Note 52 — Chapter XV

These, and other poems, show that Catullus was quick to feel any coldness or neglect on the part of his friends, and exceedingly dependent for his happiness on their sympathy. But the tone of these poems is quite different from the resentment which he feels and expresses against those from whom he had experienced malice or treachery. It does great injustice to his noblest qualities, to think of him as one who wantonly attacked or lightly turned against his friends. No instance of such levity of feeling can be adduced from his writings. It has been conclusively shown52 that in the third line of the 95th poem there can be no reference to Hortensius, who, under the name of Hortalus, is addressed by Catullus in his 65th poem with courteous consideration: and if 'Furius and Aurelius' are to be regarded, on the strength of the opening lines of the 11th poem, as having ever ranked among his devoted friends, then the poem, instead of being a magnificent outburst of scornful irony, becomes a mere specimen of bathos. Nothing, on the other hand, can be more in keeping with the feeling of contemptuous tolerance which Catullus expresses in his other poems relating to them, than the pointed contrast between their hollow professions of enthusiasm and the degrading office which he assigns to them,—