LIV. 6.

Yet thou flee’st not above my keen iambics.

This line is quoted as Catullus’s by Porphyrion on Hor. c. 1. 16, 24. His words, Catullus cum maledicta minaretur, compared with the last lines of this poem, Irascere iterum meis iambis Inmerentibus, unice imperator, seem to justify my view that they belong here. See my large edition, p. 217, fragm. I. The following line, So may destiny, &c., is a supplement of my own: it forms a natural introduction to the Si non uellem of v. 10.

LV.

This is the only instance where Catullus has introduced a spondee into the second foot of the phalaecian, which then becomes decasyllabic. The alternation of this decasyllabic rhythm with the ordinary hendecasyllable is studiously artistic; I have retained it throughout. In the series of dactylic lines 17-22, Catullus no doubt intended to convey the idea of rapidity, as, in the spondaic line immediately following, of labour.

4 You on Circus, in all the bills but you, Sir.

There seems to be no authority for the meaning ordinarily assigned to libellis, “book-shops.” I prefer to explain the word placards, either announcing the sale of Camerius’s effects, which would imply that he was in debt, or describing him as a lost article.

LXI.

In the rhythm of this poem, I have been obliged to deviate in two points from Catullus. (1) In him the first foot of each line is nearly always a trochee, only rarely a spondee: the monotonous effect of a positional trochee in English, to say nothing of the difficulty, induced me to substitute a spondee more frequently. (2) I have been rather less scrupulous in allowing the last foot of the glyconic lines to be a dactyl (-uu), in place of the more correct cretic (-u-).

108. The words in italics are a supplement of my own.