he tells us, he eventually made his home, returning to his native district only at intervals, when a little box, selected from his travelling gear, could hold all that he needed for the visit (lxviii, 34). The vivid glimpses which the poems reveal of the gay society of his day in Rome, and the touching evidence they afford of the fluctuations of his intensely emotional nature, crowd upon the memory. They show us his abounding sociality and gaiety as a companion, the depth and tenderness of his affection for those whom he loved, the true sympathy with which he embraced his friends in their sorrows no less than in their joys; at the same time the vigour of his hatreds, or at least the strength of the vituperation with which, perhaps, he often simulated them; † and above all his passionate and tragic infatuation for the captivating but worthless Lesbia, which was at once a prime inspiration of his muse and the ultimate ruin of his life. We recall especially that memorable journey to Bithynia, on the staff of the proprætor Memmius, where the poet hoped to replenish a purse which, he said, had come to be full only of dusty cobwebs, but where the governor's vigilance frustrated his junior's intention to *The great proconsul Julius Cæsar is said to have been a frequent guest in the house. † See Munro (op. cit., p. 75) for a reasoned argument to show that the poet's defamatory attacks on some of his contemporaries are not to be judged by modern standards of taste, but must be looked at in the light in which they would be generally understood in his day. The Roman populace, when in merry mood, were wont to vie with each other in scurrilous Fescennine verse; but the personal abuse in which they indulged was only a pastime which did not denote any real unfriendliness or enmity. Such contests in vituperation were perpetuated for many centuries. In the latter half of the fifteenth century they were signally exemplified in the sonnets of the Italian poets Luigi Pulci and Matteo Franco; and a generation or two later the most noted Scottish poets, in their 'flytings,' or scoldings of each other, exhausted the vocabulary of scurrilous epithets wherein their native language was specially rich, yet they remained good friends. + xiii, 8. enrich himself at the expense of the provincials. We can picture the consequent disappointment and disgust which led him to throw up his place on the staff and return home; his eagerness to travel and see famous places by the way, and the kindly companionship that prompted the sonnet in which he bade farewell to the comrades whom he left behind him.* More especially do we think of him at his brother's grave in the Troad, and of the anguish of that lasting grief to which he again and again gave vent in language of such passionate longing and hopeless despair.† The incidents of the long homeward voyage, as he has so graphically recited them, rise one by one into our recollection—the yacht which he purchased, built of wood from the forests of Pontic Amastris, whence in imagination he seemed still to hear the whistling of the wind through the rustling foliage of the trees from which her timbers had been cut; the sail across the rough Black Sea, through the wild Thracian Propontis to famous Rhodes and the Cyclad Isles, and thence along the shores of the threatening Adriatic-the vessel holding her course, alike in storm and calm, now with sails and now with oars, never outstripped by any other craft afloat, but coming back at last from the remotest seas to be piloted up the Po and the Mincio into the limpid waters of the Lago di Garda, where she was finally dedicated to the sailors' patrons, Castor and Pollux.‡ The Lake of Garda, now inseparably associated with Catullus, was not improbably familiar to him in his youth, for it lies only some twenty-five miles to the west of Verona. It may have been to the wealthier citizens of Verona what the coast of the Tyrrhene Sea was to those of Rome-a place where they erected villas and to which they were wont to resort for their summer holiday. Catullus' father may thus have possessed a villa on the shore of the lake, which could be easily and speedily reached by a good road from Verona. In any case, we know that the poet either inherited or otherwise acquired a residence at Sirmio off the southern coast. A more fitting abode for stimulating the noblest powers of his genius could not have been found in the whole compass of Italy. In Rome, where he threw himself, heart and * xlvi. † lxviii, 19, 91; ci. iv. soul, into the gay life of the city, he had many distractions and anxieties. Besides the wayward course of his passion for Lesbia, so faithfully reflected in his poems, his generosity and extravagance reduced his means and increased his solicitudes. But here, in his native province, far from the stir and strife of the capital and face to face with Nature in her most varied and alluring guise, he could regain the mastery of himself. How deep was the attachment of Catullus to this retreat on the Garda Lake may best be realised from the exuberant joy expressed in one of his most delightful lyrics (xxxi), written on the spot, when he returned from the East. The poem is addressed to Sirmio, which he calls the little gem of all the peninsulas or islands that Neptune bears on lake or sea. He can hardly trust himself at first to believe that he has really left the hot plains of Bithynia, and is now once more in his beloved retreat. What can be more blessed, he exclaims, than to drop the burden of our cares and, wearied with the toils of foreign travel, to return to our own dear home, there to rest upon the bed so eagerly desired? Such a consummation is, indeed, ample recompense for all the fatigues that have been endured. Bursting into jubilant song, he welcomes his lovely Sirmio, bidding it to share in his delight and rejoice to have its master back once more, and, with that boyish love of mirthfulness so characteristic of his temperament, he calls on the water itself to swell the general chorus of glee with all the laughter that its rippling waves can send forth. If it be asked what were the attractions of the place that could give rise to so exuberant an attachment, the answer can hardly be given in a few words, depending as it does partly on the special features of the lake and its surroundings, and partly on the habits and tastes of the poet himself. Having a keen eye for beauty of every kind, he appreciated the varied beauties of Sirmio. This appreciation was no doubt of a sensuous rather than a contemplative nature. It was mingled, too, with gratification that this lovely spot was his own home, endeared to him by its associations. But there were some characteristics of the place that would strongly appeal to his temperament; and a consideration of these may help us to understand his enthusiasm. The Lago di Garda, the Lacus Benacus of the Romans, differs from other Italian lakes in certain features that give it a well-marked peculiarity. Its northern half, like a Norwegian fjord, is a strip of water two to three miles broad, running in a nearly straight line towards the north-east, between two ranges of mountains that rise steeply in verdant slopes from its shores. This portion of the lake belongs characteristically to the mountain region. The southern half emerges from the mountains into the plains, where it widens out into a basin some ten miles broad, encircled only by comparatively low hills. This combination of mountainous and lowland surroundings (as, on a smaller scale, in the case of Loch Lomond, in Scotland) gives the lake its most distinctive feature. At its southern end it is separated from the great Lombardy plain by the gigantic semicircle of moraine-mounds which mark the end of the massive glacier that once descended from the Tyrolese Alps, filled up the basin of the lake, and reached the plain, at that time possibly covered by the sea. Another characteristic of Garda is the remarkable straightness of its trend. Standing on the low hills above the southern shore, we can look along the whole length of the lake and far up into the mountain country beyond. One result of this configuration is seen in the violent storms to which the lake is subject when the winds blow strongly from the snowy uplands in the north-east. Big waves then arise, which gain force as they are driven to the southern shore, where they fall with great violence on the shingle-beach. The lake is famous for the fury of its storms. Probably Virgil saw it in one of its tempestuous moods, for he describes it as 'heaving with billows and with a roar as of the sea.'* Near the southern margin of the lake, about three miles from the shore, a small solitary wooded island rises out of the water. From a distance it seems to stand wholly unconnected with any other land. But on a nearer view it is found to be attached to the shore by a strip of alluvial ground, so narrow in some parts as to • Fluctibus et fremitu adsurgens, Benace, marino?'-' Georgics,' ii, 160. In boisterous weather sea-sickness is not unknown among the passengers in the steamboats on the lake. afford hardly more than room for a roadway, and so low as to be more or less submerged when the level of the water at this end of the lake is raised by prolonged northerly gales. This spit of land is a natural accumulation of considerable antiquity, which has served for many centuries as a means of communication between the island and the lake-shore. The island consists of a mass of pinkish limestone, and rises several hundred feet above the surface of the water, into which it descends more or less steeply on all sides. Its surface is clothed to the top with olive woods, which in spring are carpeted with violets, grape-hyacinths and the lesser periwinkle, that cast a flush of blue over the fresh herbage beneath the grey-green foliage of the prevailing trees.† This island, now known as Sirmione, is undoubtedly the Sirmio of Catullus. At its northern end are some Roman ruins, popularly believed to be the remains of the poet's house; but they probably belong to a later time, though, as they are placed on the most advantageous site for a commanding view of the lake and the mountains beyond, they may occupy the ground on which the dwelling of Catullus actually stood. From the summit of the island the eye takes in the whole wide expanse of the great southern basin of the lake and also the entire length of the northern fjord-like portion, with its little promontories on either side, far away into the blue distances of the interior; while above the nearer crests we catch glimpses of remote snowy peaks beyond. Owing to the southward prolongation of the lake outside the limits of the mountains, it is possible from Sirmione to see, on both sides, part of the southern front of the Alpine chain as it sweeps down to the great plain at its foot. To the west lie the foothills around Brescia, and far to the east those that rise to the sky-line north of Verona. The countless varieties of outline and diversities of colour in this vast panorama of high grounds afford to the beholder an inexhaustible source *It was doubtless to this twofold character that Catullus alluded when he addressed his home on the lake as 'Pæne insularum, Sirmio, insularumque †The reader will remember Tennyson's line-' Then beneath the Roman ruin, where the purple flowers grow.' |