Catullus and Horace

Author(s): John Ferguson

Source: The American Journal of Philology, Vol. 77, No. 1 (1956), pp. 1-18
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
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 AMERICAN
JOURNAL OF PHILOLOGY

VOL. LXXVII, 1 WHOLE NO. 305

CATULLUS AND HORACE.

Horace's judgment of Catullus is famous and familiar. In
the tenth satire of the first book he criticizes an associate of
Hermogenes, no doubt 1 Demetrius, whose only skill is in singing
Catullus and Calvus.2 Noyes in his book on Horace suggests
that to complain that someone declaims nothing but Shakespeare
is not to criticize Shakespeare,3but Horace's general rejection
of Catullus' approach to poetry is clear enough.4 Catullus is
one of the docti poetae.5 Horace did not wholly disavow the
possession of doctae frontes,6 but he had a healthy scepticism
about the parade of learning, and would have urged an aurea
mediocritas 7 in this as in all things. Indeed, Demetrius' own
skill is ingeniously represented by the word doctus,s and in the
very preceding poem the bore, who has been variously identified,
claims to be one of the docti.9 G. L. Hendrickson, in three able
articles,10argued, with much probability, that the purpose of the
tenth satire was to criticize Valerius Cato and his school, and
1G. L. Hendrickson, "Horace and Valerius Cato,"
C.P., XI, pp.
249 ff.; XII, pp. 77 ff., 329 ff., argued that the reference is to Furius
Bibaculus.
2 Hor., Sat., I,
10, 19.
Noyes, Horace, pp. 90-100.
'Tenney Frank, Catullus and Horace, pp. 162-4.
5Tib., III, 6, 41; Ov., Am., III, 9, 62; A. A., II, 181; Mart., I, 61, 1.
Hor., Od., I, 1, 29.
7Ibid., II, 10, 5. 9
Ibid., I, 9, 7.
8 Idem,
Sat., I, 10, 19. 10 op. cit.

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2 JOHN FERGUSON.

that the deletion of the opening lines, which forms a curious

problem for the textual critic, was to eliminate any direct
personal reference to him. Cato was, like Catullus, a Cisalpine,
and the acknowledged leader of the group of poets to whom he
belonged. Bentley long ago identified Pitholeon Rhodius with M.
Otacilius Pitholaus, who was associated with Catullus and
Furius Bibaculus in lampooning Caesar. The bombastic Alpinus
appears to be Bibaculus himself. Varro of Atax certainly looked
to Alexandria for his inspiration, and is mentioned with Catullus
as a predecessor of the Augustan elegiac writers. But even if
Hendrickson's central thesis be disallowed, there is enough to
show that Horace was opposed to the practice of many writers
of Catullus' circle.
The Ars Poetica, as one would expect, throws more light on
these critical differences. In particular there is a forthright pas-
sage about the need to fit metre to theme." Horace felt that the
neoteri were slovenly in their verse technique, and when he bor-
rows from Catullus without acknowledgment (" Damned good to
steal from" said a fellow-artist of a very different school about
William Blake) he refines and corrects in accordance with his
principles. He felt also that they were insufficiently alive to
the characteristic peculiarities of the different metres. Horace
would never have written a deep cry of passionate pathos in
scazon iambics. But Catullus had seen deeper than Horace.
Miser Catulle 12 is a triumph of genius over rule. The "limp"
which usually provided the twist of the epigram, the barbed hook
which bites into its victim, here creates the sob or sigh of the
distraught lover. In addition to these more general criticisms,
there are a few detailed allusions which we can trace, and no
doubt many more which we have lost. In writing critically of
the "purple patch" Horace refers to descriptions of Diana's
altar and of the river Rhine, which are tacked on to their poems,
not blended in.13 Valerius Cato wrote a poem on Diana, and
Furius Bibaculus an epic on Caesar's conquests. The allusions
are not absolutely certain, but we know of no other equally
1 Hor., A. P., 73-88.
2
Cat., 8. The poem has sometimes been taken as a light satire on
a tiff. I cannot so take it.
"1Hor., A. P., 14-18.

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 CATULLUS AND HORACE. 3

probable source, and the fact that we can place two of his refer-
ences plausibly among the same school of poets is itself sugges-
tive. It is important to add that Horace never degenerated into
petty divergence for the sake of being different. Acron tells us
that the scriptor cyclicus whom Horace upbraids is the same
" swollen Antimachus " whose wordiness Catullus contrasts un-
favourably with his friend Cinna's Zmyrna.14 This was the
poem, of no great length, which took nine years to produce.
One cannot think that the poem itself appealed to Horace. But
the care, the courting of perfection, did, and, like Philargyrius,
and despite some modern commentators, one cannot fail to
detect in his demand for nine years' polishing a direct reference
to Cinna, and a readiness to attribute praise where he believed
praise to be due.15 Similarly, if Ellis is right in his identification
of the Gellius of Catullus' epigrams with the Pedius Publicola
of Horace, the two poets agree well in their judgment of Publi-
cola.l6 He became a bitter enemy of Catullus, but we learn that
his mind was diligent in the literary chase, and that a transla-
tion of Callimachus was an acceptable offering at his table.17
Horace's Pedius is a purist for Latinity, who does not permit a
macaronic mingling of Latin and Greek 18 (which suggests that
he might well be interested in problems of translation from one
language into the other). He is besides a critic of discrimina-
tion,19 and, whatever Catullus may say about his morals, he
nowhere disparages his taste.
Horace then has one mention and one mention only of Catul-
lus by name, and that is mildly sarcastic. And he is generally
critical of the school of writing to which Catullus belongs. We
learn something more about his attitude to his predecessor from
his own claim to originality. This he makes in no uncertain
terms. In the last ode of the third book he asserts that his
glory is to have been the first to render Aeolian poetry in Latin.20
14 Cat., 95, 10; Hor., A. P., 136; Acron ad loc.
" Philargyrius in Eel., 9, 35; Cat., 95, 1-2; Hor., A. P., 388; Quint.,
X, 4, 4.
16 Ellis, Commentary on
Catullus, pp. 349-54; cf. Dio Cass., XLVII, 24.
17 Cat., 116.

18 Hor., Sat., I, 10, 28.

19
Ibid., I, 10, 85.
20
Idem, Od., III, 30, 13.

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4 JOHN FERGUSON.

This assertion is more closely defined in an earlier poem in

which he says that he is playing on an instrument unheard
before, the lyre of Lesbos.21 In the letter to Maecenas in which
he defends his published work against its detractors he makes the
additional claim to have been the first to convey the spirit and
metre of Archilochus in Latin.22 The Roman thirst for an
inherited immortality and their conception of originality as the
"accommodation " of a fresh department of Greek literature is,
in the sincerity of its flattery, one of the highest compliments
ever accorded to the Greeks.23 But Horace's particular claims
are really rather impudent. It would be hard to deny that
Catullus' more vituperative effusions conveyed the spirit of the
scorpion-tongued Archilochus, and he certainly at times wrote
in iambics which we may suppose were Parian,24 though it is
Callimachus rather than Alcaeus who is blended in to make the
potion milder. And Catullus was undoubtedly the first to attune
the Lesbian lyre to the Latin language in his two Sapphic
poems.25 It is true that there are only two such poems, that
they are both intensely personal, and that Quintilian does not
account Catullus a lyric poet at all, and these things have often
been alleged in extenuation of Horace. But Horace himself
betrays a certain awareness that his claims have been two sweep-
ing. Even in the odes, he makes clear a preference for Alcaeus
to Sappho,26 and in the first three books the Alcaic metre is
used half as often again as the Sapphic. In the letter in which
he is concerned to answer criticism he speaks with considerable
care, and has evidently been challenged on this very point of
priority, presumably by admirers of Catullus; we know that by
the time of Propertius Lesbia was "more familiar than
Helen." 27 Horace now makes three pleas. First, he makes a
fresh assertion at least of his originality in following Archilo-
chus: this, as we have seen, cannot be sustained, but it has not
21
Ibid., I, 26, 10-12.
22 Idem,
Ep., I, 19, 23.
28Lucr., I, 927; V, 336; Verg., G., II, 175; III, 10 and 292; Prop.,
IV, 1, 3; Manil., II, 53.
24
Cat., 4; 29; 52.
2S
Idem, 11; 51.
28
Hor., Od., II, 13, 30.
27
Prop., II, 34, 87.

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 CATULLUS AND HORACE. 5

exactly been made before. Secondly (and here I follow the

scholiast as against Bentley and most recent editors), he says
that he introduced Sappho and Alcaeus to impart a very differ-
ent tone to his verse. Thirdly, he categorically asserts his pri-
ority in introducing Alcaeus. This is a clear enough acknowl-
edgment of Catullus' priority in the case of Sappho.28
But acknowledgment of priority is not of itself acknowledg-
ment of indebtedness, and it will be a matter of some importance
to our understanding of both poets to examine the places where
Horace borrows from Catullus and the way in which he uses the
material which he picks up. Catullus' poetry falls into three
sharply defined groupings. The first sixty poems are lyrical.
The next eight are longer poems, linked by the common theme
of marriage. The last thirty-eight are elegiac epigrams. Now
the interesting point is that there is no clear evidence that
Horace knew any elegiac poem of Catullus. Such reminiscences
as may be alleged are few and unreliable. Both end a hexameter
with eius.29 Both use the rare word sesquipedalis. (The use is
incidentally a good commentary on the different verbal sensi-
tivity of the two poets. Catullus ends his line appallingly dentes
os sesquipedales, Horace brilliantly sesquipedalia verba.30) And
that is really all. This is not wholly surprising. Horace was
primarily a lyric poet, and we would expect the lyrics to com-
mand his attention. But it is an interesting speculation whether
he had in fact so much as read the elegiacs, and, if not, whether
in Horace's day the three sections of Catullus' poetry were in
circulation independently of one another.
About twenty years ago, C. W. Mendell drew attention to
Horace's familiarity with Catullus' longer poems.31 This had
been hitherto overlooked, but Mendell buttressed his argument
with such overwhelming evidence of verbal debt that his conclu-
sion must be accepted. In particular he demonstrated Horace's
debt to the Marriage of Peleus and Thetis. In the twenty-
28
Hor., Ep., I, 19, 23-34.
29Cat., 84, 5; Hor., Sat., II, 6, 76; cf. Lucr., I, 782 and 965; Prop.,
IV, 2, 35; Ov., Trist., III, 4, 27.
30Cat., 97, 5; Hor., A. P., 97; cf. Mart., VII, 14, 10.
31C. W. Mendell, "Catullan Echoes in the Odes of Horace," C. P.,
XXX, pp. 289 ff. I am grateful to Professor H. T. Rowell for reference
to this article.

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6 JOHN FERGUSON.

seventh ode of the third book Horace treats the myth of Europa.
But he says little about the more familiar parts of the story, and
concentrates on the theme of the abandoned mistress, which is
not usually associated with the Europa legend, but found notable
expression in Catullus' picture of Ariadne. In this Horatian
passage are found niveum, palluit, quae simul, tetigit, furor (of
love), fluctus, iuvencum, dedat, cornua, monstri, praedae (a
female victim), rupes, procellae, carpere, barbam, perfidus, lace-
randa, invicti, singultus, all of which are found in or may be
taken from Catullus' sixty-fourth poem, and many of which are
otherwise rare in Horace; 32 in addition one or two parallels of
thought may be adduced.33 In the eleventh ode of the same book
Horace treats the myth of Hypermnestra. From this Mendell
culls lympha, periurus, splendidus, lacerant, favor, querella,
clemens, sepulcrum, memor, parco, and extremus, all from the
same poem of Catullus. When Horace writes of the sea, even
allegorically, he appears to go to the same source for his vocabu-
34
lary. Twenty lines on the ship of state contain malus (mast),
saucius, antemnae, funis, carinae, fluctus, nudus (stripped of),
portus, lintea, pinus, navita, puppes. Antemnae is unique in
Horace; all except fluctus and navita are rare; all are in Catul-
lus' poem. Other poems from the first book offer possible,
though less striking, examples of borrowing from Catullus' epyl-
lion. The fourth has Favonius, carinae, canus, and the unique
talis. The thirty-second shows the adverbial primum, religarat,
and rite; of these only the second carries any weight. But a
single stanza of the thirty-fourth offers attenuat, stridore, ob-
scura, and rapax, and there are close parallels of thought and
language between the lines immediately preceding and one pas-
sage in Catullus.35
With the other long poems the evidence is more tenuous. In
one of Horace's spring songs he may have had the Attis in mind;
the association with spring was a natural one. Stabulis and
albicant occur in consecutive lines. Both are unique in Horace,

S2 For references see C. W. Mendell, op. cit.

88Hor, Od., III, 27, 34 and 49; Cat., 64, 180. Hor., Od., III, 27, 63;
Cat., 64, 160.
84Hor., Od., I, 14.
S5 Ibid., I, 34, 5 and 12; Cat., 64, 204-6.

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 CATULLUS AND HORACE. 7
both are found in the Attis.36 The following lines contain choros,
alterno pede, viridi. Catullus has viridem citus adit Idam pro-
perante pede chorus.37 It is precarious to build much on this,
and more important to notice that the dynamic power of the
Attis and even the tour-de-force of its metrical brilliance left no
mark upon Horace whatever. Similarly, though it may be that
the vocabulary of the Hypermnestra myth owes something to the
fact that Horace had read Catullus' epithalamia, he seems
utterly unaffected by their wealth of imagery and grace of touch.
His familiarity with the lyrics is beyond question, and we
must begin by seeing what use he made of Catullus' original
Sapphics. The Sapphic metre is based upon a sequence of tro-
chees and dactyls, and Catullus' usage approximates closely to
that of Sappho. Horace, however, adapts the metre to the genius
of the Latin language, thereby obscuring its real nature, by
insisting that the fourth syllable of the first three lines of each
stanza shall be long, thus adding the weight which is character-
istic of Latin rather than Greek. He also gives greater rigidity
to the verse by insisting on a caesura after the fifth or sixth
syllable of these lines; in his early works it is mainly the former.
" He gave to it" says Munro, " that easy and monotonous flow
which it retained ever after." 38 He thus eschews the effect
which Sappho and Catullus use with such skill, whereby the line
is like a country dancer tripping into the centre, and then
reversing with the same step back to position. We may see this
in a line like Sappho's a4a 8' 'etKovro70'v ' < iLaKaLpa,9 or Catul-
lus' Pauca nuntiate meae puellae.4 We might say that Catullus
shows his genius in adapting the language to the metre, Horace
his in adapting the metre to the language.
These are generalities. When we come to detail it is striking
how much Horace's Autolycan grasp has lifted from Catullus'
two short poems. The earlier of these is a rendering of a sublime
poem of Sappho's. In it he employs the striking phrase dulce
ridentem. Horace was among those whom it struck. He picked
it up, put it into a poem which was already indebted to Catullus,

SeHor., Od., I, 4, 3-4; Cat., 63, 53 and 87.

87
Hor., Od., I, 4, 5-9; Cat., 63, 30.
88 Munro, Criticisms and Elucidations of Catullus,
p. 241.
89Sappho, 1, 13.
o Cat., 11, 15.

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8 JOHN FERGUSON.

transferred it from the beginning of the stanza to the climactic

position of the whole poem, the beginning of the third line of the
last stanza, and finally reduplicated it by adding the words
dulce loquentem, at the same time pointing to the fact that
Catullus in his transcription from Sappho had omitted aSv
vdtoaas.41Later in the same poem Catullus, no doubt feeling
Sappho's words were too intense and personal for him as yet,
broke off into halting lines of his own to the effect that otium has
been his undoing. Horace's lines to Grosphus take up the
thought and answer it. The coincidence of the emphatic re-
peated position of the word in both poems cannot be accidental.42
Catullus has wrestled with the feeling that idleness and unoccu-
pied leisure have led him to this apparent impasse of love for a
married woman above his station; as it has destroyed cities in the
past, so it has destroyed his peace of mind. Horace answers that
men in stress and strain long for idleness, leisure, and peace,
but it cannot be bought, or won by dreaming; so we ought to
joy in the present without looking further. The advice may have
been good for Grosphus: it is aimed directly at Catullus.
Catullus' other Sapphic provokes the same reaction-borrow-
ing and emendation. Horace on Catullus might well be felt to
have earned the title applied to Bentley on Horace, splendide
emendax. Catullus' eleventh poem is his final renunciation of
Lesbia. It is addressed to Furius and Aurelius, and the first
three stanzas speak of their readiness to follow him to the ends
of the earth. Different remotenesses are named, introduced in
turn by sive. There are some vivid descriptive touches, and,
though some of the metre is harsh, the clauses are happily varied
in structure and length. There is a geographical movement from
south-east to north-west, first from India, through Arabia and
Parthia to Egypt, and then from the Alps through the Rhine-
land to Britain. Two of Catullus' phrases Horace filches direct.
Neither is very significant, but in each case Horace's treatment
is interesting. Catullus' lesser Sapphic, sive in extremos pene-
trabit Indos 43 is nicely balanced with its internal rhyme. Horace
could hardly improve on it; instead he transfers the effect to a

1 Sappho, 2, 3-5; Cat., 51, 5; Hor., Od., I, 22, 23-4.

42Cat., 51, 13-16; Hor.,
Od., II, 16, 1-8.
4' Cat., 11, 2.

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 CATULLUS AND HORACE. 9

hexameter impiger extremos curris mercatorad Indos.4 Catullus'

ultimosque Britannos, however (whatever be the reading of the
previous words), with the end of a line falling in the middle of
the word ultimos, is as harsh as the Britons themselves.45 Horace
transfers this to an Alcaic. The close association with the name
Caesar and the proximity of Eous show that he has Catullus in
mind. His phrase ultimos Orbis Britannos 46 shows how it is
possible to use the same words with polish as a neat bridge be-
tween two lines. But apart from such verbal details Horace
twice imitates Catullus' geographical enunciation. In the famil-
iar poem Integer vitae which he wrote for Aristius Fuscus, a
scholar and critic who would appreciate the borrowings, and
which has for its climax the Catullan dulce ridentem, his second
stanza parallels the corresponding stanza in Catullus.47 There
is the same use of sive, the same movement from a desert,
through an inhospitable region, to a river. Or rather, not the
same. Horace is subtler. Catullus repeats sive (or seu) at the
beginning of each of the first three lines; not so Horace. And
Horace's sure handling of the break in the third line is a sure
sign of his mastery of his medium. It is noteworthy also that
he confines his geographical excursus to one stanza, in which
he moves from west to east, from Africa via the Caucasus to
India, but allows himself a second, different but corresponding,
journey of mind in the fourth stanza, in which he moves south-
wards from Tivoli through Apulia to Africa. It is noteworthy
also that the arrows which Catullus puts on the backs of the
Parthians have changed their context, and appear in Horace's
opening lines. He recurs to the same theme in the first words
of his poem to Septimius. The places mentioned are fairly close
to one another, Cadiz, Cantabria, and the Syrtes, and I take the
poem to be a specific answer to an invitation for a holiday in the
western Mediterranean. But the thought of companionship in
distant places drives him back to Catullus, and the use of unda
to end the stanza, as the vocative has begun it, points the direct
reference to Catullus; Horace's aditure mecum is a variant on
44Hor., Ep., I, 1, 45.
45Cat., 11, 11-12.
46 Hor., Od., I, 35, 29-30.
47 Ibd.,
I, 22, 5-8.

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10 JOHN FERGUSON.

comites followed by the future.48 Once again he confines himself

to a single stanza, this time Catullus' first. Once again his lines
are patterned with deliberate care and artifice. " Elegant," says
Munro, and the word is intended critically. And when we have
examined all Horace's refinements, we are bound with Munro
to ask "What is there in Horace like the pathos, worthy of
Burns, which pervades the Qui illius culpa cecidit velut prati
Ultimi flos praetereunte postquam Tactus aratro est " 49
But Horace does not betray his familiarity with Catullus
merely where he chooses to employ the same metre. One of the
most significant comparisons is in an instance where he de-
liberately abjures Catullus' metre. This is over the hymn to
Diana. Catullus writes in a verse of three glyconics followed
by a pherecratean. It seems as if some such measure was con-
sidered peculiarly apposite to the worship of Diana. Anacreon's
hymn to Artemis is written in a slightly different patterning of
the same lines,50and a fragmentary inscription to Diana
umbrarum ac nemorum incolam,
ferarum domitricem,
Dianam deam virginem

is, as Biicheler rightly saw, rhythmically cognate.51 Now, it

seems clear that Horace knew Catullus' poem. There are three
echoes of it in the Carmen Saeculare, and though none in isola-
tion is firm evidence of debt, the combination creates a high
presumption. Certainly Horace's virgines lectas puerosque castos
sound suspiciously like Catullus' puellae et pueri integri under
a different metrical guise.52 Again, Horace's sive tu Lucina
probas vocari Seu Genitalis is reminiscent of Catullus' Tu Lucina
dolentibus Juno dicta puerperis; 53 the combination tu Lucina
is suggestive, and Juno appears in Latin as the feminine of
Genius. If so Horace is offering a slight corrective in separating
the two names. Finally, Horace's opening invocation to Diana
describes her as silvarum potens. There are only about 75 words

*8 Ibid., II, 6, 1-4.

4' Munro, op. cit., p. 243.
60Anacreon, frag. 1 (Bergk).
51
C. I. L., VI, 124, 30700.
52
Hor., C. S., 6; Cat., 34, 2.
58
Hor., C. S., 15-16; Cat., 34, 13-14.

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 CATULLUS AND HORACE. 11
in Catullus' little hymn. Both are natural in descriptions of
Diana, but both occur in Catullus in the same case, which is
curious if merely coincidental.54 When Horace wrote his ode
to Diana and Apollo, he used the stilted fifth Asclepiad, and
filled his sixteen lines with a degree of allusiveness more to be
expected from the doctus poeta than his critic. In fact Horace's
allusions are Greek rather than Latin, except for the reference
to Algidus,55 whereas Catullus, apart from the mention of the
birth at Delos, uses a Roman framework, which the last stanza,
with the archaic and technical word sospites, accentuates. In
Catullus' song we can trace the lad whose roots are in the coun-
try, and who has known the worship of Diana in her own wild
groves,
montium domina ut fores
silvarumque virentium
saltuumque reconditorum
amniumque sonantum.56
This is a melody, as Tenney Frank observes, which has not been
heard in Latin, and which is perhaps not to be heard again.
Horace (I think with Catullus in mind) waters this away into
something less than a single line, laetam fluviis et nemorum
coma.7 There is no contrast which displays more clearly than
this how Horace, with all his greater sensitivity to the finer
points, remains blind to things deeper.
A similar, though less instructive, example of the same theme
producing rather different poems is found over the matter of
dinner invitations. Catullus invites Fabullus to supper-pro-
vided he brings his own food; he can, however, rely on his host
for some really excellent perfume.58 Horace invites Virgilius
(perhaps not the poet) for the evening; he will provide the wine
if his guest brings the perfume.59 The metres are different.
There are no verbal similarities between the two poems, and not
much weight can be put on the occurrence of candida puella 6o
64Hor., C. S., 1; Cat., 34, 10 and 15.
6
Hor., Od., I, 21, 6.
6Cat., 34, 9-12.
67 Hor., Od., I, 21, 5.
68 Cat., 13.
9 Hor., Od., IV, 12.
60Idem,
Epod., 11, 27.

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 12 JOHN FERGUSON.

and Cupidines 61 in the plural elsewhere in Horace's writings.

Horace's poem is individual and characteristic, opening as it does
with a comment on the passing of the seasons, moving on to a
mythological comment, of the type he owed to Pindar, and pro-
gressing through the main business of the letter to the final
epigram dulce est desipere in loco. The unity of a poem by
Catullus is obvious and on the surface. With Horace it is more
finely woven and difficult to discern. By the time he wrote the
fourth book the influence of Catullus was more remote. Never-
theless, it seems possible that the subject was suggested by the
older poet, more possible if it in fact was addressed to the author
of the Eclogues and Georgics, as the third stanza slightly sug-
gests, for if so it belongs to an earlier period of his life, and
was held back for publication. In any case some insight may
be gained by comparing Catullus' direct approach with Horace's
elaboration.
The lovers' dialogue is another theme the two poets have in
common, and the comparisonwas suggested by Patin many years
ago. The idea of such a dialogue is commonly said to derive
from the bucolic exchanges of pastoral poetry, but I suspect that
the bantering ripostes of the marriage-song lie somewhere at
its roots. The two poems in question have not much in common
besides their charm.62 Of the Acme and Septimius Munro wrote
"The most charming picture in any language of a light and
happy love." Donec gratus eram tibi was one of the two poems
which Scaliger said that he would have renounced the kingdom
of all Aragon to have written. Catullus writes in his character-
istic hendecasyllables, Horace in the third Asclepiad. Catullus
paints a picture of the perfection of true love, and a single
affirmation from each of the lovers is enough to do this. Their
love is a perfect unity; there is no difference of mood between
their utterances, though Septimius is more concerned with out-
ward manifestation and she with inward response. Horace's
ode deals with the reconciliation of two quarrelling lovers; its
stanzas are nicely and artificially balanced; yet, as Wickham ob-
served, maintain dramatic propriety in the different ideas the
man and woman express. Such neat balance Catullus reserved
81Idem, Od., I, 19, 1; IV, 1, 5.
"' Ibid., III, 9; Cat., 45.

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 CATULLUS AND HORACE. 13

for his comment: the sneeze of good omen after each had spoken,
the splendid synthesis mutuis animis amant amantur. Horace
produces the tidier poem, Catullus is more deeply affecting.
Horace moves the mind, Catullus the heart. Horace's verses are
the product of wit, Catullus' of the romantic imagination.
There is more certain familiarity with the fifth poem. This
is the prototype of all the " Come live with me and be my love "
poems of Marlowe, Raleigh, Jonson, Chapman, Herrick, Day
Lewis, and the rest. The first six lines are the most obviously
appealing which Catullus ever wrote, and it is hardly surprising
that they impinged vividly on Horace's consciousness.

Vivamus, mea Lesbia, atque amemus,

rumoresque senum severiorum
omnes unius aestimemus assis.
Soles occidere et redire possent:
nobis cum semel occidit brevis lux,
nox est perpetua una dormienda.63
The language impressed him, and its echoes recur. He writes
of death variously, and often in terms which directly recall
Catullus. At one point perpetuus sopor urget;64 at another
omnes una manet nox.65 Most interesting is perhaps the ex-
ample from Diffugere nives.66 There the celeres lunae represent
Catullus' soles, and nos ubi decidimus, while clearly based in
structure and language on Catullus' fifth line, loses the double
value of setting and death implied in Catullus' use of the word,
and the brilliant pathetic parallel between the light of day and
the light of life. It may be remarked in passing that the deriva-
tion of these words from Catullus suggests strongly what has
been long suspected on other grounds, that this poem was written
at an earlier stage of Horace's life, and omitted from his first
collection because it was too close to Solvitur acris hiems.67
These are verbal reminiscences. But the thought of the poem
recurs frequently in Horace, so much so that one critic remarks
that " the belief thus expressed by Catullus, as well as his moral,

8sCat., 5, 1-6.
64Hor., .,, I, 24, 5.
66 Ibid., I, 28, 15.
66 Ibid.,
IV, 7, 13-14.
67 Ibid., I, 4 .

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14 JOHN FERGUSON.

is confirmed again and again in the Odes of Horace." 68 We are

all driven to the same goal. Years glide by, and we must leave
all we love the best. Rich and poor succumb to the same Destiny.
Death beats on the door of kings and beggars alike. So let us
live and love while we have youth, before morosa canities over-
takes us.69 It is hard to say how far this is an accidental coinci-
dence of thought, how far a common property of the sort of
Epicureanism which appears to have been popular in Rome in
the first century (and of which we find expression in people as
various as Caesar, Cassius, Atticus, Lucretius, and Virgil as well
as Catullus and Horace), and how far a direct debt to this poem
of Catullus. That Horace knew Catullus' poem we have seen.
In this light the last quotation is significant. The thought of
grumpy old age follows quickly on the thought of love. We will
ourselves become the senes severiores. This is just the sort of
twist that Horace likes to give to his borrowings, and this, if so,
is a peculiarly happy example. It is significant, too, that this
is the one poem in which Catullus gives vivid expression to this
thought, and the fact that Horace alludes to it several times sug-
gests that it expressed for him, tellingly, something he had come
to feel about life. But Catullus' carpe diem is warm, passionate,
and personal. Horace is older, much older, before he begins to
write, and is cool, detached, and impersonal. Catullus' thoughts
of death are confined to himself and Lesbia; Horace's extend to
all mankind. Catullus is dominated by the joy of present op-
portunity; Horace by the lack of future opportunity.
The influence of Catullus' fourth poem was different. These
verses about the ship which brought him back from Bithynia
are pleasant enough but slight in their theme, and free from the
characteristic intensity of Catullus' loves and hates. They are,
however, a remarkable tour-de-force, being written in pure
iambics, a rhythm to which Latin with its frequent spondees
does not easily lend itself. Horace in the Epodes was experi-
menting with iambic metres, but, typically, he always admits the
counterweighing spondee. At the same time he would naturally
68 J. B.
Chapman, Horace and his Poetry, p. 104, an attractive and
little known sketch.
69The
quotations are from Hor., Od., II, 3; 14; III, 1; I, 4; 9. Many
more poems might be cited.

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 CATULLUS AND HORACE. 15
be interested in Catullus' essay, and there is a certain amount
of evidence of such familiarity. A. W. Verrall made some inter-
esting comparisons with the sixteenth epode,70and suggested in
particular that in Horace's couplet
ire pedes quocunque ferent, quocunque per undas
Notus vocabit aut protervus Africus 71
the use of pedes for " sheets " comes from Catullus, and Notus
vocabit is based on his vocaret aura.72 Again, the seventeenth
epode contains an iambic reference to Castor and Pollux, whom,
however, Horace like Catullus describes by periphrasis, as brother
of Castor, instead of naming.73 There is reason for this in Catul-
lus, who is writing pure iambics, which of course do not admit
the name Pollux; there is none in Horace. Here again Horace
is artificial where Catullus is natural. The Catullan derivation
is confined by the previous lines where the rarish word perambu-
lare and the combination pudica et proba are found in Catullus.74
It is noteworthy how Horace transfers the latter phrase from
hendecasyllabics to iambics by the substitution for et of a re-
peated tu. The Odes too occasionally reflect the language of this
poem of Catullus. Most notable of these is the use of the Greek
nominative and infinitive. Ait fuisse navium celerrimus seems
to be the earliest instance of this in Latin. Horace has it twice;
the example in the Odes is from a poem clearly influenced by
Catullus, and the example in the Epistles is with ait.75 Some-
times it looks as if the idea is from Catullus, but his language is
deliberately eschewed. Catullus writes of minacis Adriatici.
Horace has variously fretis acrior Hadriae, inquieti Hadriae,
improbo iracundior Hadria.76 It is fascinating to watch the in-
genuity with which Horace avoids repeating himself; when he is
avoiding repeating someone else as well, the marvel is greater.
Similarly Catullus' Rhodumque nobilem becomes in Horace
claram Rhodon.7 More important is Horace's poem on the ship
70
Verrall, Studies in Horace, pp. 182-3.
71
Hor., Epod., 16, 21-2.
72
Cat., 4, 20-1.
73 Hor., Epod., 17, 42-3; Cat., 4, 27.
71Hor., Epod., 17, 40-1; Cat., 29, 8; 42, 24.
75
Cat., 4, 2; Hor., Od., III, 27, 78; Ep., I, 7, 22.
T7 Cat., 4, 6; Hor., Od., I, 33, 15; III, 3, 5; 9, 22.
77 Cat., 4, 8; Hor., Od., I, 7, 1.

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16 JOHN FERGUSON.

of state. It has long puzzled commentators why the Roman

ship of state should be cruising round the Aegean, and the fact
that it was built of Pontic pine instead of the more appropriate
Idaean led some to detect a fantastic reference to Sextus Pom-
peius. Mendell rightly saw that the references are literary not
political, and derive from this poem of Catullus, from which
Horace also takes his use of silva and nobilis.78 So too with
Horace's poem on Virgil's voyage to Greece. Horace apostro-
phizes the ship which is to carry his friend. This in itself may
have been suggested by a similar poem of Callimachus.79 At the
same time the idea of making the ship central may derive from
Catullus; Catullus' poem is one of happiness and good omen and
such a reference would be apposite. One of the difficulties in
an investigation of this kind is to trace individual indebtedness
as against independent drawing on a stock of commonplaces and
Greek originals. There are, however, indications that Catullus'
verses are somewherein Horace's mind. The references to Castor
and Pollux, and the Adriatic, are commonplaces in a poem on
seafaring. But the use of trux as applied to inanimate things
is not common before the Augustan age, and both Catullus and
Horace have it of the sea.80 And Horace's tollere seu ponere,
with the omission of the first seu, recalls Catullus' laeva sive
dextera.81 Once again the comparison is as instructive in its
differences as its resemblances. Catullus' poem has a single
theme without diversion. He praises the ship, or allows it to be
its own claqueur, and traces its story from its origin in the leafy
forests above Amastris to its final dedication to the Dioscuri.
The poem charms by its simplicity. But Horace uses the oc-
casion for moralizing comment on the arrogance of seafaring and
other Babel-like pretensions of mankind. You could never find
in Catullus a generalized comment such as nil mortalibus ardui
est.82
Other echoes are fainter. It was to be expected that Horace
would be interested in Catullus' single essay in choriambics. He
78
C. W. Mendell, op. cit.; Hor., Od., I, 14, 11-12 and 20; Cat., 4, 7-13.
79 Callimachus, frag. 400 (Pfeiffer).
80 Cat., 4, 9; Hor., Od., I, 3, 10.
81
Cat., 4, 19; Hor., Od., I, 3, 16.
s2 Hor., Od., I, 3, 37.

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 CATULLUS AND HORACE. 17

gleaned from it the word amiculus 83 (the diminutive is char-

acteristic of the neoteri in general and Catullus in particular:
we may compare, though with less certainty, the use of versi-
culi 84); also the idiomatic and not very usual te retrahere.86
But the poem has left little trace on Horace's versification.
Catullus' attack on Amiana
Salve, nec minimo puella naso
nec bello pede nec nigris ocellis
nec longis digitis nec ore sicco
nec sane nimis elegante lingua
has often been compared with Horace's

depugis, nasuta, brevi latere ac pede longo est,8e

and this may be another example of Horace's passion for com-
pression. It is curious that Catullus, on whom the influence of
Callimachus is so marked, should himself be implicitly criticized
for looseness and verbosity; the genius of the Greek poet for
verbal economy can be instantly seen by comparing Cory's
familiar rendering of the elegy for Heraclitus with the original.
A few more reminiscences might be cited, but only one adds
much to what we have already seen. In one of his attacks on
Thallus Catullus throws off almost casually the phrase insolenter
aestues, proceeding to a simile of a ship in a storm. One of the
most famous passages in Horace takes up the metaphor and
develops it as a metaphor. It is in the ode to Pyrrha
heu quotiens fidem
mutatosque deos flebit et aspera
nigris aequora ventis
emirabitur insolens.87
Here again it is noteworthy how Horace improves his original.
In the first place he sustains the metaphor. Catullus drops into
a simile; this is natural, but it is less artistic. And secondly
Horace takes insolenter from its natural position preceding its

83
Cat., 30, 2; Hor., Ep., I, 17, 3.
84 Cat., 50, 4; Hor., Epod., 11, 2; Sat., I, 2, 109; 10, 32.
86 Cat., 30, 9; Hor., Ep., I, 18, 59.
86 Cat., 43, 1-4; Hor., Sat., I, 2, 93.
s7 Cat., 25, 12-13; Hor., Od., I, 5, 5-8.

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18 JOHN FERGUSON.

verb, transforms it into an adjective and gives it all the weight

at the end, not merely of a line, but of a stanza. He has seen
the artistic potentialities of the word in its context and used
them to the full.
What is the conclusion of all this ? First that Horace's debt
to Catullus is greater than he overtly acknowledged, greater
perhaps than he himself recognized. Second that almost always
Horace in borrowing refines. One cannot but admire the con-
summate artistry with which he finds the precisely right word
and the precisely right place for it; equally one cannot help
feeling that something has been lost. White bread is aesthet-
ically satisfying and smooth to the palate, but it lacks some of
the most nourishing part of the wheat. Just so did the Pre-
Raphaelites, while acknowledging Raphael's originality and
daring, yet see his fineries turn to vapidity. His consummate
technique destroyed his vitality.88 Third, that the Horatian
ode is a very much more complex instrument of poetry than
the Catullan lyric. It is fascinating to trace its abstruse pat-
terning of thought and language, to reflect upon its moral
generalizations, to rest in its overall urbanity and good humour.
But it lacks the overwhelming directness, the fire, the singleness
of purpose of Catullus. It is not the purpose of this essay to
award posthumous prizes or make exclusive value-judgments.
Both have real though differing qualities, and to laud either is
not to scout the other. But rightly to understand their relation-
ship and their divergent approach is to be on the road to a just
and understanding appraisal of both.
JOHIN FERGUSON.
QUEEN MARY COLLEGE,LOND(N.

88 Holman
Hunt, Pre-Raphaelitism, 1, p. 94; Ruskin, Modern Painters,
IIT, 4, iv, 17.

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