Multas per gentes et multa per æquora vectus, Adveni has miseras frater ad inferias. Ut te postremo donarem munere mortis Et mutum nequidquam alloquerer cinerem. Quandoquidem fortuna mihi tete abstulit ipsum Has miser indigne frater adempte mihi! Nunc tamen interea prisco quæ more parentum Tradita sub tristes munera ad inferias Accipe fraterno multum manantia fletu Atque in perpetuum frater ave atque vale! On his return to Rome he resumed his old habits, and died in the prime of life, probably B. C. 47, as that is the latest date to which allusion is made in his writings. His works consist of numerous short fugitive pieces of a lyrical character; elegies, such as that already quoted; a secular hymn to Diana; a poem, somewhat of a dithyrambic character, entitled Atys; and the Epithalamium of Peleus and Thetis, a mythological poem in heroic verse. His taste was evidently formed on a study of the Greek poets, from whom he learnt not only his beautiful hendecasyllables, but also their modes of thought and expression. He had skill and taste to adopt the materials with which his vast erudition furnished him, and to conceal his want of originality and inspiration. Some of his pieces are translations from the Greek, as, for example, the elegy on the hair of Berenice, which is taken from the Greek of Callimachus, and the celebrated ode of Sappho.[505] He was one of the most popular of the Roman poets—firstly, because he possessed those qualities which the literary society of Rome most highly valued, namely, polish and learning; and secondly, because, although he was an imitator, there is a living reality about all that he wrote—a truly Roman nationality. He did not merely disguise the inspiration of Greece in a Latin dress, but invested Roman life, and thoughts, and social habits with the ideal of Greek love and beauty. For these reasons his fame flourished as long as Rome possessed a classical literature. Two eminent men only have withheld their admiration—Horace in the golden age; Quintilian in the period of the decline. The former disparages him as a lyrical poet; the latter almost passes him over in silence. Horace was jealous of a rival who was so nearly equal to himself: he could not bear the remotest chance of his claim being disputed to be the musician of the Roman lyre;[506] and he dishonestly declared that he first adapted Æolian strains to the Roman lyre,[507] notwithstanding the Lesbian character and hendecasyllabic metres of his predecessor. Quintilian could not appreciate Catullus, because his own taste was too stiff and affected, and spoilt by the rhetorical spirit of his age.