And couldst thou, Theseus, from her native land Thy Ariadne bring, then cruel so Desert thy victim on a lonely strand? And didst thou, perjured, dare to Athens go, Nor dread the weight of Heaven’s avenging blow? Could naught thy heart with sacred pity touch? Naught make thy soul the baleful plot forego ’Gainst her that loved thee? Ah! not once were such The vows, the hopes, thy smooth professions did avouch! Then all was truth, then did thy honeyed tongue Of wedded faith the flattering fable weave. All, all unto the winds of heaven are flung! Henceforth let never listening maid believe Protesting man. When their false hearts conceive The selfish wish, to all but pleasure blind, No words they spare, no oaths unuttered leave; But when possession cloys their pampered mind, No care have they for oaths, no words their honour bind. For this, then, I from instant death did cover Thy faithless bosom; and for this preferred, Even to a brother’s blood, a perjured lover; Now to be torn by savage beast and bird, With no due form, no decent rite, interred! What foaming sea, what savage of the night, In murky den thy monstrous birth conferred? What whirlpool guides and gave thee to the light, The welcome boon of life thus basely to requite? What though thy royal father’s stern command The bond of marriage to our lot forbade, Oh! safely still into thy native land I might have gone thy happy serving maid; There gladly washed thy snowy feet or laid Upon thy blissful bed the purple vest. Ah, vain appeal! upon the winds conveyed, The heedless winds, that hear not my behest: No words his ear can reach or penetrate his breast! The writers of the Augustan age and their successors paid Catullus what they considered the highest compliment, when they called him _learned_. Criticism referred everything to the Greek standard. The qualities which they recognised by this epithet were those which they deemed most valuable—more so even than originality and invention—an extensive acquaintance with the materials of Greek story, an elaborate study of the poets taken as models, a scientific appreciation of the cadences and harmonies of Greek versification. They were grateful for the blessings which they were conscious of having derived from mental cultivation; and the highest praise which they could bestow was to confer upon a poet the title of a learned and accomplished man.