Note 39 — Chapter XV

seems to point to some exercise of Cicero's special talent as an advocate, for which Catullus was grateful. The great orator and the great poet, who speaks so modestly of himself in the contrast he draws between them, may have been brought together in many ways. They had common friends and acquaintances—Hortensius, Manlius Torquatus, Sestius, Licinius Calvus, Memmius, etc.; and they heartily hated the same persons, Clodia, Vatinius, Piso, and others. The intimate associates of Catullus shared the political views and sympathies which the orator had professed at least up to the year 55 b.c. Cicero, too, was naturally attracted to young men of promise and genius,—if they did not belong too prominently to the 'grex Catilinae';—and, like Dr. Johnson in his relations to Beauclerk and Boswell, he may have valued their society more for their intellectual vivacity than their moral virtues39.