e Benacus, which welcomed him home
"wearied with foreign travel." To this period and to his first return to
Rome after his visit to his native district belong the poems xlvi., ci.,
iv., xxxi. and x., all showing by their freshness of feeling and vivid
truth of expression the gain which the poet's nature derived from his
temporary escape from the passions, distractions and animosities of
Roman society. Two poems, written in a very genial and joyous spirit,
and addressed to his younger friend Licinius Calvus (xiv. and l.), who
is ranked as second only to himself among the lyrical poets of the age,
and whose youthful promise pointed him out as likely to become one of
the greatest of Roman orators, may, indeed, with most probability be
assigned to these later years (xiv.). From the expression "Odissem te
odio Vatiniano," in the third line of xiv., it may be inferred that the
poem was written not earlier than December (the "Saturnalia") of the
year 56 B.C., as it was early in that year, as we learn from a letter of
Cicero to his brother Quintus (ii. 4. 1), that Calvus first announced
his intention of prosecuting Vatinius. The short poem numbered liii.
would be written in August 54 B.C. The poems which have left the
greatest stain on the fame of Catullus--those "referta contumeliis
Caesaris," the licentious abuse of Mamurra, and probably some of those
personal scurrilities addressed to women as well as men, or too frank
confessions, which posterity would willingly have let die, may well have
been written in the last years of his life, under the influence of the
bitterness and recklessness induced by his experience. It cannot be
determined with certainty whether the longer and more artistic pieces,
which occupy the middle of the volume--the _Epithalamium_ in celebration
of the marriage of Manlius Torquatus, the 62nd poem, written in
imitation of the Epithalamia of Sappho, "Vesper adest: iuvenes,
consurgite"; the _Attis_, and the Epic Idyll representing the marriage
festival of Peleus and Thetis--belong to the earlier or the later period
of the poet's career. If the person addressed in the first part of the
68th is the Manlius of the _Epithalamium_, and the lines from 3 to 8--

"Naufragum ut eiectum ... pervigilat,"

refer to the death of Vinia, it would follow that the first Epithalamium
was written some time before that poem, and thus belongs to the earlier
time. While the translations of Sappho,--

"Ille mi par esse de