CATULLUS 



CAUCASUS 



pleasant Hpring,' he Bays, ' I played enough at 

 rimming.' In Home he mingled with the best 

 nociety, hwoming intimate with the two Ciceros, 

 i hr Metelli, Hortensius, and probably with Lu- 

 cretius. Ami in Komr he met the fatly whom, 

 mi.lcr the name of Lesbia, he has sung in verses 

 which stan. I at the head of the lyric poetry of 

 I..'.-- inn. It is almost certain that the Leshia of 

 < .ii nl In- was none other than Clodia, the sister 

 ni Cicero's enemy, Publius Clodius Pulcher. One 

 <>f the most heautiful and accomplished women of 

 her linn-, she inspired Catullus with a passionate 

 love of which the changing phases are mirrored in 

 a wonderful cycle of poems. There is first a time 

 of rapturous joy ; then come douhts, quarrels, and 

 reconciliations, and in the end betrayal and de- 

 spair. The final rupture seems to have happened 

 in .~>7 B.C., and in that year Catullus accompanied 

 the proprietor (Jains Memmius to his province of 

 liithynia. He returned to Rome disappointed in 

 his hopes of enriching himself, and entered im- 

 petuously into the contest which was then being 

 wa<rtul between the senatorian and the democratic 

 parties. Like Cicero and most of the men of 

 letters of his day, he espoused the cause of the 

 senate. A fiery, unscrupulous partisan, he assailed 

 his enemies with equal scurrility and wit, and 

 directed one of his coarsest lampoons at the head 

 of Julius Ccesar. His closing years were darkened 

 by the loss of a favourite brother, on whose tomb 

 in the Troad, which he visited when returning 

 from Bithynia, he wrote one of the most exquisite 

 of all poems that breathe regret for the dead. He 

 was himself cut off in early life, for, though the 

 exact date of his death can only be conjectured, 

 in all probability he did not survive the year 

 54 B.C. 



The extant works of Catullus comprise 116 

 pieces, many of which are extremely brief, while 

 the longest of them contains only some 400 lines. 

 There is considerable variety, nowever, in this 

 somewhat slender body of poetry. There are 

 graceful, playful verses of society, and there are 

 verses, struck out in the heat of party warfare, 

 in which satiric wit sparkles through fescennine 

 raillery. There are elaborate descriptive and 

 mythological pieces, such as the Coma Berenices 

 and the stately and richly-coloured Peleus and 

 Thetis, which appear to have been translated or 

 adapted from the Greek. There is the Attis, a 

 strange poem, unlike any other work of a Latin 

 writer in its wild imaginative power and in the 

 magnificent sound and sweep of its galliambic verse. 

 Ana there is the crowning series of love-poems, in 

 which the incarnation or burning passion in ex- 

 quisite language, the mastery of verbal music, are 

 carried to what is seemingly the highest attain- 

 able point of perfection. ' In these ' Lesbia 

 poems there is no sign of the laborious art which 

 produced the mosaic-work of the Horatian odes. 

 They seem to have flowed forth thought, feeling, 

 phrase, and cadence combined in a perfect whole 

 at a single creative impulse. Their author's 

 mastery of the Latin tongue was unerring and 

 unbounded. In his works it seems endowed with 

 the elastic and radiant strength of the Greek. He 

 revealed all it had of energy, sonority, and sweet- 

 ness, of monumental dignity and laughing grace. 

 He moulded it into lines which neither Lucretius 

 nor Virgil has surpassed for majesty of rhythm ; he 

 wove it into lyrics which for ligntness of move- 

 ment and caressing sweetness of cadence are 

 unmatched in all the fields of Latin verse. For 

 breadth of vision, fertility of thought, insight into 

 human character, we must turn to other writers 

 than Catullus. For fire and music and unlaboured 

 felicity of phrase he has no superior among the 

 lyric poets of all time. 



The text of the works of CatulluH, after having 

 been lost for more than three hundred yean, was 

 discovered in the 14th century at Verona. The 

 original manuscript was again lout, and until 

 lately only one copy of it, which wa* preserved at 

 St Germains, and i now in Paris, wan lielieved to 

 be in existence. A manuscript in tin- liodlcian 

 Library, however, has been discovered by Dr 

 Bahrens to be a sister copy of the St Germains 

 manuscript. The best editions are by Mr Robinson 

 Ellis (1867; new ed. 1878; Commentary, new !. 

 1889), Bahrens (Leip. 1876; new ed. 1885); Port. 

 gate ( 1889) ; and S. G. Owen ( 1893). Among Eng- 

 lish verse translations are those of Martin ( 1861 ), 

 Cranstoun (1867), Ellis (1871), Hart Davies 

 (1879), and Grant Allen (the Attis, 1892). See 

 also Munro's Criticisms and Elucidations (1878); 

 Sellar's Roman Poets of the Republic (new ed. 

 1881 ); and Lafaye, Catulle et ses Modeles ( 1894). 



Catydid. See KATYDID. 



Canb, a town in the Prussian province of Hesse- 

 Nassau, on the right bank of the Rhine, 30 miles 

 WNW. of Wiesbaden by rail. Here Bliicher 

 crossed the Rhine with his army, January 1, 1814 ; 

 and here, too, till 1866, toll was levied by the Duke 

 of Nassau the only ruler who kept up this feudal 

 privilege from vessels navigating the Rhine. Caub 

 has underground slate-quarries ; and opposite, on 

 an island in the river, where Louis le Debonnaire 

 died in 840, is a castle called the Pfalz, built in 

 1326, which is said to have been resorted to for 

 safety by the Countesses Palatine during childbed. 

 In 1876 and 1879 Caub was the scene of two serious 

 landslips. Pop. 2179. 



Cauca, a river of Colombia, in South America, 

 which, after a northerly course of 600 miles, falls 

 into the Magdalena. Its valley is one of the 

 richest and most populous districts of the continent, 

 and it gives name to the largest of the Colombian 

 states, traversed by the Andean coast-range, and 

 extending along the Pacific from Panama to 

 Ecuador. Area, 260,000 sq. m. ; population esti- 

 mated at 460,000. It is rich in minerals, and 

 possesses the most productive platinum mine in 

 America. Capital, Fopayan. 



Caucasus and the Caucasians. The great 

 mountain-range of the Caucasus forms the back- 

 bone of a well-marked geographical region, nearly 

 corresponding with the Russian governor-general- 

 ship or lieutenancy of Caucasia. The natural and 

 administrative northern limit is the great Manitch 

 depression, extending from the Sea of Azov to the 

 Caspian, and including the basins of the Kuban 

 and Terek rivers. The southern natural limit is 

 along the basins of the Rion and Kur rivers. The 

 Russian province comprises all the Russian terri- 

 tory to the Turkish ana Persian frontiers, including 

 also part of the Armenian highlands and the 

 mountain masses adjoining them, now known by 

 the infelicitous name of Little Caucasus, south of 

 the Rion and Kur rivers. Little or Anti-Caucasus 

 is connected with Caucasus proper by the narrow 

 Mesk ridge crossing the Rion-Kur Valley between 

 the headwaters of those streams. The Sea of Azov 

 and the Caspian seem at one time to have leen 

 connected by the Manitch depression ; south of 

 which extend vast steppes of flat treeless land 

 fertile, but with little or no water. South of the 

 steppe to the northern spurs of the mountains is 

 luxuriant park land covered with magnificent 

 grasses, and also quite level. Beyond this rise the 

 mountains in successive terraces. On the south 

 side, towards the Rion and Kur, the mountain face 

 is much steeper and more sudden. 



The Cancasus occupies the isthmus between the 

 Black Sea and the Caspian, its general direction 

 being from west-north-west to east-south-east. 



