41. Catullus was now the friend of Caesar. The great commander was entertained at his father's house, and perhaps even there was making his plans for future campaigns. The fortunes of the poet were rising. What might he not hope for from his great patron, and why should others not share in his success? Furius and Aurelius, scorned by him since their faithlessness in the matter of Juventius, were eager to crawl back into his favor. And they fancied they could bring him a message that would be joyfully greeted, and would secure them the favorable reception they sought for their own advances: Lesbia was willing to recall her recalcitrant lover. She had once before been successful when making the first advances herself (cf. ยง 19). Why should she fear defeat now? But both she and her ill-chosen emissaries were speedily undeceived. The broken chain of the old love could never be welded again. Catullus had won by absence, by self-discipline, and most of all, perhaps, by real knowledge of facts in the case, the freedom from his passion for which he had prayed (c. 76). He could once more believe in the friendship of Caelius Rufus, and to him acknowledge, with pain, indeed, but no longer with unavailing torture his true view of Lesbia's character (c. 58). And these proffers now made to him through, and by, Furius and Aurelius were definitely and disdainfully rejected (c. 11), -with a manly, not a petulant disdain, for Catullus could not even then forget that he had loved Lesbia>.
This text is part of:
Catullus. Catullus. E. T. Merrill. Cambridge. Harvard University Press. 1893.
The National Endowment for the Humanities provided support for entering this text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.