[Sidenote: The Book of Poems.] The poems of Catullus, as they have been handed down to us, form a small book of 2,280 lines. They are not arranged chronologically, but rather according to contents and style. The first sixty are short poems in various lyric metres, and have to do with the poet’s love, with his friends and enemies, and with the experiences of his life. These are followed by seven longer poems in imitation of Alexandrian originals, and the rest of the collection consists of short pieces, all in elegiac verse. This arrangement is doubtless due to some editor, not to Catullus himself, but gives the book a certain artistic unity which would be lacking if the poems were arranged in chronological order. A few quotations from Catullus which can not be identified with passages in the extant poems are found in the works of other writers, but they are so few as to indicate that nearly all he ever wrote is contained in the existing book. [Sidenote: The epithalamia.] In the longer poems Catullus shows himself a consummate master of language and versification and a skillful imitator of the Alexandrian poetry most popular among the younger literary men of his time. The first epithalamium, or wedding song, composed for the marriage of Manlius Torquatus and Vinia Arunculeia, is written in lyric metre of short lines. It is supposed to be sung as the bride is escorted to her new home, the first part by a chorus of maidens, the second by youths. Such songs were traditional among the Greeks as well as among the Romans, and there is little originality in the subject or its general treatment, but the brilliant versification and the charming tender passages it contains make this the most attractive of all the longer poems of Catullus. The second epithalamium, in hexameter verse, was apparently composed for no special occasion. A chorus of youths and a chorus of maidens sing responses, calling upon Hymenæus, the god of marriage, and describing by allusion the passage of the bride from maidenhood to wifehood. So the maidens compare her to a flower that has grown in a secluded garden, and the youths compare her to a vine that twines about an elm.