But the chief motive both of the 29th and the 57th,-the two poems which Suetonius regarded as attaching an 'everlasting stigma' to the name of Caesar-is the jealousy of Mamurra,-the object also of many separate satires,-who, through the favour of the proconsul and the fortune which he thereby acquired, was a successful rival of Catullus in his provincial love affairs.
"The Roman Poets of the Republic"
W. Y. Sellar
It is quite possible that the last of these, who was proconsul in Cisalpine Gaul in 62 B.C., and to whom Cicero writes when governor of that province, may have lived on the same footing as Julius Caesar did with Catullus' father at Verona, and that, in that way, Catullus obtained his first introduction to his wife Clodia, the Lesbia of the poems.
"The Roman Poets of the Republic"
W. Y. Sellar
Their decision was already obsolete: it was founded on Bonaparte's despatch of April 30th; but in the interval their proconsul had wholly changed the situation by overthrowing the rule of the Doge and Senate, and by setting up a democracy, through which he could extract the wealth of that land.
"The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2)"
John Holland Rose