Complete Works of Catullus Read online

  XIII

  You shall have a good dinner at my house, Fabullus, in a few days, please the gods, if you bring with you a good dinner and plenty of it, not forgetting a pretty girl and wine and wit and all kinds of laughter. If, I say, you bring all this, my charming friend, you shall have a good dinner; for the purse of your Catullus is full of cobwebs. But on the other hand you shall have from me love’s very essence, or what is sweeter or more delicious than love, if sweeter there be; for I will give you some perfume which the Venuses and Loves gave to my lady; and when you snuff its fragrance, you will pray the gods to make you, Fabullus, nothing but nose.

  XIV

  IF I did not love you more than my own eyes, my dearest Calvus, I should hate you, as we all hate Vatinius, because of this gift of yours; for what have I done, or what have I said, that you should bring destruction upon me with all these poets? May the gods send down all their plagues upon that client of yours who sent you such a set of sinners. But if, as I suspect, this new and choice present is given you by Sulla the schoolmaster, then I am not vexed, but well and happy, because your labours are not lost. Great gods! what a portentous and accursed book! And this was the book which you sent your Catullus, to kill him off at once on the very day of the Saturnalia, best of days. No, no, you rogue, this shall not end so for you. For let the morning only come — I will be off to the shelves of the booksellers, sweep together Caesii, Aquini, Suffenus, and all such poisonous stuff, and with these penalties will I pay you back for your gift. You poets, meantime, farewell, away with you, back to that ill place whence you brought your cursed feet, you burdens of our age, you worst of poets.

  XIVA (a fragment)

  O MY readers — if there be any who will read my nonsense, and not shrink from touching me with your hands...

  XV

  To you, Aurelius, I entrust my all, even my loved one, and I ask a favour of you, a modest favour. If you have ever with all your soul desired to keep anything pure and free from stain, then guard my darling now in safety — I don’t mean from the vulgar throng; I have no fear of such as pass to and fro our streets absorbed in their own business. ’Tis you I fear, you and your passions, so fatal to the young, both good and bad alike. Give those passions play where and how you please, ever ready for indulgence when you walk abroad. This one boy I would have you spare: methinks ’tis a modest request. And if infatuate frenzy drive you to the heinous crime of treason against me, ah! then I pity you for your sad fate. For before the city’s gaze with fettered, feet you shall be tortured as cruelly as an adulterer.

  XVI (a fragment)

  ... who have supposed me to be immodest, on account of my verses, because these are rather voluptuous. For the sacred poet ought to be chaste himself, his verses need not be so.

  XVII

  O COLONIA, you who wish to have a long bridge on which to celebrate your games, and are quite ready to dance, but fear the ill-jointed legs of your little bridge, standing as it does on old posts done up again, lest it should fall sprawling and sink down in the depths of the mire; — may you have a good bridge made for you according to your desire, one in which the rites of Salisubsilus himself may be undertaken, on condition that you grant me this gift, Colonia, to make me laugh my loudest. There, is a townsman of mine whom I wish to go headlong from your bridge over head and heels into the mud; — only let it be where is the blackest and deepest pit of the whole bog with its stinking morass. The fellow is a perfect blockhead, and has not as much sense as a little baby two years old sleeping in the rocking arms of his father. He has for wife a girl in the freshest flower of youth; — a girl too; more exquisite than a tender kidling; one who ought to be guarded more diligently than ripest grapes — and he lets her play as she will; and does not care one straw, and for his part does not stir himself, but lies like an alder in a ditch hamstrung by a Ligurian axe, with just as much perception of everything as if it did not exist anywhere at all. Like this, my booby sees nothing, hears nothing; what he himself is, whether he is or is not, he does not know so much as this. He it is whom I want now to send head foremost from your bridge to try whether he can all in a moment wake up his stupid lethargy, and leave his sluggish mind there in the nasty sludge, as a mule leaves her iron shoe in the sticky mire.

  XXI

  AURELIUS, father of all starvations, not these only but all that have been or are or shall be in future years, you wish to sport with my favourite. And not on the quiet: you keep with him, jest in his company, you stick close to his side and leave nothing untried. All in vain: as you plot against me, I’ll have at you first. If you had your belly full I should say nothing; as it is, what annoys me is that my lad will learn how to be hungry and thirsty. Stop, then, while you can do so unharmed, or you will have to make an end in very different plight.

  XXII

  THAT Suffenus, Varus, whom you know very well, is a charming fellow, and has wit and good manners. He also makes many more verses than any one else. I suppose he has got some ten thousand or even more written out in full, and not, as is often done, put down on old scraps; imperial paper, new rolls, new bosses, red ties, parchment wrappers; all ruled with lead and smoothed with pumice. When you come to read these, the fashionable well-bred Suffenus I spoke of seems to be nothing but any goatherd or ditcher, to look at him again; so absurd and changed he is. How are we to account for this? The same man who was just now a dinner-table wit or something (if such there be) even more practised, is more clumsy than the clumsy country, whenever he touches poetry; and at the same time he is never so happy as when he is writing a poem, he delights in himself and admires himself so much. True enough, we all are under the same delusion, and there is no one whom you may not see to be a Suffenus in one thing or another. Everybody has his own delusion assigned to him: but we do not see that part of the bag; which hangs on our back.

  XXIII

  FURIUS, you who have neither a slave, nor a moneybox, nor a bug, nor a spider, nor a fire, but who have a father and a stepmother too, whose teeth can chew even a flintstone, you lead a merry life with your father and that dry stick, your father’s wife. No wonder: you all enjoy the best health, your digestions are excellent, you have nothing to be afraid of; fires, dilapidations, cruel pilferings, plots to poison you, other chances of danger. And besides this, your bodies are as dry as horn, or drier still if drier thing there be, what with sun and cold and fasting. How can you, Furius, be otherwise than well and prosperous? You are free from sweat, free from spittle and rheum and troublesome running of the nose.

  Since you have such blessings as these, Furius, do not despise them nor think lightly of them; and cease to pray, as you do, for the hundred sestertia; for you are quite well off enough as it is.

  XXIV

  You who are the flower of the Juventii, not only of those we know, but of all who either have been or shall be hereafter in other years, — I had rather you had given the riches of Midas to that fellow who has neither servant nor money-box, than so allow yourself to be courted by him. “What? is he not a fine gentleman?” you will say. Oh, yes; but this fine gentleman has neither a servant nor a money-box. You may put this aside and make as little of it as you like: for all that, he has neither a servant nor a money-box.

  XXV

  EFFEMINATE Thallus, softer than rabbit’s fur or down of goose or lap of ear, or dusty cobweb; and also, Thallus, more ravenous than a sweeping storm when ??? send me back my cloak which you have pounced upon, and my Saetaban napkin and Bithynian tablets, you silly fellow, which you keep by you and make a show of them, as if they were heirlooms. Unglue and let drop these at once from your claws, lest your soft downy flanks and pretty tender hands should have ugly figures branded and scrawled on them by the whip, and lest you should toss about as you are little used to do, like a tiny boat caught in the vast sea, when the wind is madly raging.

  XXVI

  FURIUS, my little farm stands exposed not to the blasts of Auster nor Favonius nor fierce Boreas or Apheliotes, but to a call of fifteen thou
sand two hundred sesterces. A wind that brings horror and pestilence!

  XXVII

  COME, boy, you who serve out the old Falernian, fill up stronger cups for me, as the law of Postumia, mistress of the revels, ordains, Postumia more tipsy than the tipsy grape. But water, begone, away with you, water, destruction of wine, and take up your abode with scrupulous folk. This is the pure Thyonian god.

  XXVIII

  You subalterns of Piso, a needy train, with baggage handy and easily carried, my excellent Veranius and you, my Fabullus, how are you? have you borne cold and hunger with that wind-bag long enough? do your account books show any gain, however small, entered on the wrong side, as mine do? Why, after following in my praetor’s train I put down on the credit side... So much for running after powerful friends! But may the gods and goddesses bring many curses upon you, you blots on the names of Romulus and Remus.

  XXIX

  WHO can look upon this, who can suffer this, except he be lost to all shame and voracious and a gambler, that Mamurra should have what Gallia Comata and furthest Britain had once? Debauched Romulus, will you see and endure this? [You are shameless and voracious and a gambler.] And shall he now, proud and full to overflowing, make a progress through the beds of all, like a white cock-pigeon or an Adonis?

  Debauched Romulus, will you see and endure this? You are shameless and voracious and a gambler. Was it this then, you one and only general, that took you to the furthest island of the West? was it that that worn-out profligate of yours, Mentula, should devour twenty or thirty millions? What else, then, is perverted liberality, if this be not? Has he not spent enough on lust and gluttony? His ancestral property was first torn to shreds; then came his prize-money from Pontus, then in the third place that from the Hiberus, of which the gold-bearing river Tagus can tell. And him do the Gauls and Britains fear? Why do you both support this scoundrel? or what can he do but devour rich patrimonies? Was it for this that you, father-in-law and son-in-law, have ruined everything?

  XXX

  ALFENUS, ungrateful and false to your faithful comrades, do you now cease (ah, cruel!) to pity your beloved friend? What? do you not shrink from betraying me, deceiving me, faithless one? Do the deeds of deceivers please the gods above? — All this you disregard, and desert me in my sorrow and trouble; ah, tell me, what are men to do, whom are they to trust? For truly you used to bid me trust my soul to you (ah, unjust!), leading me into love as if all were safe for me; you, who now draw back from me, and let the winds and vapours of the air bear away all your words and deeds unratified. If you have forgotten this, yet the gods remember it, remembers Faith, who will soon make you repent of your deed.

  XXXI

  SIRMIO, bright eye or peninsulas and islands, all that in liquid lakes or vast ocean either Neptune bears: how willingly and with what joy I revisit you, scarcely trusting myself that I have left Thynia and the Bithynian plains, and that I see you in safety. Ah, what is more blessed than to put cares away, when the mind lays by its burden, and tired with labour of far travel we have come to our own home and rest on the couch we longed for? This it is which alone is worth all these toils. Welcome, lovely Sirmio, and rejoice in your master, and rejoice ye too, waters, of the Lydian lake, and laugh out aloud all the laughter you have in your home.

  XXXII

  I ENTREAT you, my sweet Ipsithilla, my darling, my charmer, bid me to come and rest at noonday with you. And if you do bid me, grant me this kindness too, that no one may bar the panel of your threshold, nor you yourself have a fancy to go away, but stay at home.... But if you will at all, then bid me come at once....

  XXXIII

  CLEVEREST of all clothes-stealers at the baths, father Vibennius and you his profligate son,... off with you into banishment and the dismal regions, since the father’s plunderings are known to all the world....

  XXXIV

  WE girls and chaste boys are lieges of Diana. Diana let us sing, chaste boys and girls. O child of Latona, great offspring of greatest Jove, whom thy mother bore by the Delian olive-tree, that thou mightest be the lady of mountains and green woods, and sequestered glens and sounding rivers; thou art called Juno Lucina by mothers in pains of travail, thou art called mighty Trivia and Moon with counterfeit light. Thou, goddess, measurest out by monthly course the circuit of the year, thou fillest full with goodly fruits the rustic home of the husbandman. Be thou hallowed by whatever name thou wilt; and as of old thou wert wont, with good help keep safe the race of Romulus.

  XXXV

  I ASK you, papyrus page, to tell the gentle poet, my friend Caecilius, to come to Verona, leaving the walls of Novum Comum and the shore of Larius: for I wish him to receive certain thoughts of a friend of his and mine. Wherefore if he is wise he will devour the way with haste, though his fair lady should call him back a thousand times, and throwing both her arms round his neck beg him to delay. She now, if a true tale is brought to me, dotes on him with passionate love. For since she read the beginning of his “Lady of Dindymus,” ever since then, poor girl, the fires have been wasting her inmost marrow. I can feel for you, maiden more scholarly than the Sapphic Muse; for Caecilius has indeed made a lovely beginning to his “Magna Mater.”

  XXXVI

  CHRONICLE of Volusius, filthy waste-paper, discharge a vow on behalf of my love; for she vowed to holy Venus and to Cupid that if I were restored to her love and ceased to dart fierce iambics; she would give to the lame-footed god the choicest writings of the worst of poets, to be burnt with wood from some accursed tree.: and my lady perceived that these were the “worst poems” that she was vowing to the merry gods in pleasant sport. Now therefore, O thou whom the blue sea bare, who inhabitest holy Idalium and open Urii, who dwellest in Ancona and reedy Cnidus and in Amathus and in Golgi, and in Dyrrhachium the meeting-place of all Hadria, record the vow as received and duly paid, so surely as it is not out of taste nor inelegant. Meantime come you here into the fire, you bundle of rusticity and clumsiness, chronicle of Volusius, filthy waste-paper.

  XXXVII

  GALLANT pot-house, and you brothers in the service, at the ninth pillar from the temple of the Brothers in the hats (Castor and Pollux), are you the only men, think you? the only ones who have leave to buss all the girls, while you think every one else a goat? Or if you sit in a line, five score or ten maybe, witless all, think you that I cannot settle ten score while they sit? Yet you may think so: for I’ll scribble scorpions all over the pot-house front. My girl, who has left my arms, though loved as none ever shall be loved, has taken up her abode there.

  She is dear to all you men of rank and fortune — indeed, to her shame, all the petty lechers that haunt the byways; to you above all, paragon of longhaired dandies, Egnatius, son of rabbity Celtiberia, made a gentleman by a bushy beard and teeth brushed with your unsavoury Spanish wash.

  XXXVIII

  YOUR Catullus is ill at ease, Cornificius, ill and in distress, and that more and more daily and hourly. And you, though that is the lightest and easiest task, have you said one word to console him? I am getting angry with you — what, treat my love so? Give me only some little word of comfort, pathetic as the tears of Simonides!

  XXXIX

  EGNATIUS, because he has white teeth, is everlastingly smiling. If people come to the prisoner’s bench, when the counsel for the defence is making every one cry, he smiles: if they are mourning at the funeral of a dear son, when the bereaved mother is weeping for her only boy, he smiles: whatever it is, wherever he is, whatever he is doing, he smiles: it is a malady he has, neither an elegant one as I think, nor in good taste. So I must give you a bit of advice, my good Egnatius. If you were a Roman or a Sabine or a Tiburtine or a pig of an Umbrian or a plump Etruscan, or a black and tusky Lanuvian, or a Transpadane (to touch on my own people too), or anybody else who washes his teeth with clean water, still I should not like you to be smiling everlastingly; for there is nothing more silly than a silly laugh. As it is, you are a Celtiberian; now in the Celtiberian country the natives rub their teeth a
nd red gums, we know how; so that the cleaner your teeth are, the dirtier

  XL

  WHAT infatuation, my poor Ravidus, drives you headlong in the way of my iambics? What god invoked by you amiss is going to stir up a senseless quarrel? Is it that you wish to be talked about? What do you want? would you be known, no matter how? So you shall, since you have chosen to love my lady, — and long shall you rue it.

  XLI

  AMEANA, that worn-out jade, asked me for a round ten thousand; that girl with the ugly snub nose, the mistress of the bankrupt of Formiae. You her relations, who have the charge of the girl, call together friends and doctors: she is not right in her mind, and never asks the looking-glass what she is like.