calvus

If Catullus required to be induced by any one to make an apology, it is more likely that his father's influence moved him to do so than the example and influence of Calvus.

Moreover, the brotherly friendship in which Catullus lived with Calvus, and his earlier intimate relations with Caelius and Gellius, who were all born in or about the year 82 b.c., seem to indicate that he was nearer to them in age than he would have been if born in 87 b.c.

Caesar must have looked upon the imputations of the 57th poem as a mere angry ebullition of boyish petulance: and he showed the same disregard for imputations made by Calvus, which, though as unfounded, were not so absolutely incredible and unmeaning.

He thinks it probable that Catullus' reconciliation must have taken place about the same time or subsequently to that of Calvus, who was likely to have influenced Catullus' political action, and that Calvus could not have desired to be reconciled till after the autumn of 54, when he prosecuted Vatinius.

A line in the poem, immediately preceding that containing the allusion to the speech of Calvus,— Per consulatum perierat Vatinius,— was, till the appearance of Schwabe's 'Quaestiones Catullianae,' accepted as a proof that Catullus had actually witnessed the Consulship of Vatinius in 47 b.c.