Lesbia, as formerly mentioned, is universally allowed to be Clodia, the sister of the turbulent Clodius; but there has been a great deal of discussion and dispute, with regard to the identity of the other individuals against whom the epigrams are directed. Justus Lipsius(513) has written a dissertation with regard to Vettius and Cominius. The former he supposes to be the person mentioned in Cicero’s Letters to Atticus, and by Suetonius, as having been suborned by Cæsar, to allow himself to be seized with a weapon on his person, and to confess that he had been employed by the Chiefs of the Senate to assassinate Pompey—a device contrived by Cæsar, in order to set Pompey and the Senate at variance. Cominius was an accuser by profession, and impeached C. Cornelius, whom Cicero defended(514). Lipsius believes Alphenus to be Pompey, and thinks that the epigram, directed against him, is supposed to be written in the person of Cicero. He is of opinion that the poet durst not venture to mention Pompey’s name, and therefore designed him by an assumed one; but the epigrams on Julius Cæsar prove that Catullus was neither so scrupulous nor timid. The greatest number, however, and the most cutting of the epigrams, are aimed at Gellius, his successful rival in the affections of Lesbia— —— “Quem Lesbia malit, Quam te cum totâ gente, Catulle, tuâ.” There were two persons of this name at Rome in the time of Catullus—an uncle and nephew. The first was a notorious profligate, who had wasted his patrimony, and afterwards headed mobs in the Forum for hire(515). The nephew was equally dissolute. After the death of Cæsar, he conspired to assassinate Cassius in the midst of his army, and, having been pardoned, deserted to Antony. One of the various crimes of which he was suspected, identifies him as the Gellius branded by our poet, and whose vices were so great— —— “Quantum non ultima Tethys, Non genitor nympharum abluit Oceanus.” This idea, by the way, of crimes of such crimson dye that they cannot be washed out by the wide world of waters, seems to have been originally derived from some verses of the chorus in the Choephoræ of Æschylus— —— “ποροι τε παντες ἐκ μιας ὁδου Βαινοντες τον χαιρομυσου Φονον καθαιροντες ἰουσαν ατην.” The great successor of Æschylus expressed the same idea, in different language, in the _Œdipus Tyrannus_— “Ὀιμαι γαρ ὀυτ’ αν Ιστρον ὀυτε Φασιν αν Νιψαι καθαρμω τηνδε στεγην, ὁσα Κευθει.” Seneca, imitating Catullus, in his _Hercules Furens_, says— —— “Arctoum licet Mæotis in me gelida transfundat mare, Et tota Thetis per meas currat manus, Hærebit altum facinus.” —— There is a remarkable resemblance betwixt this idea and a well-known passage in _Macbeth_: “Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood Clean from my hand?” ——