Roads from Rome | Page 5

the homely strain of our own
little town. I confess I was thankful to hear a literary man and a friend
praise you for not being cosmopolitan. I am not afraid now of your
going over to the Greeks. But are you in danger of losing Verona in
Rome?"
The gathering dusk, the day's pure happiness, the sense of impending
separation opened Catullus's heart. "Do you mean Clodia?" he asked
straightforwardly. "Did Cicero talk of her too?" "Not only Cicero,"
Valerius had answered gently, "and not only your other friends. Will
you tell me of her yourself?" "What have you heard?" Catullus asked.
Valerius paused and then gave a direct and harsh reply: "That she was a
Medea to her husband, has been a Juno to her brother's Jupiter and is an
easy mistress to many lovers."
After that, Catullus was thankful now to remember, he himself had
talked passionately as the road slipped away under their horses' feet. He
had told Valerius how cruel the world had been to Clodia. Metellus had
been sick all winter and had died as other men die. He had belittled her
by every indignity that a man of rank can put upon his wife, but she had
borne with him patiently enough. Because she was no Alcestis need she
be called a Medea or a Clytemnestra? And because the unspeakable
Clodius had played Jupiter to his youngest sister's Juno need Clodia be

considered less than a Diana to his Apollo? As for her lovers--his voice
broke upon the word--she loved him, Catullus, strange as that seemed,
and him only. Of course, like all women of charm, she could play the
harmless coquette with other men. He hated the domestic
woman--Lucretius's dun-coloured wife, for instance--on whom no man
except her mate would cast an eye.
He wanted men to fall at his Love's feet, he thanked Aphrodite that she
had the manner and the subtle fire and the grace to bring them there.
Her mind was wonderful, too, aflame, like Sappho's, with the love of
beauty. That was why he called her Lesbia. He had used Sappho's great
love poem (Valerius probably did not know it, but it was like a purple
wing from Eros's shoulder) as his first messenger to her, when his heart
had grown hot as AEtna's fire or the springs of Thermopylae. She had
finally consented to meet him at Allius's house. Afterwards she had told
him that the day was marked for her also by a white stone.
If Valerius could only know how he felt! She was the greatest lady in
Rome, accoutred with wealth and prestige and incomparable beauty.
And she loved him, and was as good and pure and tender-hearted as
any unmarried girl in Verona. He was her lover, but often he felt
toward her as a father might feel toward a child. Catullus had trembled
as he brought out from his inner sanctuary this shyest treasure. And
never should he forget the healing sense of peace that came to him
when Valerius rode closer and put his arm around his shoulder.
"Diogenes," he said, "your flame is still bright. I could wish you had
not fallen in love with another man's wife, and if he were still living I
should try to convince you of the folly of it. But I know this hot heart
of yours is as pure as the snow we see on the Alps in midsummer. That
is all I need to know." And they had ridden on in the darkness toward
the lights of home.
The wind rose in a fresh wail: "He is dead, he is dead." The touch of his
arm was lost in the unawakening night. His perfect speech was stilled
in the everlasting silence. A smile, both bitter and wistful, came upon
Catullus's lips as he remembered a letter he had had yesterday from
Lucretius, bidding him listen to the voice of Nature who would bring

him peace. "What is so bitter," his friend had urged, "if it comes in the
end to sleep? The wretched cannot want more of life, and the happy
men, men like Valerius, go unreluctantly, like well-fed guests from a
banquet, to enter upon untroubled rest. Nor is his death outside of law.
From all eternity life and death have been at war with each other. No
day and no night passes when the first cry of a child tossed up on the
shores of light is not mingled with the wailings of mourners. Let me tell
you how you may transmute your sorrow. A battle rages in the plain.
The earth is shaken with the violent charges of the cavalry and with the
tramping feet of men. Cruel weapons gleam in the sun. But to one afar
off upon a hill