The order of the poems in this volume seems to be an
artificial compromise between two systems — one an arrange-
ment by metre, and the other by date of composition. In
the former view the book falls,into three sections — the pun
lyrics, the idyllic pieces, and the poems in elegiac versi



v.] Catullus. 55

The central place is occupied by the longest and most
elaborate, if not the most successful, of his poems, the epic
idyl on the marriage of Peleus and Thetis. Before this
are the lyrics, chiefly in the phalaecean eleven-syllabled
verse which Catullus made so peculiarly his own, but in
iambic, sapphic, choriambic, and other metres also, winding
up with the fine epithalamium written for the marriage of
his friends, Mallius and Vinia. The transition from this
group of lyrics to the Marriage of Peleus and Thetis is made
with great skill through another wedding-chant, jm idyl in
form, but approaching to a lyric in tone, without any
personal allusions, and not apparently written for any
particular occasion. Finally comes a third group of poems,
extending to the end of the volume, all written in elegiac
verse, but otherwise extremely varied in date, subject, and
manner. The only poem thus left unaccounted for, the
Atys, is inserted in the centre of the volume, between the
two hexameter poems, as though to make its wild metre
and rapid movement the more striking by contrast with
their smooth and languid rhythms. Whether the arrange-
ment of the whole book comes from the poet's own hand
is very doubtful. His dedicatory verses, which stand at
the head of the volume, are more probably attached to the
first part only, the book of lyrics. Catullus almost cer-
tainly died in 54 B.C. ; the only positive dates assignable to
particular poems, in either the lyric or the elegiac section,
alike lie within the three or four years previous, and, while
no strict chronological order is followed, the pieces at
the beginning of the book are almost certainly the earliest,
and those at the end among the latest.
