Many of the critics of this period also wrote poems. Among these was VALERIUS CATO, sometimes called CATO GRAMMATICUS, whose love elegies were known to Ovid. He also amused himself with short mythological pieces, none of which have come down to us. Two short poems called _Dirae_ and _Lydia_, which used to be printed among Virgil's _Catalecta_, bear his name, but are now generally regarded as spurious. They contain the bitter complaints of one who was turned out of his estate by an intruding soldier, and his resolution to find solace for all ills in the love of his faithful mistress. The absorbing interest of the war between Caesar and Pompey compelled all classes to share its troubles; even the poets did not escape. They were now very numerous. Already the vain desire to write had become universal among the _jeunesse_ of the capital. The seductive methods by which Alexandrinism had made it equally easy to enshrine in verse his morning reading or his evening's amour, proved too great an attraction for the young Roman votary of the muses. Rome already teemed with the class so pitilessly satirized by Horace and Juvenal, the "Saecli incommoda, pessimi poetae." The first name of any celebrity is that of VARRO ATACINUS, a native of Gallia Narbonensis. He was a varied and prolific writer, who cultivated with some success at least three domains of poetry. In his younger days he wrote satires, but without any aptitude for the work. [98] These he deserted for the epos, in which he gained some credit by his poem on the Sequanian War. This was a national epic after the manner of Ennius, but from the silence of later poets we may conjecture that it did not retain its popularity. At the age of thirty-five he began to study with diligence the Alexandrine models, and gained much credit by his translation of the _Argonautica_ of Apollonius. Ovid often mentions this poem with admiration; he calls Varro the poet of the sail-tossing sea, says no age will be ignorant of his fame, and even thinks the ocean gods may have helped him to compose his song. [99] Quintilian with better judgment [100] notes his deficiency both in originality and copiousness, but allows him the merit of a careful translator. We gather from a passage of Ovid [101] that he wrote love poems, and from other sources that he translated Greek works on topography and meteorology, both strictly copied from the Alexandrines.