We may range among the satires of this period, the _Diræ_ of the grammarian, Valerius Cato, who, being despoiled of his patrimony, especially his favourite villa at Tusculum, during the civil wars of Marius and Sylla, in order to make way for the soldiery, avenged himself, by writing poetical imprecations on his lost property. This poem is sometimes inscribed _Diræ in Battarum_, which is inaccurate, as it gives an idea that Battarus is the name of the person who had got possession of the villa, and on whom the imprecations were uttered. There is not, however, a word of execration against any of those who had obtained his lands, except in so far as he curses the lands themselves, praying that they may become barren—that they may be inundated with rain—blasted with pestiferous breezes, and, in short, laid waste by every species of agricultural calamity. Joseph Scaliger thinks that Battarus was a river, and Nic. Heinsius that it was a hill. It seems evident enough from the poem itself, that Battarus was some well known satiric or invective bard, whom the author invokes, in order to excite himself to reiterated imprecations(427):— “Rursus et hoc iterum repetamus, Battare, carmen.” The concluding part of the _Diræ_, as edited by Wernsdorff(428), is a lamentation for the loss of a mistress, called Lydia, of whom the unfortunate poet had likewise been deprived. This, however, has been regarded by others as a separate poem from the _Diræ_. Cato was also author of a poem called _Diana_, and a prose work entitled _Indignatio_, in which he related the history of his misfortunes. He lived to an advanced age, but was oppressed by extreme poverty, and afflicted with a painful disease, as seems to be implied in the lines of his friend Furius Bibaculus, preserved in the treatise _De Illustribus Grammaticis_:— “Quem tres calculi, et selibra farris, Racemi duo, tegula sub unâ, Ad summam prope nutriunt senectam(429).”