I

In the effort to dull the edge of his mental anguish by physical exhaustion Catullus had walked far out from the town, through vineyards and fruit-orchards displaying their autumnal stores and clamorous with eager companies of pickers and vintagers.  On coming back to the eastern gate he found himself reluctant to pass from the heedless activities of the fields to the bustle of the town streets and the formal observances of his father’s house.  Seeking a quiet interlude, he turned northward and climbed the hill which rose high above the tumultuous Adige.  The shadows of the September afternoon had begun to lengthen when he reached the top and threw himself upon the ground near a green ash tree.

The bodily exercise had at least done him this service, that the formless misery of the past weeks, the monstrous, wordless sense of desolation, now resolved itself into a grief for which inner words, however comfortless, sprang into being.  Below him Verona, proud sentinel between the North and Rome, offered herself to the embrace of the wild, tawny river, as if seeking to retard its ominous journey from Rhaetia’s barbarous mountains to Italy’s sea by Venice.  Far to the northeast ghostly Alpine peaks awaited their coronal of sunset rose.  Southward stretched the plain of Lombardy.  Within easy reach of his eye shimmered the lagoon that lay about Mantua.  The hour veiled hills and plain in a luminous blue from which the sun’s radiance was excluded.  Through the thick leaves of the ash tree soughed the evening wind, giving a voice to the dying day.  In its moan Catullus seemed to find his own words:  “He is dead, he is dead.”  His brother was dead.  This fact became at last clear in his consciousness and he began to take it up and handle it.

The news had come two weeks ago, just as he was on the point of flying from Rome and the autumn fevers to the gaieties of Naples and Baiae.  That was an easy escape for a youth whose only taskmasters were the Muses and who worked or played at the behest of his own mood.  But his brother, Valerius, had obeyed the will of Rome, serving her, according to her need, at all seasons and in all places.  Stationed this year in Asia Minor he had fallen a victim to one of the disastrous eastern fevers.  And now Troy held his ashes, and never again would he offer thanks to Jupiter Capitolinus for a safe return to Rome.

As soon as the letter from Valerius’s comrade reached him, Catullus had started for Verona.  For nearly ten years he had spoken of himself as living in Rome, his house and his work, his friendships and his love knitting him closely, he had supposed, into the city’s life.  But in this naked moment she had shown him her alien and indifferent face and he knew that he must go home or die.  It was not until he saw his father’s stricken eyes that he realised that, for once, impulse had led him into the path of filial duty.  In the days that