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Updated: May 10, 2025
Of a kindred nature were the letters interchanged between the statesmen and literati of this period, which were carefully collected and published in the following epoch; such as the correspondence of Caesar himself, of Cicero, Calvus and others.
He lived through the following night harassed by waking visions of every conceivable calamity; but toward morning fell asleep, and as was his wont, awoke late. The first friend he met on the street was Calvus, the young poet and orator. "Have you heard the news from Præneste?" began Calvus. "News? What news?"
She had at first known of him only through the filthy, slanderous verses of such oligarchs as Catullus and Calvus; then through her lover she had come to look upon Cæsar as an incarnation as it were of omniscience, omnipotence, and benevolence the man for whom everything was worth sacrificing, from whom every noble thing was to be expected.
Calvus, who had been aedile and quattuorvir at Teate Marrucinorum, was given the quinquennial rights, it was of such importance that it needed especial mention, and that such mention was made by a decree of the city senate, shows clearly that such a method of getting a quinquennalis was out of the ordinary.
And yet there had not been even one day in these eight years when Catullus had felt that he and his brother were not as close to each other as in the old Verona days. He had lived constantly with his friends and rarely with his brother, but below even such friendships as those with Caelius and Calvus, Nepos and Cornificius lay the bond of brotherhood.
I will not mention the names of those still living for fear of seeming to flatter, but is a person like myself to be afraid that it will be unbecoming for him to do what well became Marcus Tullius, Caius Calvus, Asinius Pollio, Marcus Messalla, Quintus Hortensius, M. Brutus, Lucius Sulla, Quintus Catulus, Quintus Scaevola, Servius Sulpicius, Varro, Torquatus or rather the Torquati, Caius Memmius, Lentulus, Gaetulicus, Annaeus Seneca, Lucan, and, last of all, Verginius Rufus?
Whatever speech Avitus composes will be found so absolutely perfect and complete in all respects that it would satisfy Cato by its dignity, Laelius with its smoothness, Gracchus with its energy, Caesar with its warmth, Hortensius with its arrangement, Calvus with its point, Sallust with its economy and Cicero with its wealth of rhetoric.
It throws much light on the peculiar artistic position of Catullus, to bear in mind that this masterpiece of frigid pedantry obtained his warm and evidently sincere praise. The other member of the triad, Gaius Licinius Macer Calvus, one of the most brilliant men of his time, was too deeply plunged in politics to be more than an accomplished amateur in poetry.
On the question of authenticity, see Drachmann, loc. cit. Vollmer, Sitz. Bayer. Akad. 1907, 335, and Vergil's Apprenticeship, Class. These are but a few of the minor details that show Vergil in his youth a close reader of Catullus, and doubtless of Calvus, Cinna and Cornificius, who employed the same methods.
When C. Calvus, after publishing some scandalous epigrams upon him, endeavoured to effect a reconciliation by the intercession of friends, he wrote to him, of his own accord, the first letter.
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