as long as they finish off some
limp little dirge in hendecasyllabics, feel that they are marvellously
charming and polished, although there is nothing more empty than such
verses or nothing easier to do if a man has acquired a little practice
in Latin.

How little effort, for instance, shall we imagine the conclusion of
this epigram cost Borbonius, fashioned as it is according to the model
of Catullus?

Wherefore come, O Roman muses,
Full of honey and of graces,
Learned verses of good Pino;
I embrace you, just Camenae,
All day long I read you gladly
In this mortifying season,
Time of tears and time of penance,
Harsh and troublesome, by Jupiter![38]

You can see where the perverse imitation of Catullus has conducted a
Christian, in other respects devout, so that in discussing a Christian
fast day he had no fear of using the profane name of Jove. But,
leaving this aside, what is more inept than the verse _Harsh and
troublesome, by Jupiter!_, however Catullan. Nevertheless, Borbonius
thought his epigram concluded elegantly in that line because he found
in Catullus a similar one.[39] But, leaving aside such spiritless
imitators, one can truly affirm of those ideas that conclude epigrams
that there is a good deal of elegance in them when they are themselves
distinguished and nicely cohere with the preceding chain of thought.
For, since nothing so sticks in the reader's mind as the conclusion,
what is better than to put there what especially you want to fix in
his soul. Consequently, those epigrams are rightly censured as faulty
that go in the order of anti-climax or in which the conclusion is sort
of added on or appended to the rest and does not neatly develop out of
the preceding verses. This fault is discernible in the following
epigram, though in other respects it is distinguished:

You that a stranger in mid-Rome seek Rome
And can find nothing in mid-Rome of Rome,
Behold this mass of walls, these abrupt rocks,
Where the vast theatre lies overwhelmed.
Here, here is Rome! Look how the very corpse
Of greatness still imperiously breathes threats!
The world she conquered, strove herself to conquer,
Conquered that nothing be unconquered by her.
Now conqueror Rome's interred in conquered Rome,
And the same Rome conquered and conqueror.
Still Tiber stays, witness of Roman fame,
Still Tiber flows on swift waves to the sea.
Learn hence