Note 22 — Chapter XV

Cornelius Nepos, the friend who early recognised the genius of Catullus and to whom one of his 'libelli' was dedicated in the lines now prefixed to the collection,—Quintilius Varus, probably the Varus of poems x and xxii, and the friend whose death Horace laments in an Ode to Virgil, and whose candour as a critic he commends in the Ars Poetica,—Furius Bibaculus, Cornificius, and Caecilius, most of whom were among the intimate friends of Catullus, came from, or resided in, the North of Italy22. In the poem already mentioned he speaks of the mistress of Caecilius as being—