62. _Carmen Nuptiale_. Some parts of this epithalamium have been taken from Theocritus, particularly from his eighteenth Idyl, where the Lacedæmonian maids, companions of Helen, sing before the bridal-chamber of Menelaus(497). This second nuptial hymn of Catullus may be regarded as a continuation of the above poem, being also in honour of the marriage of Manlius and Julia. The stanzas of the former were supposed to be sung or recited in the person of the poet, who only exhorted the chorus of youths and virgins to commence the nuptial strain. But here these bands contend, in alternate verses; the maids descanting on the beauty and advantages of a single life, and the lads on those of marriage. The young men, companions of the bridegroom, are supposed to have left him at the rising of the evening star of love:— —— “Vesper Olympo Expectata diu vix tandem lumina tollit. * * * * * Hespere, qui cœlo lucet jucundior ignis?” These lines appear to have been imitated by Spenser in his Epithalamium— “Ah! when will this long weary day have done! Long though it be, at last I see it gloom, And the bright evening star, with golden crest, Appear out of the east; Fair child of beauty, glorious lamp of love, How cheerfully thou lookest from above!” The maids who had accompanied the bride to her husband’s house, approached the youths who had just left the bridegroom, and they commence a very elegant contention concerning the merits of the star, which the chorus of virgins is pleased to characterize as a cruel planet. They are silenced, however, by the youths hinting that they are not such enemies to Hesper as they pretend to be. Then the maids, draw a beautiful, and, with Catullus, a favourite comparison between an unblemished virgin, and a delicate flower in a garden: “Ut flos in septis secretus nascitur hortis, Ignotus pecori, nullo convulsus aratro, Quem mulcent auræ, firmat sol, educat imber; Multi illum pueri, multæ optavere puellæ. Idem cum tenui carptus defloruit ungui, Nulli illum pueri, nullæ optavere puellæ. Sic virgo dum intacta manet, tum cara suis; sed Cum castum amisit, polluto corpore, florem, Nec pueris jucunda manet, nec cara puellis.” To the sentiment delineated by this image, the youths reply by one scarcely less beautiful, emblematical of the happiness of the married state; and as this was a theme in which the maidens were probably not unwilling to be overcome, they unite in the last stanza with the chorus of young men, in recommending to the bride to act the part of a submissive spouse.