ad cried
"Enough!"

Said Horace: "Nunc est bibendum."

IX

THE IMPERIAL ORGY

Death, in taking Cleopatra, closed the doors of the temple Janus. After
centuries of turmoil, there was peace. The reign of the Caesars had begun.
Octavius became Augustus, the rest of the litter divine. The triumvirs of
war were succeeded by the triumvirs of love. These were the poets.

Catullus had gone with the republic. In verse he might have been primus.
He was too negligent. His microscopic masterpieces form but a brief bundle
of pastels. The face repeated there is Lesbia's. He saw her first lounging
in a litter that slaves carried along the Sacred Way. Immediately he was
in love with her. The love was returned. In the delight of it the poet was
born. His first verses were to her, so also were his last. But Lesbia
wearied of song and kisses, at least of his. She eloped with his nearest
friend. In the _Somnambula_ the tenor sings _O perche non posso
odiarte_--Why can I not hate thee? The song is but a variant on that of
Catullus. Odi et amo, I love and hate you, he called after her. But, if
she heard, she heeded as little as Beatrice did when Dante cursed the day
he saw her first. Dante ceased to upbraid, but did not cease to love. He
was but following the example of Catullus, with this difference: Beatrice
went to heaven, Lesbia to hell, to an earthly hell, the worst of any, to a
horrible inn on the Tiber where sailors brawled. She descended to that,
fell there, rather. Catullus still loved her.

At the sight of Cynthia another poet was born. What Lesbia pulchra had
been to Catullus, Cynthia pulchrior became to Propertius. He swore that
she should be his sole muse, and kept his word, in so far as verse was
concerned. Otherwise, he was less constant. It is doubtful if she deserved
more, or as much. Never did a girl succeed better in tormenting a lover,
never was there a lover so poetically wretched as he. In final fury he
flung at her farewells that were maledictions, only to be recaptured,
beaten even, subjugated anew. She made him love her. When she died, her
death nearly killed him. Nearly, but not quite. He survived, and, first
among poets, intercepted the possibility of reunion there where all things
broken are made complete, and found again things vanished--_Lethum non
omnia finit_.

Horace resembled him very remotely. A little fat man--brevis atque obesus,
Suetonius said--he waddled and wallowed in the excesses of t