18. The sight of this young poet at her feet may have been attractive to Lesbia, but it could not take the place of all other attractions. The exclusive demand his love made upon her grew irksome. He might be so wholly swallowed up in love for her as to disregard everything else, but she was not so in love with him. It flattered her vanity to hold him thus in thrall, but was tiresome if she also must have her freedom limited by the same shackles. And so she gradually turned away from him toward other pleasures. He finally met her coldness by an attempt to assert his own independence (c. 8). But even in his self-exhortation to firmness in meeting indifference with indifference, he cannot forbear to dwell upon the happy days of the past, nor can he conceal his own hope for a reconciliation. Strangely enough, he seems not even to suspect infidelity on Lesbia's part with other lovers. Though he himself had made her unfaithful to her husband, he is troubled by no fear that she may be entering upon fresh fields of conquest. Though he cannot explain her present action, he is so utterly blinded by his own passion, that he even warns her to consider the desolate lot that awaits her, if she persists in breaking with him (c. 8.14 ff.).
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Catullus. Catullus. E. T. Merrill. Cambridge. Harvard University Press. 1893.
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