Sri Aurobindo

Letters on Poetry and Art

SABCL - Volume 27

Part 2. On His Own and Others’ Poetry
Section 2. On Poets and Poetry
Comments on Some Examples of Western Poetry (up to 1900)

Catullus [2]

Disertissime Romuli nepotum,

quot sunt quotque fuere, Marce Tulli,

quotque post aliis erunt in annis,

gratias tibi maximas Catullus

agit pessimus omnium poeta,

tanto pessimus omnium poeta,

quanto tu optimus omnium patronus.

Would you not say that Catullus was bound to have looked upon Cicero the man as a pompous ass, however sincerely he may have admired Cicero the man of letters?

I am not sure how his contemporaries regarded Cicero — were they not hypnotised by his eloquence, scholarship, literary versatility, conversational and epistolatory powers, overflowing vitality? One would think that men like Catullus and Caesar would see through him, though. There is certainly a note that sounds very like irony in the last three lines, but it is very subtle and others than Cicero may have regarded it as a graceful eulogy enhanced by the assumption of extreme humility (though only a courteous assumption) in the comparison between the poeta and the patronus.