Like most educated Romans, Catullus had a great love for the country. His joy in returning to his country seat on the peninsula of Sirmio forms the subject of a charming little poem: Gem of all isthmuses and isles that lie, Fresh or salt water’s children, in clear lake Or ampler ocean; with what joy do I Approach thee, Sirmio! Oh! am I awake, Or dream that once again mine eye beholds Thee, and has looked its last on Thracian wolds? Sweetest of sweets to me that pastime seems, When the mind drops her burden, when—the pain Of travel past—our own cot we regain, And nestle on the pillow of our dreams! ’Tis this one thought that cheers us as we roam. Hail, O fair Sirmio! Joy, thy lord is here! Joy too, ye waters of the Golden Mere! And ring out, all ye laughter-peals of home![38] Of the lesser poets of the Ciceronian period little need be said. Their works are lost, but for scattered fragments, except in so far as a few anonymous poems are to be ascribed to this period. The writers of mimes, Decimus Laberius and Publilius Syrus, have already been mentioned (p. 30). [Sidenote: Matius, Lævius, Sueius.] Gnæus Matius, who appears to belong to this time, wrote mimiambics in the manner of Herondas and other Alexandrian poets—lively reproductions of scenes of ordinary life—in choliambic verse, that is, iambic trimetres, the last foot of which is a spondee; Lævius wrote sportive love-poems (_Erotopægnia_); and Sueius composed idylls, two of which, the _Moretum_ and the _Pulli_, are known by name, besides a book of annals. Matius also made a free translation of Homer’s _Iliad_. More important in their own day were two friends of Catullus, Gaius Licinius Calvus and Gaius Helvius Cinna. [Sidenote: Calvus and Cinna.] Calvus, who lived from 87 to 47 B. C., was a distinguished orator and politician, who devoted his leisure hours to poetry. His poems included epithalamia, elegies, epigrams, and at least one mythological epyllion, entitled _Io_. Cinna appears to have come, like Catullus, from northern Italy, but of his life little is known beyond the fact that he was with Catullus on the staff of Memmius in Bithynia. His chief work was a poem entitled _Smyrna_, which, although it was of moderate length, occupied him for nine years. The subject was the unnatural love of the maiden Smyrna for her father and the birth of their son Adonis. The poem was so learned and obscure as to be almost incomprehensible, and was similar in this respect to the _Alexandra_ of the Alexandrian Lycophron. The admiration expressed by Catullus for this work shows how highly the younger Roman poets esteemed successful imitations of even the worst faults of their Alexandrian models.