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Caius Calvus, who had composed several injurious epigrams against him, having employed many of his friends to mediate a reconciliation with him, Caesar voluntarily persuaded himself to write first to him. And our good Catullus, who had so rudely ruffled him under the name of Mamurra, coming to offer his excuses to him, he made the same day sit at his table.
The others were provinces of Rome, and the rest were outlying barbaric people, hardly as yet fit to be Roman provinces. And he was now lord of Rome. Did he think of this as he walked on the shore of Puteoli or of the ceremony he was about to encounter before he ate his dinner? He did not walk long, for at two o'clock he bathed, and heard "that story about Mamurra" without moving a muscle.
The Iberian booty mentioned in the poem must have reference to Caesar's governorship of Further Spain, and Mamurra must even then, as certainly afterwards in Gaul, have been found at Caesar's headquarters; the Pontic booty presumably has reference to the war of Pompeius against Mithradates, especially as according to the hint of the poet it was not merely Caesar that enriched Mamurra.
Mamurra of Formiae, Caesar's favourite and for a time during the Gallic wars an officer in his army, had, presumably a short time before the composition of this poem, returned to the capital and was in all likelihood then occupied with the building of his much- talked-of marble palace furnished with lavish magnificence on the Caelian hill.
Lunar marble was first brought to Rome in the time of Julius Cæsar; and Mamurra, so bitterly reviled by Catullus, the commander of the artificers in Cæsar's army in Gaul, lined with great slabs of this marble the outside and inside of his house on the Coelian Hill the first recorded instance of veneering or incrusting walls with marble.
And when Valerius Catullus, who had, as he himself observed, fixed such a stain upon his character in his verses upon Mamurra as never could be obliterated, he begged his pardon, invited him to supper the same day; and continued to take up his lodging with his father occasionally, as he had been accustomed to do. LXXIV. His temper was also naturally averse to severity in retaliation.
Mamurra of Formiae, Caesar's favourite and for a time during the Gallic wars an officer in his army, had, presumably a short time before the composition of this poem, returned to the capital and was in all likelihood then occupied with the building of his much- talked-of marble palace furnished with lavish magnificence on the Caelian hill.
Caesar and his friend Mamurra felt his satire; and though he was afterwards reconciled to Caesar, the reconciliation did not go beyond a cold indifference. To Mamurra he was implacably hostile, but satirised him under the fictitious name of Mentula to avoid offending Caesar. His life was that of a thorough man of pleasure, who was also a man of letters.
It was indeed scarcely entitled to the honour of the smallest resentment. If any could be shewn, it must have been for the freedom used by the author, and not for any novelty in his lampoon. There are two poems on this subject, viz. the twenty-ninth and fifty-seventh, in each of which Caesar is joined with Mamurra, a Roman knight, who had acquired great riches in the Gallic war.
It was also one of the first introduced, for Mamurra lined the walls of his house on the Coelian with it, as well as with Lunar marble, in the time of Julius Cæsar; but Statius mentions that it was not very highly esteemed, especially in later times, when more valuable marbles came into use.
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