the Ciceronian age is in close relation to the personal genius of Cicero.




V.

LYRIC POETRY: CATULLUS.


Contemporary with Lucretius, but, unlike him, living in the full whirl
and glare of Roman life, was a group of young men who were professed
followers of the Alexandrian school. In the thirty years which separate
the Civil war and the Sullan restoration from the sombre period that
opened with the outbreak of hostilities between Caesar and the senate,
social life at Rome among the upper classes was unusually interesting and
exciting. The outward polish of Greek civilisation was for the first time
fully mastered, and an intelligent interest in art and literature was the
fashion of good society. The "young man about town," whom we find later
fully developed in the poetry of Ovid, sprang into existence, but as the
government was still in the hands of the aristocracy, fashion and
politics were intimately intermingled, and the lighter literature of the
day touched grave issues on every side. The poems of Catullus are full of
references to his friends and his enemies among this group of writers.
Two of the former, Cinna and Calvus, were poets of considerable
importance. Gaius Helvius Cinna--somewhat doubtfully identified with the
"Cinna the poet" who met such a tragical end at the hands of the populace
after Caesar's assassination--carried the Alexandrian movement to its
most uncompromising conclusions. His fame (and that fame was very great)
rested on a short poem called _Zmyrna_, over which he spent ten years'