To whom inscribe my charming new book—just out and with ashen pumice polished? Cornelius , to you! for you used to deem my triflings of account,

and at a time when you alone of Italians dared unfold the ages’ abstract in three chronicles—learned, by Jupiter !—and most laboriously written. Therefore take this booklet, such as it is, and, O Virgin Patroness,

may it outlive generations more than one.

Sparrow, darling of my girl, with which she plays, which she presses to her bosom, to whom she gives her fingertip, arousing sharp bites as he seeks after it,

when gleaming with desire of me she jests a light joke of it, so that, I think, it is a solace for her pain when the heavy burning is at rest. Could I but play with you just as she does

and lighten the sad cares of mind. This was as pleasing to me as the golden apple was to the fleet footed girl, which unloosed her girdle long-time fastened.

O mourn, you Loves and Cupids, and all men of gracious mind. Dead is the sparrow of my girl, sparrow, darling of my girl,

which she loved more than her eyes; for it was sweet as honey, and its mistress knew it as well as a girl knows her own mother. Nor did it move from her lap, but hopping round first one side then the other,

to its mistress alone it continually chirped. Now it fares along that path of shadows from where nothing may ever return. May evil befall you, savage glooms of Orcus, which swallow up all things of fairness:

which have snatched away from me the comely sparrow. O wretched deed! O hapless sparrow! Now on your account my girl’s sweet eyes, swollen, redden with tear-drops.

That pinnace which you see, my friends, says that it was the speediest of boats, that it could gain the lead of any craft skimming the surface,

whether the task were to fly with oarblades or sail. And she denies that the shore of the menacing Adriatic denies this, or the Cyclades awkward [to navigate], or noble Rhodes and bristling Thracian Propontis, or the frim Pontic gulf,

where she afterwards was a pinnace, beforehand was bearded forest; and often on Cytorus’ ridge she gave out a rustling with speaking foliage. And you, Pontic Amastris, and to boxwood bearing Cytorus, the pinnace declares that this was and is most well-known to you;

she says that from its origin it stood upon your topmost peak, dipped its oars in your waters, and bore its master from there through so many seas lacking self-control, whether the wind called from port or starboard

or whether favorable Jove fell on both the sheets at once; and nor were any vows [from stress of storm] made be her to shore-gods, when she came from the most distant sea to this glassy lake.

But these things were of before: now laid away, she grows old in peace and dedicates herself to you, twin Castor, and to Castor’s twin.

Let us live, my Lesbia, and let us love, and count all the mumblings of sour age at a penny’s fee. Suns can set and rise again:

we when once our brief light has set must sleep through a perpetual night. Give me a thousand kisses, and then a hundred, then another thousand, then a second hundred, then another thousand without resting, then a hundred.

Then, when we have made many thousands, we will confuse the count lest we know the numbering, so that no one can cast an evil eye on us through knowing the number of our kisses.

Flavius, you would speak of your sweetheart to Catullus, and you could not keep silent, were she not both ill-mannered and ungraceful. In truth you affect I know not what hot-blooded

whore you love: this you are ashamed to confess. For your couch, fragrant with garlands and Syrian unguent, in no way mute cries out that you do not lie alone at night, and also the pillow and bolsters indented here and there,

and the creakings and joggings of the quivering bed: unless you can silence these, nothing and again nothing avails you to hide your affairs. And why? You would not display such love-weary loins unless occupied in some tomfoolery.

Therefore, whatever you have for good or ill, tell us! I want to call you and your loves to heaven in charming verse.

You ask, how many kisses of yours, Lesbia, may be enough and to spare for me. As the countless Libyan sands which strew asafoetida-bearing Cyrene

between the oracle of sweltering Jove and the sacred tomb of ancient Battus, or as the many stars, when night is silent, look upon the furtive loves of mortals, to kiss you with kisses of so great a number

is enough and to spare for passion-driven Catullus: so many that prying eyes may not avail to number, nor ill tongues to bewitch.

Unhappy Catullus, cease your trifling and what you see lost, know to be lost. Once bright days used to shine on you when you used to go wherever your girl led you,

loved by us as never a girl will ever be loved. There those many joys occured which you did wish, nor was the girl unwilling. In truth bright days used once to shine on you. Now she no longer wants you: you too, powerless to avail, must not want her,

do not pursue her retreating, do not live unhappy, but with firm-set mind endure, harden yourself. Farewell, girl! now Catullus hardens himself, he will not seek you, will not ask you since you are unwilling. But you will be pained, when you are not asked.

Faithless, go your way! what manner of life remains to you? who now will visit you? who find you beautiful? whom will you love now? whose will you be called? whom will you kiss? whose lips will you bite? But you, Catullus, remain firm in your hardness.

Veranius, standing in the front of all my friends, had I three hundred thousand of them, have you come home to your Penates, your longing brothers and your aged mother?

You have come back. O joyful news to me! I’ll see you safe and sound, and hear you speak of regions, deeds, and peoples Iberian, as is your manner; and reclining over your neck shall kiss your laughing mouth and eyes.

Of all men most full of bliss, who is more happy or more blissful than I?

Varus drew me off from the Forum where I was passing the time to see his lover: a professional, as it seemed to me at first sight, neither inelegant nor lacking good looks.

When we came in, we fell to discussing various subjects, among which, how was Bithynia now, how things had gone there, and whether I had made any money there. I replied what was true, that neither ourselves

nor the praetors nor their company had brought away anything whereby to flaunt a better-scented hair-do, especially as our praetor, who boned us all, didn’t care a hair for his company. But surely, she said, you got some men to bear your litter,

for they are said to grow there? I, to make myself appear to the girl as one of the fortunate, No, I say, it did not go that badly with me, ill as the province turned out,

that I could not procure eight strapping men to bear me. (But not a single one was mine either here or there who could hoist on his neck the fractured foot of my old bedstead). And she, like the saucy tramp she was,

Please, Catullus, says she, lend me those bearers for a short time, for I want to ride to the shrine of Serapis. Hold it! say I to the girl, when I said I had this, my mind slipped; my friend,

Cinna Gaius, he provided himself with these. In truth, whether his or mine—what is it to me? I use them as though I had paid for them. But you are awfully crude and a bother, not through you am I to be careless.

Furius and Aurelius, comrades of Catullus, whether he forces his way to furthest India where the shore is lashed by the far-echoing waves of the Dawn,

or whether to the land of the Hyrcanians or soft Arabs, or whether to the land of the Sacians or quiver-bearing Parthians, or where the seven-mouthed Nile colors the sea, or whether he traverses the lofty Alps ,

gazing at the monuments of mighty Caesar, the Gallic Rhine, the shuddering water and remotest Britons, prepared to attempt all these things at once, whatever the will of the heavenly gods may bear,—

repeat to my girl a few words, though they are not at all good. May she live and flourish with her fornicators, and may she hold three hundred at once in her embrace, loving not one in truth

, but bursting again and again the guts of all: nor may she look back upon my love as before, which by her lapse has fallen, just as a flower on the meadow’s edge, after the touch of the passing plough.

Marrucinius Asinius, you do not use your left hand nicely amid the jests and wine: you make off with the napkins of the careless. Do you think this is witty? It escapes you, fool,

how coarse a thing and unbecoming it is! Don’t you believe me? Believe your brother Pollio who would willingly give a talent to divert you from your thefts: for he is a lad skilled in pleasantries and clever talk.

Therefore, either expect three hundred hendecasyllables, or return me my napkin which I esteem, not for its value but as a pledge of remembrance from my comrade.

For Fabullus and Veranius sent me napkins as a gift from Iberian Saetabis; these I must love even as I do Veraniolus and Fabullus.

You will feast well with me, my Fabullus, in a few days, if the gods favour you, provided you bring here with you a good and great feast, not forgetting a radiant girl

and wine and wit and all kinds of laughter. Provided, I say, you bring them here, our charming friend, you will feast well: for your Catullus’ purse is full with cobwebs. But in return you will receive a pure love,

or what is sweeter or more elegant: for I will give you an unguent which the Venuses and Cupids gave to my girl, which, when you smell it, you will entreat the gods to make you, Fabullus, all Nose!

If I did not love you more than my eyes, most delightful Calvus, for your gift I should hate you with Vatinian hatred. For what have I done or what have I said

that you should torment me so vilely with these poets? May the gods give that client of yours ills enough, who sent you so many scoundrels! Yet if, as I suspect, Sulla, the litterateur, gives you this new and care-picked gift,

it is not ill to me, but well and beatific, that your labors [in his cause] are not made light of. Great gods, what a horrible and accursed book which—if you please!—you have sent to your Catullus, that he might die of boredom the livelong day

in the Saturnalia, choicest of days! No, no, my joker, you will not get off so easily: for at dawn I will haste to the booksellers’ cases; the Caesii, the Aquini, Suffenus, every poisonous rubbish will I collect

that I may repay you with these tortures. Meantime farewell! be gone from here, where an ill foot brought you, pests of the period, most wretched of poets.

If by chance you ever should be readers of my triflings and you will not quake to lay your hands upon us

I commend myself and my lover to you, Aurelius. I come with a modest request that,—if you longed for anything with your heart which you desired chaste and untouched—

you will preserve my boy’s chastity from—I do not say from the people: I fear not at all those who hurry along the thoroughfares here and there occupied on their own business: in truth, my fear is from you and your penis,

pestilent to boys fair and to foul. Set it in motion where you please, as you please, as much as you want, outdoors wherever you find the opportunity: for this one object I make an exception, to my thought a reasonable request. But if your infatuation and senseless passion

push you forward, scoundrel, to a crime so great as to assail our head with your snares, ah!, then an evil fate will make you suffer, when, with feet taut bound, radishes and mullets will pierce through the open hole.

I will make you my boys and bone you, sexually submissive Aurelius and Furius the sodomite, who think, because my verses are voluptuous, that I am not chaste enough.

For it is right that a poet be chaste himself; it is not at all necessary for his verses to be. My verses, in a word, may have a spice and charm, if they are voluptuous and not chaste enough, and because they are sexy and can arouse—

I do not say boys—but this hairy pair who can’t shake their stiffies. Because you have read of many thousand kisses, do you think me less a man? I will make you my boys and bone you!

O Colonia , you who long to play on a long bridge and have it readied to dance on, but fear the shaky legs of the little bridge standing on second-hand sticks, lest it tumble flat in the deep swamp;

let the bridge be as good as you desire, on which even the Salian dances may be undertaken: for which give to me, Colonia , the gift of greatest laughter. I want a certain townsman of mine to go head over heels from your bridge into the mud,

in truth where the brimming, stinking swamp is darkest and an especially deep-sunk mire. He’s the biggest ass of a man, lacking the sense of a two-year-old dozing in his father’s cradling arm. Although a girl is wedded to him flushed with springtide’s bloom

(and a girl more dainty than a tender kid needs to be watched with keener diligence than the lush-black grape-bunch), he leaves her to play as she wants, cares not a single hair, nor troubles himself with marital office, but lies like an alder tree felled by a Ligurian hatchet in a ditch,

as aware of everything as though no woman were anywhere. Such is my thick-headed friend! he sees not, he hears not. He also knows not who he is himself, or whether he is or is not. Now I want to chuck him head first from your bridge, if it is possible to suddenly rouse this sleepy dullard

and to leave behind in the heavy mud his sluggish spirit, as does a mule its iron shoe in the sticky mire.

= Anth. Lat. 1700

= Anth. Lat. 1699

= Anth. Lat. 1698

Aurelius, father of hunger, in ages past in time now present and in future years yet to come, you long to make my lover your boy.

And you do not operate secretly: for you are with him, you joke together, closely sticking at his side you try every means. In vain: for, though you plot against me, I’ll tag you first with a boning.— Now if you were satisfied, I would be silent:

but what irks me is that my boy, ah me! must learn to starve and thirst with you. Therefore, desist, while you may with modesty, lest you reach the end,—but by being boned.

That Suffenus, Varus, whom you know well, is a man fair spoken, witty and urbane, and one who makes lengthy verses. I think he has written at full length ten thousand or more,

nor are they set down, as commonly, on scraped parchment: regal paper, new boards, new bosses, straps, red parchment, the whole thing ruled with the lead and smoothed off with the pumice. But when you read these, that refined and urbane

Suffenus seems on the contrary to be a mere goatherd or ditch-digger, so great and shocking is the change. What can we think of this? The same man, who just now seemed a man-about-town, or if anything could be more polished than that, is stupider than the stupid countryside

as soon as he touches poetry, and nor is the same man ever as happy as when he is writing poetry—so greatly is he pleased with himself, so much does he admire himself. Still, we are all the same and are deceived, nor is there any man in whom you can not see a Suffenus in some one point.

Each of us has his assigned delusion: but we see not what’s in the wallet on our back.

Furius, you who have neither a slave, nor a coffer, nor a bug, nor a spider, nor fire, but have both a father and a step-mother whose teeth can munch up even flints,—

you live finely with your father, and with your father’s wooden spouse. And no wonder: for you are all in good health, finely you digest, you fear nothing, not arson, not the fall of your house,

not impious thefts, not plots of poison, no perilous happenings whatsoever. And you have bodies drier than horn (or if there is anything more arid still, if ought there be), parched by sun, frost, and famine.

So why is it not happy and well with you? Sweat is a stranger to you, absent also are saliva, phlegm, and evil nose-snot. Add to this cleanliness the thing that’s still more cleanly, that your backside is purer than a salt-cellar,

nor do you crap ten times in the whole year, and then it is harder than beans and pebbles; and if you rub and crumble it in your hands, you can’t ever dirty a finger.

Spurn not these goodly gifts and favours, Furius, nor think lightly of them; and stop always begging for a hundred sesterces: for you are happy enough!

O you who are the little flower of Juventian race, not only of these now living, but of those that were before and also of those that will be in the coming years, I’d rather that you had given the wealth of Midas

to that man who owns neither a slave nor coffer, than that you should suffer yourself to be loved by him. What? you ask. Isn’t he a fine looking man? He is; but this fine looking man has neither a slave nor coffer. Slight and make light of this as you please:

nevertheless, he has neither a slave nor coffer.

Thallus you sodomite, softer than rabbit’s fur, or goose’s marrow, or an ear lobe, or an old man’s drooping penis, and the cobwebs there; again Thallus greedier than the driving storm,

when †the ram shows them off their guard†, give me back my mantle which you have swooped down upon, and the Saetaban napkin and Thynian tablets which, idiot, you openly parade as though they were heirlooms. Now unglue these from your nails and return them,

lest the stinging scourge shamefully score your downy little butt and delicate little hands, and you unaccustomedly heave and toss like a tiny boat surprised on the vast sea by a raging storm.

Furius, your little house is pitted not against the southern breeze nor the western wind nor cruel Boreas nor sunny east, but fifteen thousand two hundred sesterces.

O horrible and baleful wind.

Boy cupbearer of old Falernian, pour me more pungent cups as bids the laws of Postumia, mistress of the feast, drunker than a drunken grape.

But off with you, as far as you please, crystal waters, bane of wine, depart you to the sober: here the Thyonian juice is pure.

Piso’s Company, a penniless staff, with lightweight knapsacks, scantly packed, most dear Veranius you, and my Fabullus too, how goes it with you? Have you borne frost and famine enough with that sot?

Which in your tablets appear—the profits or expenses? So with me, who when I followed a praetor, inscribed more gifts than gains.

O Memmius, well and slowly did you bone me, supine, day by day, with the whole of that beam. But, from what I see, in like case you have been; for you have been crammed with no smaller a poker. Courting friends of high rank! But may the gods and goddesses heap ill upon you,

disgraces to Romulus and Remus.

Who can see this, who can stand it, save the shameless, the glutton, and gambler, that Mamurra Mentula should possess what long-haired Gaul had and remotest Britain had before?

You sodomite Romulus, will you see this and bear it? Then you are shameless, a glutton and a gambler. And will he now, proud and overflowing, saunter over each one’s bed, like a little white dove or an Adonis? You sodomite Romulus, will you see this and bear it?

Then you are shameless, a glutton and a gambler. For such a name, Generalissimo, have you been to the furthest island of the west, that this love-weary Mentula of yours should squander twenty or thirty million?

What is it but a skewed liberality? Perhaps he spent too little, or perhaps he was washed clean? First he wasted his patrimony; second the loot from Pontus ; then third the loot from Spain , which even the goldbearing Tagus knows.

Now he is feared by Gauls and Britain . Why do you indulge this scoundrel? What can he do but devour well-fattened inheritances? Was it for such a name, † most wealthy father-in-law and son-in-law, that you have destroyed everything?

Alfenus, unmindful and unfaithful to your comrades true, is there now no pity in you, hard of heart, for your sweet loving friend? Do you betray me now, and not hesitate to play me false now, dishonourable one? Yet the irreverent deeds of traitorous men do not please the dwellers in heaven:

this you take no heed of, leaving me wretched among my ills. Tell me, ah, what may men do, or in whom may they have their trust? Surely you used to bid me entrust my soul to you, unfair, drawing my affections to yourself, as though all were safely mine. Yet now you withdraw yourself, and all your purposeless words and deeds

you suffer the winds and airy clouds to bear away. If you have forgotten, yet the gods remember, Faith remembers, and in time to come will make you regret your doing.

Sirmio ! Eyelet of islands and peninsulas, which each Neptune holds whether in limpid lakes or on the wide sea, how gladly and how happily do I see you again,

scarcely believing that I’ve left behind Thynia and the Bithynian plains, and that I gaze on you safe and sound. O what greater blessing than cares released, when the mind casts down its burden, and when wearied with the toil of travel we reach our hearth,

and rest in the long-for bed. This and only this repays our numerous labors. Hail, lovely Sirmio , and rejoice in your master; and rejoice, you waves of the Lybian lake; laugh, you laughters echoing from my home.

Please, my sweet Ipsithilla, my delight, my charmer: order me to come to you at noon. And if you should order this, it will be useful

if no one makes fast the outer door [against me], and don’t be minded to go out, but stay at home and prepare for us nine continuous love-makings. In truth if you are minded, give the order at once:

for breakfast over, I lie supine and ripe, poking through both tunic and cloak.

O best of the thieves of the baths, Vibennius the father, and his sexually submissive son (for the father is the filthier with the right hand, the son is the greedier with the backside),

why don’t you go into exile and to hellish shores, seeing that the father’s plunder is known to the people, and that, son, you cannot sell your hairy butt for one cent?

We, upright maids and youths, are in Diana’s care: upright youths and maids, we sing Diana.

O Latonia, progeny great of greatest Jove, whom your mother bore beneath Delian olive, that you might be queen of lofty mounts,

of foliaged groves, of remote glens, and of winding streams. You are called Juno Lucina by the mother in the pangs of childbirth,

you are named potent Trivia and Luna with an ill-got light. You, Goddess, with monthly march measuring the yearly course, glut with produce the rustic roofs of the farmer.

Be you hallowed by whatever name you prefer; and cherish, with your good aid, as you are accustomed, the ancient race of Romulus.

Paper, I would like you say to that sweet poet, my comrade, Caecilius, that he come to Verona , quitting New Comum’s city-walls and Larius’ shore;

for I want him to receive certain thoughts from a friend of his and mine. Therefore, if he is wise, he’ll devour the way, although a bright-hued girl a thousand times calls him back when he goes,

and flinging both arms around his neck asks him to delay—she who now, if truth is reported to me, is undone with immoderate love of him. For, since the time she read the beginning of his Mistress of Dindymus ,

flames have been devouring the innermost marrow of the poor little girl. I forgive you, girl, more learned than the Sapphic muse: for charmingly has the Great Mother been begun by Caecilius.

Volusius’ Annals , defiled sheets, fulfil a vow for my girl: for she vowed to sacred Venus and to Cupid that if I were reunited to her,

and I desisted hurling savage iambics, she would give the choicest writings of the worst poet to the slow-footed god to be burned with ill-omened wood. And the wretched girl saw herself

vow this to the gods in jest. Now, O Creation of the pale blue sea, you who dwell in sacred Idalium and in storm-beaten Urium , and foster Ancona and reedy Amathus , Cnidos and Golgos

and Dyrrhachium , the tavern of the Adriatic, accept and acknowledge this vow if it lacks neither grace nor charm. But meantime, off with you to the flames, crammed with boorish speech and vapid,

Annals of Volusius, defiled sheets.

Tavern of lust and you, its tentmates (at ninth pillar from the Cap-donned Brothers), do you think that you alone have mentules, that it is allowed to you alone to have sex with whatever may be feminine,

and to think the rest are goats? But, because you sit, tasteless, hundred or maybe two hundred in a row, do you think I would not dare to bone you entire two hundred loungers at once! Just think it! for

I’ll scrawl dirty pictures all over the front of your tavern. For my girl, who has fled from my embrace, she whom I loved as none will be loved, for whom I fought fierce fights, has seated herself here. All of you, good men and rich,

and also, (O cursed shame) all of you piddling back-alley fornicators, are making love to her; and you above all, Egnatius, one of the long-haired race, the son of Celtiberia full of rabbits, whose quality is stamped by dense-grown beard,

and teeth scrubbed with Spanish urine.

It is ill, Cornificius, with your Catullus, it is ill, by Hercules, and most unbearably; and greater, greater ill, each day and hour!

And you, what solace do you give, even the tiniest, the lightest, by your words? I’m angry with you. Is my love worth this? Yet one little message would cheer me, though more full of sadness than the tears of Simonides.

Egnatius, who has shiny, white teeth, grins forever everywhere. If he is in court, when counsel excites tears, he grins. If he be at funeral pyre where one mourns a son devoted,

where a bereft mother’s tears stream for her only son, he grins. Whatever it may be, wherever he is, whatever may happen, he grins. Such an ill habit has he—neither in good taste, I suppose, nor refined. Therefore take note from me, my good Egnatius.

Whether you are from the city or Sabine or Tiburtine, or a thrifty Umbrian or a fat Etruscan, or a dark, toothy Lanuvian, or Transpadine (to touch upon my own folk also), or whoever of those who cleanly wash their teeth,

still I wish you wouldn’t grin forever everywhere; for nothing is more senseless than senseless giggling. Now you’re a Celtiberian: and in the Celtiberian land early in the morning they piss and scrub their teeth and pinky gums with it,

so that the higher the polish on your teeth, the more it proclaims that you have drunk your piss.

What ill-set mind, poor little Ravidus, thrusts you headlong at my iambics? What god, none advocate of good for you, stirs you to a senseless quarrel?

That you may be in the people’s mouth? What do you want? Do you want to be famous, no matter in what way? You will be, but by our long-drawn vengeance, since you wanted to love my lover.

Ameana, a love-worn girl, asks me for a whole ten thousand, that girl with an ugly little nose, wench of the bankrupt Formian.

You near of kin in whose care the girl is, summon both friends and doctors: for the girl is not sane, and is not accustomed to ask her mirror how she looks.

O come, all ye hendecasyllables, as many as you are, from every part, all of you, as many soever as you be! A filthy whore thinks that I am a joke, and says she won’t return to me your

writing tablets, if you can stand it. Let’s pursue her, and claim them back. Who is she? you ask. That one, whom you see strutting disgracefully, grinning with annoyance like a mime with a face like a Gallic puppy.

Surround her, and claim them back. Filthy whore, give back the writing tablets; give back, filthy whore, the writing tablets. You don’t give two cents? You slime, you whorehouse, or if you could be anything even more loathsome!

But you mustn’t think that this is enough. For if nothing else we can extort a blush on your brazened bitch’s face. We’ll yell again in heightened voice, Filthy whore, give back the writing tablets;

give back, filthy whore, the writing tablets. But we do no good, she isn’t moved. We must change our approach and our tune, if you can make further progress— Chaste and honest, give back our writing tablets.

Hail, girl with nose not the smallest, and with foot not lovely, and with eyes not black, and with fingers not long, and with mouth not dry and with tongue not so very elegant,

the wench of the bankrupt Formian. And the province declares you to be lovely? With you our Lesbia is to be compared? O generation witless and unmannerly!

O, Homestead of ours, whether Sabine or Tiburtine (for people in whose heart it is not to wound Catullus declare you Tiburtine, but those in whose heart it is, will wager anything you’re Sabine )

but whether Sabine or more truly Tiburtine, I was glad to be within your rural country-home, and to cast off an ill cough from my chest, which—not unearned—my belly granted me, for grasping after luxurious meals.

For, while I want to be Sestius’ guest, I read his defence against the plaintiff Antius, crammed with venom and pestilence. Hence a chill heavy rheum and fitful cough shook me continually until I fled to your asylum,

and brought me back to health with rest and nettle-broth. Therefore, refreshed, I give you utmost thanks, that you have not avenged my fault. Nor do I pray now for anything but that, if I should retake Sestius’ abominable script,

its chill may bring a cold and cough to Sestius himself; and he invites me [to dinner] whenever I read one of his bad books.

Septimius, holding his lover Acme in his lap, says, My Acme, if I do not love you to death, and am not prepared to love you constantly all the years in time to come,

as much and the most as one can who is desperately in love—alone in Libya or in torrid India may I come face to face with a grey-eyed lion. When he said this, Love, leftwards as before, with approbation rightwards sneezed.

Then Acme slightly bending back her head, and kissed the intoxicated eyes of her sweet boy with her rose-red lips. So, she said, my life, Septimillus, we shall serve this lord alone from now on,

as greater, keener fire burns the more amid my soft marrow. When she said this, Love, leftwards as before, with approbation rightwards sneezed. Now made complete under good auspices,

with mutual minds they love and are loved. Poor little Septimius wants Acme alone more than [the wealth of] the Syria or Britain : in Septimius alone the faithful Acme takes delight and pleasure.

Whoever has seen happier people, whoever a more propitious Love?

Now spring brings back mild breezes without cold, now heaven’s equinoctial fury falls silent at Zephyr’s pleasant breezes. Let the Phrygian meadows be left behind, Catullus,

and the teeming fields of sun-scorched Nicaea : let us fly to the glorious cities of Asia . Now my palpitating soul longs to wander, now happy in their zeal my feet grow strong. O sweet band of comrades, fare you well,

whom various roads in different directions carry back all at once setting out far from home.

Porcius and Socration, the two left hands of Piso, scurf and hunger of the world, has that verpus Priapus placed you before my Veraniolus and Fabullus?

Do you spend the day luxuriously in expensive feasts? Do my comrades seek out dinner invitations the cross-roads?

If someone let me kiss continually your honey-sweet eyes, Juventius, continually I’d kiss even to three hundred thousand kisses, nor ever should I seem on the verge of having enough,

not even if the crop of our kisses should be thicker than dried wheat sheaves.

Most eloquent of Romulus’ descendancy—as many as there are, who have been, O Marcus Tullius, and who will be after in other years—to you Catullus gives his greatest gratitude,

the worst poet of all by as much as you are the best advocate of all.

Yesterday, Licinius, in leisure much we played upon my tablets, as became us, men of fancy. Each jotting verses in turn

played first in this meter then in that, exchanging mutual epigrams amid jokes and wine. But I departed from there, afire, Licinius, with your wit and charm, so that food was useless to my wretched self;

nor could sleep close my eyes in quiet, but all over the bed in restless fury did I toss, longing to behold daylight that I might speak with you, and again we might be together. But afterwards, when my limbs, weakened by my restless labours,

lay stretched in semi-death upon the bed, I made this poem for you, my delight, from which you will perceive my pain. Now beware of presumptuousness, and beware of rejecting our pleadings, I pray you, apple of my eye,

lest Nemesis exact her dues from you. She is a forceful Goddess; beware her wrath.

He seems to me to be equal to a god, he, if such were lawful, to surpass the gods, who sitting across from you again and again gazes on you, and listens to you

sweetly laughing, which snatches away from sombre me my every sense: for the instant I glance on you, Lesbia, nothing is left to me [of voice], but my tongue is numbed, a keen-edged

flame spreads through my limbs, with sound self-caused my twin ears sing, and my eyes are enwrapped with night.

Leisure, Catullus, to you is hurtful: in leisure beyond measure do you exult and pass your life.

Leisure first ruined rulers and prosperous cities.

What is it, Catullus, why delay your death? Nonius the tumor is seated in the curule chair, Vatinius lies his way to the consulship: what is it, Catullus, why delay your death?

I just had to laugh at someone in the crowded court who, when with admirable art my Calvus had set forth Vatinius’ crimes, with hands uplifted in admiration thus spoke:

Great Gods, the fluent little Salaputian!

Otho’s tiny little head is the master’s uncouth half-soaped legs, Libo’s light and delicate wind if not all things I wish would displease

you and Fuficius, that warmed-over old man again you will be enraged at my undeserving iambics, Generalissimo.

We beg, if maybe it’s not too much trouble, you’ll show us where your haunt may be. We looked for you in the smaller Campus, for you in the Circus, for you in every bookshop,

for you in Jupiter ’s holy temple. My friend, on Magnus’ promenade I grabbed every girl I saw whose looks were unruffled, and at the same time I demanded loudly,

Give me back Camerius, you wretched girls. One of them, drawing back her naked Look! he’s hiding here between my rosey-red nipples! But bearing with you is a labor of Hercules now.

Not if I were molded into the Cretan guard, not if I were born with Pegasean wing,

or I Ladas, or Perseus with winged foot, or Rhesus’ swift and snowy team: add to these the feathery-footed and winged ones, ask at the same time the course of the winds: which bound up, Camerius, you name as mine;

yet exhausted in my every marrow and with many a faintness consumed, I would be in my quest for you, my friend.

Do you deny that you bear yourself in such great arrogance, my friend?

Tell us where you will be, declare it boldly, give up the secret, trust it to the light. What, do the milk-white maidens detain you? If you hold your tongue closed up in your mouth, you squander Love’s every fruit:

for Venus joys in words and talk. Yet if you wish, you may bar your palate, as long as you are a partner of true love.

O thing ridiculous, Cato , and funny, and worthy of your ears and of your laughter. Laugh, Cato , the more you love Catullus: the thing is ridiculous and too funny.

Just now I caught a boy a-thrusting in a girl: and, so please you, Dione, for lack of a weapon I slayed him with my own rigidity.

Beautifully it fits the shameless sodomites, Mamurra and sexually submissive Caesar. It’s no wonder: they share like stains—the one from the City, the other, Formian—

which stay deep-marked and they can not be washed off. Debauched twins each, both learned, both in one bed, one not more than the other the greater greedier adulterer, allied rivals of the girls.

Beautifully it fits the shameless sodomites.

O Caelius, our Lesbia , that Lesbia , the self-same Lesbia whom Catullus loved more than himself and all his own, now at the cross-roads and in the alleyways

husks off the high-spirited descendants of Remus .

Rufa of Bononia blows Rufulus, she the wife of Menenius. Often you have seen her among the tombs, snatching her meal from the funeral pyre. When she chases after the bread which has rolled from the fire,

she is buffeted by the half-shaven cremator.

Did a lioness of the Libyan mountains beget you, or Scylla yelping from her lowmost groin with mind so harsh and loathsome,

that you have contempt for a suppliant’s voice in his last calamity? ah, heart overgreatly cruel.

You who dwell on Helicon Hill, sprung from Urania, who carry off the gentle virgin to her mate, O Hymenaeus Hymen, O Hymen Hymenaeus!

Twine round your temples sweet-smelling flowers of marjoram; put on your gold-tinted veil; lighthearted here, come here, bearing on snowy foot the golden-yellow sandal:

And afire with the joyous day, chanting wedding melodies with ringing voice, strike the ground with your feet, with your hand swing aloft the torch of pine.

For Vinia—fair as Venus dwelling in Idalium when came to the Phrygian judge—a virgin fair, weds Manlius amid happy auspices.

She, bright-shining as the Asian myrtle florid in its branches, which the Hamadryads nurture for their pleasure with besprinkled dew.

So come then! convey your approach here, leaving the Aonian cave in cliffs of Thespiae , over which flows the chilling stream of Aganippe.

And summon homewards the mistress, eager for her new husband, firm-prisoning her soul in love; as tight-clasping ivy, wandering here and there, wraps the tree around.

And also you, upright virgins, for whom a like day is nearing, chant in cadence, singing O Hymenaeus Hymen, O Hymen Hymenaeus!

That more freely, hearing himself to his duty called, will he bear here his presence, Lord of honorable love, uniter of true lovers.

What god is worthier to be sought by anxious lovers? Whom of the celestials do men worship more greatly? O Hymenaeus Hymen, O Hymen Hymenaeus!

You for his young the trembling father beseeches, for you virgins unclasp the belt from their breasts, for you the fearful bridegroom harkens with eager ear.

You deliver into the hands of the untamed youth that flower-like maiden, taken from her mother’s bosom, O Hymenaeus Hymen, O Hymen Hymenaeus!

Without you Venus can do nothing suitable that good repute sanctions; but she can, with you willing. Who dares to be compared with such a god?

Without you, no house can produce heirs, no parent be surrounded by offspring; but they can, with you willing. Who dares to be compared with such a god?

And lacking your rites no land can give protection to its territory; but it can, with you willing. Who dares to be compared with such a god?

Unbolt, open the gates: the virgin is here. See how the torches shake their gleaming locks?



Her natural modesty detains her: hearing this the more, she weeps because she must go.

Cease your tears. For you there is no peril, Aurunculeia, that any woman more beauteous will ever see the light of day coming from Ocean.

You are like the hyacinth flower, which stands aloft amid varied riches of its master’s garden. But you delay, day slips by: advance, new bride.

Advance, new bride, it now seems right, and listen to our speech. See how the torches shake their glittering tresses: advance, new bride.

Nor is your man a fickle husband, given to ill adulteries, seeking shameless acts, ever wishing to lie away from your soft breasts,

But as the lithe vine among neighbouring trees doth cling, so shall he be enclasped in your embrace. But day slips by: advance, new bride.

O nuptial couch which for all with feet of ivory white.

What joys are coming to your man in fleeting night, in noon of day, let him rejoice! but day slips by: advance, new bride.

Raise high, O boys, the torches: I see the gleaming veil approach. Come, chant in cadence, O Hymen Hymenaeus io, O Hymen Hymenaeus.

Nor longer silent is lewd Fescinnine jest, nor, favorite, hearing your master’s love has flown, deny the nuts to the boys.

Give nuts to the boys, O listless favorite; long enough have you played nuts: now you must serve Talassius. O favorite, give the nuts!

The country wives were dirt to you, O favorite, but yesterday: now the barber shaves your face. Wretched, wretched favorite, give the nuts.

They will say when the bridegroom has been annointed that you can scarce abstain from your hairless boys: but abstain! O Hymen Hymenaeus io, O Hymen Hymenaeus.

We know that these delights were known to you only when lawful: but to the wedded these same no more are lawful. O Hymen Hymenaeus io, O Hymen Hymenaeus!

You also, bride, what your husband seeks beware of denying, lest he go elsewhere in its search. O Hymen Hymenaeus io, O Hymen Hymenaeus!

Look, your husband’s home is yours, influential and goodly, allow it to serve you (O Hymen Hymenaeus io, O Hymen Hymenaeus!)

Until white-haired old age, shaking your trembling brow, nods assent to everything. O Hymen Hymenaeus io, O Hymen Hymenaeus!

Bring with good omen your golden feet across the threshold, and go through the polished doorway. O Hymen Hymenaeus io, O Hymen Hymenaeus!

Look! your husband alone within, lying on Tyrian couch, all-expectant waits for you. O Hymen Hymenaeus io, O Hymen Hymenaeus!

No less than in yours, in his breast burns an inmost flame, but more deeply inward. O Hymen Hymenaeus io, O Hymen Hymenaeus!

Release the maiden’s slender arm, boy with crimson-bordered toga: now let her approach her husband’s couch. O Hymen Hymenaeus io, O Hymen Hymenaeus.

You good women of fair renown to aged spouses, put the maiden to bed. O Hymen Hymenaeus io, O Hymen Hymenaeus.

Now you may come, bridegroom: your wife is in the bedroom, with face brightly blushing as white parthenice amid ruddy poppies.

But, bridegroom (so help me the heaven-dwellers) in no way less beautiful are you, nor does Venus slight you. But the day slips by: on! do not delay.

You have not delayed for long, now you are coming. Kindly Venus will help you, since what you desire you take publicly, and do not conceal true love.

Whoever wishes to keep count of your many thousand games, first let him make an accounting of the number of Africa ’s sands and the glittering stars.

Play as you like, and speedily give heirs. It does not become so old a name to without children, but from similar stock always to be generated.

A little Torquatus I wish, from his mother’s lap reaching out his dainty hands, and smiling sweetly at his father with lips apart.

May he be like his father Manlius , and easily acknowledged by every stranger, and by his face point out his mother’s faithfulness.

May such praise confirm his birth from true mother, such fame as rests only with Telemachus from best of mothers, Penelope.

Close the doors, virgins: enough we’ve played. But, fair bride and groom, live you well, and diligently fulfil the office of vigorous youth.

Vesper is here: youths, arise. Vesper at last has just borne aloft in the heavens his long awaited light. Now it is time to arise, now to leave the luxurious tables, now will come the virgin, now will be sung the Hymenaeus. Hymen O Hymenaeus, Hymen come O Hymenaeus!

Unwedded girls, do you see the youths? Arise in response: so it must be that the Star of Eve displays its Oetaean fires. Surely it is thus; see how fleetly they have leapt forth? Nor without intent have they leapt forth; what they will sing, it is our task to surpass. Hymen O Hymenaeus, Hymen come O Hymenaeus!

For us, comrades, the palm of victory is not easily acquired; see how the girls rehearse what they planned. They do not plan in vain, what they have may be memorable. No wonder: for inwardly they toil with whole of their minds.

Our minds are parted in one direction, our ears in another: rightfully therefore we shall be surpassed, for victory loves solicitude. So then, at least now focus your attention: now they begin to sing, now we shall have to respond. Hymen O Hymenaeus, Hymen come O Hymenaeus!

Hesperus ! what crueler star is borne aloft in the heavens? you who could pluck a maid from her mother’s embrace, pluck a clinging maid from her mother’s embrace, and could give the chaste girl to a burning youth. What more cruel could victors accomplish in vanquished city? Hymen O Hymenaeus, Hymen come O Hymenaeus!

Hesperus ! what more delightful star shines in the heavens? you who strengthen with your flame the marriage betrothals which husbands pledge, and which the fathers pledged before, and they are not joined before your flame is borne aloft. What more wished for do the gods give than that happy hour? Hymen O Hymenaeus, Hymen come O Hymenaeus!

Hesperus , comrades, has stolen one girl away from us, [Hymen O Hymenaeus, Hymen come O Hymenaeus!]

For at your approach a guard always keeps watch. Thieves lie in wait by night, often on your return with your name changed,

Hesperus , you catch the same men. Yet it pleases the unwedded girls to criticize you with false complaints. But what if they criticize the one whom with silent mind they long for? Hymen O Hymenaeus, Hymen come O Hymenaeus!

As grows the hidden flower in a walled garden, unknown to cattle, uprooted by no plow, which the breezes caress, the sun strengthens, and the rain gives growth: many boys and many girls have longed for it: this same flower when plucked by a delicate fingernail sheds its blossoms: no boys and no girls long for it:

so the virgin, while she stays untouched, so long is she dear to her own; when she has lost her chaste flower from her body profaned, she does not remain a delight for the boys, she beauteous, nor is she dear to the girls. Hymen O Hymenaeus, Hymen come O Hymenaeus!

As the widowed vine which grows in naked field never uplifts itself, never ripens a mellow grape, but bending prone beneath the weight of its tender body now and again its highmost shoot touches with its root; this no farmer, no oxen will cultivate: but if this same chance to be joined with marital elm,

many farmers, many oxen will cultivate it: so the virgin, while she stays untouched, so long does she age, uncultivated; but when she obtains fitting union at the right time, dearer is she to her husband and less of a trouble to her father. Hymen O Hymenaeus, Hymen come O Hymenaeus!

Even you, virgin, do not struggle against such a mate. It is improper to struggle with him to whom your father has handed you over, your father himself together with your mother whom you must obey. Your maidenhead is not wholly yours, in part it is your parents’: a third part is your father’s, a third part is given to your mother, a third alone is yours: be unwilling to struggle against two,

who to their son-in-law their rights together with dowry have given. Hymen O Hymenaeus, Hymen come O Hymenaeus!

Over the vast main borne by swift-sailing ship, Attis, as with hasty hurried foot he reached the Phrygian wood and gained the tree-girt gloomy sanctuary of the Goddess,

there roused by rabid rage and mind astray, with sharp-edged flint downwards dashed his burden of virility.

Then as he felt his limbs were left without their manhood, and the fresh-spilt blood staining the soil, with bloodless hand she hastily took a tambour light to hold, your taborine, Cybele, your initiate rite,

and with feeble fingers beating the hollowed bullock’s back, she rose up quivering thus to chant to her companions. Haste you together, she-priests, to Cybele’s dense woods, together haste, you vagrant herd of the dame Dindymene, you who inclining towards strange places as exiles,

following in my footsteps, led by me, comrades, you who have faced the ravening sea and truculent main, and have castrated your bodies in your utmost hate of Venus , make glad our mistress speedily with your minds’ mad wanderings. Let dull delay depart from your thoughts, together haste you, follow

to the Phrygian home of Cybele, to the Phrygian woods of the Goddess, where sounds the cymbal’s voice, where the tambour resounds, where the Phrygian flutist pipes deep notes on the curved reed, where the ivy-clad Maenades furiously toss their heads, where they enact their sacred orgies with shrill-sounding ululations,

where that wandering band of the Goddess flits about: there it is meet to hasten with hurried mystic dance. When Attis, spurious woman, had thus chanted to her comity, the chorus straightway shrills with trembling tongues, the light tambour booms, the concave cymbals clang,

and the troop swiftly hastes with rapid feet to verdurous Ida. Then raging wildly, breathless, wandering, with brain distraught, hurries Attis with her tambour, their leader through dense woods, like an untamed heifer shunning the burden of the yoke: and the swift Gallae press behind their speedy-footed leader.

So when the home of Cybele they reach, wearied out with excess of toil and lack of food they fall in slumber. Sluggish sleep shrouds their eyes drooping with faintness, and raging fury leaves their minds to quiet ease. But when the sun with radiant eyes from face of gold

glanced over the white heavens, the firm soil, and the savage sea, and drove away the glooms of night with his brisk and clamorous team, then sleep fast-flying quickly sped away from wakening Attis, and goddess Pasithea received Somnus in her panting bosom. Then when from quiet rest torn, her delirium over,

Attis at once recalled to mind her deed, and with lucid thought saw what she had lost, and where she stood, with heaving heart she backwards traced her steps to the landing-place. There, gazing over the vast main with tear-filled eyes, with saddened voice in tristful soliloquy thus did she lament her land:

Mother-land, my creatress, mother-land, my begetter, which full sadly I’m forsaking, as runaway serfs do from their lords, to the woods of Ida I have hasted on foot, to stay amid snow and icy dens of beasts, and to wander through their hidden lurking-places full of fury.

Where, or in what part, mother-land, may I imagine that you are? My very eyeball craves to fix its glance towards you, while for a brief space my mind is freed from wild ravings. And must I wander over these woods far from my home? From country, goods, friends, and parents, must I be parted?

Leave the forum, the palaestra, the race-course, and gymnasium? Wretched, wretched soul, it is yours to grieve for ever and ever. For what shape is there, whose kind I have not worn? I (now a woman), I a man, a stripling, and a lad; I was the gymnasium’s flower, I was the pride of the oiled wrestlers:

my gates, my friendly threshold, were crowded, my home was decked with floral garlands, when I used to leave my couch at sunrise. Now will I live a ministrant of gods and slave to Cybele? I a Maenad, I a part of me, I a sterile trunk!

Must I range over the snow-clad spots of verdurous Ida, and wear out my life beneath lofty Phrygian peaks, where stay the sylvan-seeking stag and woodland-wandering boar? Now, now, I grieve the deed I’ve done; now, now, do I repent! As the swift sound left those rosy lips,

borne by new messenger to gods’ twinned ears, Cybele, unloosing her lions from their joined yoke, and goading, the left-hand foe of the herd, thus speaks: Come, she says, to work, you fierce one, cause a madness urge him on, let a fury prick him onwards till he returns through our woods,

he who over-rashly seeks to fly from my empire. On! thrash your flanks with your tail, endure your strokes; make the whole place re-echo with roar of your bellowings; wildly toss your tawny mane about your nervous neck. Thus ireful Cybele spoke and loosed the yoke with her hand.

The monster, self-exciting, to rapid wrath spurs his heart, he rushes, he roars, he bursts through the brake with heedless tread. But when he gained the humid verge of the foam-flecked shore, and spied the womanish Attis near the opal sea, he made a bound: the witless wretch fled into the wild wood:

there throughout the space of her whole life a bondsmaid did she stay. Great Goddess, Goddess Cybele, Goddess Dame of Dindymus, far from my home may all your anger be, O mistress: urge others to such actions, to madness others hound.

Pines once sprung from Pelion ’s peak floated, it is said, through liquid billows of Neptune to the flowing Phasis and the Aeetaean territory, when the picked youth, the vigour of Argive manhood

seeking to carry away the Golden Fleece from Colchis , dared to skim over salt seas in a swift-sailing ship, sweeping the blue-green ocean with paddles shaped from fir-wood. That goddess who guards the castles in topmost parts of the towns herself fashioned the car, scudding with lightest of winds,

uniting the interweaved pines unto the curving keel. That goddess first instructed untaught Amphitrite with sailing. Scarce had it split with its stem the windy waves, and the billow vexed with oars had whitened into foam, when arose from the swirl of the hoary eddies the faces

of sea-dwelling Nereids wondering at the marvel. And then on that propitious day mortal eyes gazed on sea-nymphs with naked bodies bare to the breasts outstanding from the foamy swirl. Then it is said Peleus burned with desire for Thetis,

then Thetis despised not mortal marriage, then Thetis’ sire himself sanctioned her joining to Peleus. O heroes, born in the time of joyfuller ages, hail! sprung from the gods, good progeny of mothers, hail! and may you be favourably inclined. I’ll address you often in my song,

you too I’ll approach, Peleus, pillar of Thessaly , so increased in importance by your fortunate wedding-torches, to whom Jupiter himself, the sire of the gods himself, yielded up his beloved. Did not Thetis embrace you, she most winsome of Nereids born? Did not Tethys consent that you should lead home her grandchild,

and Oceanus too, whose waters enfold the total globe? When in full course of time the longed-for day had dawned, all Thessaly assembled and thronged his home, a gladsome company overspreading the halls: they bear gifts to the fore, and their joy in their faces they show.

Scyros remains a desert, they leave Phthiotic Tempe, Crannon’s homes, and the fortressed walls of Larissa; at Pharsalia they gather, beneath Pharsalian roofs they throng. None tills the soil, the heifers’ necks grow softened, the trailing vine is not cleansed by the curved rake-prongs,

nor does the bull tear up the clods with the prone-bending plowblade, nor does the sickle prune the shade of the spreading tree-branches, squalid rust steals over the neglected plows. But this mansion, throughout its innermost recesses of opulent royalty, glitters with gleaming gold and with silver.

Ivory makes white the seats; goblets glint on the boards; the whole house delights in the splendour of royal treasure. Placed in the midst of the mansion is the bridal bed of the goddess, made glossy with Indian tusks and covered with purple, tinted with the shell-fish’s rosy dye.

This tapestry embroidered with figures of men of ancient time portrays with admirable art the heroes’ valour. For looking forth from Dia’s beach, resounding with crashing of breakers, Ariadne watches Theseus moving from sight with his swift fleet, her heart swelling with raging passion,

and she does not yet believe she sees what she sees, as, newly-awakened from her deceptive sleep, she perceives herself, deserted and woeful, on the lonely shore. But the heedless youth, flying away, beats the waves with his oars, leaving his perjured vows to the gusty gales.

In the dim distance from amidst the sea-weed, the daughter of Minos with sorrowful eyes, like a stone-carved Bacchante, gazes afar, alas! gazes after him, heaving with great waves of grief. No longer does the fragile fillet bind her yellow locks, no more with light veil is her hidden bosom covered,

no more with rounded zone the milky breasts are clasped; fallen down from her body everything is scattered here and there, and the salt waves toy with them in front of her very feet. But neither on fillet nor floating veil, but on you, Theseus,

in their stead, was she musing: on you she bent her heart, her thoughts, her love-lorn mind. Ah, woeful one, with sorrows unending distraught, Erycina sows thorny cares deep in your bosom, since that time when Theseus fierce in his vigor set out from the curved bay of Piraeus ,

and gained the Gortynian roofs of the iniquitous ruler. For it is said that once, constrained by the cruelest plague to expiate the slaughter of Androgeos, Cecropia used to give both chosen youths and the pick of the unmarried maidens as a feast to the Minotaur.

When thus his strait walls with ills were vexed, Theseus with free will preferred to yield up his body for adored Athens rather than such Cecropian corpses be carried to Crete unobsequied. And therefore borne in a speedy craft by favouring breezes,

he came to the imperious Minos and his superb seat. Instantly with longing glance the royal virgin saw him, she whom the chaste couch breathing out sweetest of scents cradled in her mother’s tender enfoldings, like the myrtle which the rivers of Eurotas produce,

or the many-tinted blooms opening with the springtide’s breezes, she bent not her flashing eyes away from him, until the flame spread through her whole body, and burned into her innermost marrow. Ah, hard of heart, urging with misery to madness,

O holy boy, who mingles men’s cares and their joys, and you queen of Golgos and of foliaged Idalium , on what waves did you heave the mind-kindled maid, sighing often for the golden-haired guest! What dreads she bore in her swooning soul!

How often did she grow sallower in sheen than gold! When craving to contend against the savage monster, Theseus faced death or the palm of praise. Then gifts to the gods not unpleasing, not idly given, with promise from tight-closed lips did she address her vows.

For as an oak waving its boughs on Taurus’ top, or a coniferous pine with sweating stem, is uprooted by savage storm, twisting its trunk with its blast (dragged from its roots prone it falls afar, breaking all in the line of its fall)

so did Theseus fling down the conquered body of the brute, tossing its horns in vain towards the skies. Thence backwards he retraced his steps amidst great laud, guiding his errant footsteps by means of a tenuous thread, lest when coming out from tortuous labyrinthines

his efforts be frustrated by unobservant wandering. But why, turned aside from my first story, should I recount more, how the daughter fleeing her father’s face, her sister’s embrace, and even her mother’s, who despairingly bemoaned her lost daughter,

preferred to all these the sweet love of Theseus; or how borne by their boat to the spumy shores of Dia she came; or how her husband with unmemoried breast forsaking her, left her bound in the shadows of sleep? And oft, so it is said, with her heart burning with fury

she poured out clarion cries from depths of her bosom, then sadly scaled the rugged mounts, whence she could cast her glance over the vast seething ocean, then ran into the opposing billows of the heaving sea, raising from her bared legs her clinging raiment,

and in uttermost plight of woe with tear-stained face and chilly sobs she spoke thus:— Is it thus, O perfidious, when dragged from my motherland’s shores, is it thus, O false Theseus, that you leave me on this desolate strand? thus do you depart unmindful of slighted godheads, bearing home your perjured vows?

Was no thought able to bend the intent of your ruthless mind? had you no clemency there, that your pitiless bowels might show me compassion? But these were not the promises you gave me idly of old, this was not what you bade me hope for,

but the blithe bride-bed, hymenaeal happiness: all empty air, blown away by the breezes. Now, now, let no woman give credence to man’s oath, let none hope for faithful vows from mankind;

for while their eager desire strives for its end, nothing fear they to swear, nothing of promises forbear they: but instantly their lusting thoughts are satiate with lewdness, nothing of speech they remember, nothing of perjuries care. In truth I snatched you from the midst of the whirlpool of death,

preferring to suffer the loss of a brother rather than fail your need in the supreme hour, O ingrate. For which I shall be a gift as prey to be rent by wild beasts and the carrion-fowl, nor dead shall I be placed in the earth, covered with funeral mound. What lioness bore you beneath lonely crag?

What sea conceived and spued you from its foamy crest? What Syrtis, what grasping Scylla, what vast Charybdis? O you repayer with such rewards for your sweet life! If it was not your heart’s wish to yoke with me, through holding in horror the dread decrees of my stern sire,

yet you could have led me to your home, where as your handmaid I might have served you with cheerful service, laving your snowy feet with clear water, or spreading the purple coverlet over your couch.

Yet why, distraught with woe, do I vainly lament to the unknowing winds, which unfurnished with sense, can neither hear uttered complaints nor can return them? For now he has sped away into the midst of the seas, nor does any mortal appear along this desolate seaboard.

Thus with overweening scorn bitter Fate in my extreme hour even grudges ears to my complaints. All-powerful Jupiter! would that in old time the Cecropian ships had not touched at the Gnossan shores, nor that the false mariner, bearing the direful ransom to the unquelled bull, had bound his ropes to Crete ,

nor that yonder wretch hiding ruthless designs beneath sweet seemings had reposed as a guest in our halls! For whither may I flee? in what hope, O lost one, take refuge? Shall I climb the Idomenean crags? but the truculent sea stretching far off with its whirlings of waters separates us.

Dare I hope for help from my father, whom I deserted to follow a youth besprinkled with my brother’s blood? Can I crave comfort from the care of a faithful husband, who is fleeing with yielding oars, encurving amidst whirling waters? If I turn from the beach there is no roof in this tenantless island,

no way shows a passage, circled by waves of the sea; no way of flight, no hope; all denotes dumbness, desolation, and death. Nevertheless my eyes shall not be dimmed in death, nor my senses secede from my spent frame,

until I have besought from the gods a just penalty for my betrayal, and implored the faith of the celestials with my last breath. Wherefore you requiters of men’s deeds with avenging pains, O Eumenides, whose front enwreathed with serpent-locks blazons the wrath exhaled from your bosom,

come here, here, listen to my complaint, which I, sad wretch, am urged to outpour from my innermost marrow, helpless, burning, and blind with frenzied fury. And since in truth they spring from the very depths of my heart, be unwilling to allow my agony to pass unheeded,

but with such mind as Theseus forsook me, with like mind, O goddesses, may he bring evil on himself and on his kin. After she had poured forth these words from her grief-laden bosom, distractedly clamouring for requital against his heartless deeds, the celestial ruler assented with almighty nod,

at whose motion the earth and the shuddering waters quaked, and the world of glittering stars quivered. But Theseus, self-blinded with mental mist, let slip from forgetful breast all those injunctions which until then he had held firmly in mind,

nor bore aloft sweet signals to his sad sire, showing himself safe when in sight of Erectheus’ haven. For it is said that before, when Aegeus entrusted his son to the winds, on leaving the walls of the chaste goddess’s city, he gave these commands to the youth with his parting embrace:

O my only son, far dearer to me than long life, lately restored to me at extreme end of my years, O son whom I am forced to send off to a doubtful hazard, since my ill fate and your ardent valour snatch you from me unwilling, whose dim

eyes are not yet sated with my son’s dear form: nor gladly and with joyous breast do I send you, nor will I suffer you to bear signs of helpful fortune, but first from my breast many a complaint will I express, sullying my grey hairs with dust and ashes,

and then will I hang dusky sails to the swaying mast, so that our sorrow and burning of mind are shown by rusty-dark Iberian canvas. Yet if the dweller on holy Itone, who deigns to defend our race and Erectheus’ dwellings,

grant you to besprinkle your right hand in the bull’s blood, then see that in very truth these commandments deep-stored in your heart’s memory do flourish, nor any time deface them. As soon as your eyes shall see our cliffs, lower their gloomy clothing from every yard,

and let the twisted cordage bear aloft snowy sails, where resplendent shall shine bright topmast spars, so that, immediately discerning, I may know with gladness and lightness of heart that in prosperous hour you are returned to my face. These charges, at first held in constant mind, from Theseus slipped away as clouds are impelled by the breath of the winds

from the ethereal peak of a snow-clad mount. But as his father sought the castle’s turrets as watchplace, dimming his anxious eyes with continual weeping, when first he spied the discoloured canvas, flung himself headlong from the top of the crags,

believing Theseus lost by harsh fate. Thus as he entered the grief-stricken house, his paternal roof, Theseus savage with slaughter met with like grief as that which with unmemoried mind he had dealt to Minos’ daughter: while she gazed with grieving at his disappearing keel,

turned over a tumult of cares in her wounded spirit. But on another part [of the tapestry] swift hastened the flushed Iacchus with his train of Satyrs and Nisa-begot Sileni, seeking you, Ariadne, and aflame with love for you. These scattered all around, an inspired band, rushed madly with mind all distraught,

ranting Euhoe, with tossing of heads Euhoe. Some with womanish hands shook thyrsi with wreath-covered points; some tossed limbs of a rended steer; some girded themselves with writhed snakes; some enacted obscure orgies with deep chests,

orgies of which the profane vainly crave a hearing; others beat the tambours with outstretched palms, or from the burnished brass provoked shrill tinklings, blew raucous-sounding blasts from many horns, and the barbarous pipe droned forth horrible song.

With luxury of such figures was the coverlet adorned, enwrapping the bed with its mantling embrace. After the Thessalian youth were sated with the desire of gazing, they began to give way to the sacred gods. Hence, as with his morning’s breath brushing the still sea

Zephyrus makes the sloping billows uprise, when Aurora mounts beneath the threshold of the wandering sun, and the waves move forth slowly at first with the breeze’s gentle motion (plashing with the sound as of low laughter), but after, as the wind swells, more and more frequent they crowd

and gleam in the purple light as they float away,—so quitting the royal vestibule the folk left, each to his home with steps wandering hither and thither. After their departure, Chiron came, chief from the summit of Pelion , the bearer of sylvan spoil:

for whatever the fields bear, what the Thessalian land on its high hills breeds, and what flowers the fecund air of warm Favonius begets near the running streams, these did he bear enwreathed into blended garlands wherewith the house rippled with laughter, caressed by the grateful odor.

Speedily Penios stands present, for a time leaving his verdant Tempe , Tempe whose overhanging trees encircle, to the Dorian choirs, damsels Magnesian, to frequent; nor empty-handed,—for he has borne here lofty beeches uprooted and the tall laurel with straight stem,

nor lacks he the nodding plane and the lithe sister of flame-wrapt Phaethon and the aerial cypress. These wreathed in line did he place around the palace so that the vestibule might grow green sheltered with soft fronds. After him follows Prometheus of inventive mind,

bearing diminishing traces of his ancient punishment, which once he had suffered, with his limbs confined by chains hanging from the rugged Scythian crags. Then came the sire of gods from heaven with his holy consort and offspring, leaving you alone, Phoebus,

with your twin-sister the fosterer of the mountains of Idrus: for equally with yourself did your sister disdain Peleus nor was she willing to honour the wedding torches of Thetis. After they had reclined their snow-white forms along the seats, tables were loaded on high with food of various kinds.

In the meantime with shaking bodies and infirm gesture the Parcae began to intone their truth-naming chant. Their trembling frames were enwrapped around with white garments, encircled with a purple border at their heels, snowy fillets bound each aged brow,

and their hands pursued their never-ending toil, as of custom. The left hand bore the distaff enwrapped in soft wool, the right hand lightly withdrawing the threads with upturned fingers shaped them, then twisting them with the prone thumb it turned the balanced spindle with well-polished whirl.

And then with a pluck of their tooth the work was always made even, and the bitten wool-shreds adhered to their dried lips, which shreds at first had stood out from the fine thread. And in front of their feet wicker baskets of osier twigs took charge of the soft white woolly fleece.

These, with clear-sounding voice, as they combed out the wool, out-poured fates of such kind in sacred song, in song which no age yet to come could tax with untruth. O with great virtues augmenting your exceeding honour, mainstay of Emathia , most famous in your issue,

receive what the sisters make known to you on this happy day, a truth-naming oracle! But run, you spindles, drawing the thread which the fates follow, run, spindles! Now Hesperus will come to you bearing what is longed for by bridegrooms, with that fortunate star will your bride come,

who steeps your soul with the sway of softening love, and prepares with you to conjoin in languorous slumber, spreading her smooth arms beneath your sinewy neck. Run, drawing the thread, run, spindles! No house ever yet enclosed such loves,

no love bound lovers with such pact, as abides with Thetis, as is the concord of Peleus. Run, drawing the thread, run, spindles! To you will Achilles be born, a stranger to fear, to his foes known not by his back, but by his strong breast,

who, often the victor in the uncertain struggle of the foot-race, will outrun the fire-fleet footsteps of the speedy doe. Run, drawing the thread, run, spindles! None in war with him may compare as a hero, when the Phrygian streams trickle with Trojan blood,

and when besieging the walls of Troy with a long, drawn-out warfare perjured Pelops’ third heir lays that city waste. Run, drawing the thread, run, spindles! Often will mothers attest over funeral-rites of their sons his glorious acts and illustrious deeds,

when the white locks from their heads are unloosed amid ashes, and they bruise their discoloured breasts with feeble fists. Run, drawing the thread, run, spindles! For as the reaper, plucking off the dense wheat-ears before their time, mows the harvest yellowed beneath ardent sun,

so will he cast prostrate the corpses of Troy ’s sons with grim swords. Run, drawing the thread, run, spindles! His great valour will be attested by Scamander’s wave, which ever pours itself into the swift Hellespont , narrowing its course with slaughtered heaps of corpses

he shall make tepid its deep stream by mingling warm blood with the water. Run, drawing the thread, run, spindles! And finally she will be a witness: the captive-maid handed to death, when the heaped-up tomb of earth built in lofty mound receives the snowy limbs of the stricken virgin.

Run, drawing the thread, run, spindles! For instantly fortune will give the means to the war-worn Greeks to break Neptune ’s stone bonds of the Dardanian city, the tall tomb shall be made dank with Polyxena’s blood, who as the victim succumbing beneath two-edged sword,

with yielding knees shall fall forward a headless corpse. Run, drawing the thread, run, spindles! Come then! Conjoin in the longed-for delights of your love. Let the bridegroom receive his goddess in felicitous compact; let the bride be given to her eager husband.

Run, drawing the thread, run, spindles! Neither will the nurse returning with morning light succeed in circling her neck with last night’s thread. [Run, drawing the thread, run, spindles!], nor need her solicitous mother fear that sad discord will cause a parted bed for her daughter,

nor need she cease to hope for dear grandchildren. Run, drawing the thread, run, spindles! With such soothsaying songs of yore did the Parcae chant from divine breast the felicitous fate of Peleus. For previously the heaven-dwellers used to visit the chaste homes

of heroes and to show themselves in mortal assembly when their worship had not yet been scorned. Often the father of the gods, resting in his glorious temple, when on the festal days his annual rites appeared, gazed on a hundred bulls strewn prone on the earth.

Often wandering Liber on topmost summit of Parnassus led his howling Thyiads with loosely tossed locks, when the Delphians tumultuously trooping from the whole of their city joyously acclaimed the god with smoking altars. Often in lethal strife of war, Mavors,

or swift Triton’s queen, or the Rhamnusian virgin, in person did exhort armed bodies of men. But after the earth was infected with heinous crime, and each one banished justice from their grasping mind, and brothers steeped their hands in fraternal blood,

the son ceased grieving over departed parents, the sire craved for the funeral rites of his first-born that freely he might take of the flower of unwedded step-daughter , the unholy mother, lying under her unknowing son, did not fear to sully her household gods with dishonor:

everything licit and lawless commingled with mad infamy turned away from us the just-seeing mind of the gods. Wherefore neither do they deign to appear at such assemblies, nor will they permit themselves to be met in the daylight.

Though outspent with care and unceasing grief, I am withdrawn, Ortalus, from the learned Virgins, nor is my soul’s mind able to bring forth the sweet fruit of the Muses (so much does it waver amidst ills:

for but lately the wave of the Lethean stream washes with its flow the poor, pale foot of my brother, whom the land of Troy crushes beneath the Rhoetean shore, stolen from our eyes. [Never again will I hear you speak,]

never again, O brother, more lovable than life, will I see you. But surely I will always love you, always will I sing elegies made gloomy by your death, such as the Daulian bird pipes beneath densest shades of foliage, lamenting the lot of slain Itys.—

Yet amidst sorrows so deep, O Ortalus, I send you these verses recast from Battiades, lest by chance you should think that your words have slipped from my mind, entrusted to the wandering winds, as it was with that apple, sent as furtive love-token by the wooer,

which leapt out from the virgin’s chaste bosom; for the hapless girl forgot she had placed it beneath her soft robe—when she starts at her mother’s approach, out it is shaken: and down it rolls headlong to the ground, while a tell-tale flush bears witness to the girl’s distress.

He who scanned all the lights of the great firmament, who ascertained the rising and the setting of the stars, how the flaming splendour of the swift sun was darkened, how the planets disappear at certain seasons,

how sweet love with stealth detaining Trivia beneath the Latmian crags draws her away from her airy circuit: he that same Conon saw me, a lock of hair from Berenice ’s head, in the celestial light,

gleaming brightly, which she outstretching graceful arms promised to all of the gods, when the king, magnified by his recent marriage, had gone to lay waste the Assyrian borders, bearing the sweet traces of nightly contests, in which he had borne away her virginal spoils.

Is Venus abhorred by new brides? And are the parents’ joys turned aside by feigned tears, which they shed copiously within the threshold of the bedchamber? Their groans are untrue, by the gods I swear! This my queen taught me by her many lamentings,

when her bridegroom set out for stern warfare. Yet, when deserted, you did not grieve the widowed couch, did you, but the tearful separation from a dear brother? How care consumed your marrow, sad deep within! Such that, your whole bosom being agitated,

and your senses being snatched from you, your mind wandered! But in truth I have known you great of heart ever since you were a little maiden. Have you forgotten that noble deed, by which you gained a royal marriage, than which none dared other deeds bolder? Yet what grieving words you spoke when bidding your bridegroom farewell!

Jupiter ! how often with sad hand [you wiped] your eyes! What mighty god changed you? Was it that lovers are unwilling to be long absent from their dear one’s body? Then did you promise me to the whole of the gods on your sweet consort’s behalf, not without blood of oxen,

if he should be granted safe return. In no long time he added captive Asia to the Egyptian territory. For these reasons I, bestowed amidst the celestial host, by a new gift fulfil your ancient vow. Unwillingly, O queen, did I quit your brow,

unwillingly: I swear to you and to your head; if anyone swears lightly, may he bear a suitable penalty: but who may claim himself equal to steel? Even that mountain was swept away, the greatest on earth, over which Thia’s illustrious progeny passed,

when the Medes created a new sea, and the barbarian youth sailed its fleet through the middle of Athos . What can locks of hair do, when such things yield to iron? Jupiter ! may the whole race of the Chalybes perish, and whoever first began to seek the veins beneath the earth

and invent the hardness of iron! Just before severance my sister locks were mourning my fate, when Ethiop Memnon’s brother, the winged steed, beating the air with fluttering wings, appeared before Locrian Arsinoe,

and he bearing me up, flies through aethereal shadows and lays me in the chaste bosom of Venus . Zephyritis herself had dispatched him as her servant, a Greek settler on the Canopian shores. For it was the wish of many gods

that the golden crown from Ariadne’s temples stay fixed, not alone in heaven’s light, but that we also should gleam, the spoils dedicated from your golden-yellow head; when moist with weeping I entered the temples of the gods, the goddess placed me, a new star, among the ancient ones.

For touching the Virgin’s and the cruel Lion’s gleams, hard by Lycaonian Callisto, I turn westwards, a guide before the slow-moving Bootes who barely sinks into the vast ocean. But although the footsteps of the gods press upon me in the night,

and the daytime restores me to the white-haired Tethys, (grant me your grace to speak thus, O Rhamnusian virgin, for I will not hide the truth through any fear, even if the stars revile me with ill words, yet I will unfold the pent-up feelings from truthful breast)

I am not so much rejoiced at these things as I am tortured by being forever parted, parted from my lady’s head, with whom I, in all ointments having not a share, drank many thousands when she was still a virgin. Now do you, whom the gladsome light of the wedding torches has joined,

yield not your bodies to your desiring husbands nor throw aside your robes and bare your nipples, before your onyx cup brings me delightful gifts, your onyx, you who seek the dues of chaste marriage-bed. But she who gives herself to foul adultery,

ah! may the light-lying dust responselessly drink her vile gifts, for I seek no offerings from folk that do ill. But rather, O brides, may concord always be yours, and constant love ever dwell in your homes.

But when you, O queen, while gazing at the stars, will propitiate the goddess Venus with festal torch lights, let not me, your own, be left lacking of unguent, but rather gladden me with large gifts.

Why do the stars hold me back? would that I become a royal tress, that Orion might gleam next to Aquarius.

O dear in thought to the sweet husband, dear in thought to his sire, hail! and may Jove augment his good grace to you, Door! which of old, they say, did serve Balbus benignly, while the old man held his home here;

and which on the contrary, so it is said, did serve grudgingly after the old man was stretched stark, you doing service to the bride. Come, tell us why you are reported to be changed and to have renounced your ancient faithfulness to your lord?

No, (so may I please Caecilius to whom I am now made over!)

it is not my fault, although it is said so to be, nor may anyone impute any crime to me; albeit the fabling tongues of folk make it so, who, whenever anything is found not well done, all clamor at me: Door, yours is the blame!

It is not enough for you to say this by words merely, but so to act that everyone may feel it and see it.

In what way can I? No one questions or troubles to know.

We are wishful: be not doubtful to tell us.

First then, the virgin (so they called her!) who was handed to us

was spurious. Her husband was not the first to touch her, he whose little dagger, hanging more limply than the tender beet, never raised itself to the middle of his tunic: but his father is said to have violated his son’s bed and to have polluted the unhappy house,

either because his lewd mind blazed with blind lust, or because his impotent son was sprung from sterile seed, and therefore one greater of nerve than he was needed, who could unloose the virgin’s belt.

You tell of an excellent parent marvellous in piety,

who himself urinated in the womb of his son!

But Brixia says that she has knowledge of not only this, placed beneath the Cycnean peak, through which the golden-hued Mella flows with its gentle current, Brixia , beloved mother of my Verona .

For she talks of the loves of Postumius and of Cornelius, with whom that one committed foul adultery.

Someone might say here: How do know you these things, O door? you who are never allowed absence from your lord’s threshold, nor may hear folk’s gossip, but fixed to this beam

are accustomed only to open or to shut the house!

Often have I heard her talking with hushed voice, when alone with her serving girls, about her iniquities, quoting by name those whom we have spoken of, for she did not expect me to be gifted with either tongue or ear.

Moreover she added a certain one whose name I’m unwilling to speak, lest he uplift his red eyebrows. He is a lanky fellow, against whom some time ago was brought a grave law-suit over the spurious child-birth of a lying belly.

Because you, oppressed by fortune and bitter calamity, sent me this letter written with tears, that I might bear up shipwrecked you tossed by the foaming waves of the sea, and restore you from the threshold of death;

you whom neither sacred Venus suffers to repose in soft slumber, desolate on a lonely couch, nor do the Muses divert with the sweet song of ancient poets, while your anxious mind keeps watch:—I am grateful that you call me your friend,

and seek here the gifts of the Muses and of Venus. But so that my troubles may not be unknown to you, Manlius, and so that you not think that I hate the duty of host, hear how I myself am engulfed in the waves of fortune, and do not further seek joyful gifts from a wretched one.

In that time when the white toga was first handed to me, and my flowering age was passing its delightful spring, much and enough did I sport: nor was the goddess unknown to us who mixes bitter-sweet with our cares. But my brother’s death plunged all this pursuit into mourning.

O brother, taken from my unhappy self; you by your dying have broken my ease, O brother; all our house is buried with you; with you have perished the whole of our joys, which your sweet love nourished in your lifetime.

With your loss, I have dismissed wholly from mind these studies and every delight of mind. So then, because you write, it is shameful for Catullus to be at Verona , because here someone of the better sort warms up his frigid limbs on a desolate couch;

that, Manlius, is not shameful; rather it is a sorrow. Therefore, forgive me if I do not bestow on you these gifts which grief has snatched from me, because I am unable. For the fact that there is no great store of writings with me arises from this, that we live at Rome : there is my home,

there is my hall, there my time is passed; here but one of my book-cases follows me. As it is thus, I would not want you to think that we do this from ill-will or with a mind not open enough, because ample store is not forthcoming to either of your desires:

of my own accord would I grant both, had I the wherewithal.

I cannot conceal, goddesses, in what way Allius has aided me, or with how many good services he has assisted me, lest the flight of time through ages of forgetfulness cover with night’s blindness this care of his.

But I shall tell it to you, and you in time to come declare it to many thousands, and make this paper, grown old, speak of it And let him be more and more noted when dead, nor let the spider aloft, weaving her thin-drawn web,

carry on her work over the neglected name of Allius. For you know what anxiety of mind twofold Amathusia gave me, and in what manner she overthrew me, when I was burning like the Trinacrian rocks, or the Malian fount in Oetaean Thermopylae;

and my sorrowful eyes did not cease to dissolve with continual weeping, or did my cheeks to be dampened with sad showers. As the transparent stream gushes forth from the moss-grown rock on the airy crest of the mountain, which, when it has rolled headlong prone down the valley,

softly wends its way through the midst of the populous parts, sweet solace to the wayfarer sweating with weariness, when the oppressive heat cracks the burnt-up fields agape: or, as to sailors tempest-tossed in black whirlpool, there comes a favourable and a gently-moving breeze,

implored by prayer now to Pollux, now to Castor: of such kind was Allius’ help to us. He laid open my closed field with a wide path; he gave us a home and he gave it to our mistress, in which we both might exercise our loves in common.

There with gracious gait my bright-hued goddess betook herself, and pressed her shining sole on the worn threshold with creaking sandal; as once came Laodamia, flaming with love for her husband, to the home of Protesilaus,—a home

begun in vain—not yet had a victim appeased the lords of the heavens with sacred blood. May nothing please me overmuch, Rhamnusian virgin, that is undertaken rashly against the will of those lords! How the thirsty altar craves the pious blood

Laodamia was taught by the loss of her husband, being compelled to abandon the neck of her new spouse before one winter and another had come, in whose long nights she might sate her eager passion, so she could live despite her broken marriage-yoke.

The Parcae decreed that this would not be long distant, if her husband went a soldier to the walls of Ilium . For then with Helen’s rape Troy had begun to summon the Argive chiefs to itself; Troy (accursed!) the common grave of Asia and of Europe ,

Troy , the bitter ashes of heroes and of every noble deed, that also lamentably brought death to our brother. O brother taken from unhappy me! O delightful light taken from an unhappy brother! together with you is buried all our house,

together with you have perished all our joys, which your sweet love nurtured during life. Whom now so far away Troy , obscene, baleful Troy , an alien land, holds in far-distant soil laid not among familiar tombs or near the ashes of his kindred

There, it is said, hastening together from all parts, the Greek youth forsook their hearths and homes, lest Paris enjoy his abducted trollop with freedom and leisure in a peaceful bed.

Such then was your case, loveliest Laodamia, to be bereft of husband sweeter than life and breath; the tide of love swallowing you in so great a current bore you off into its steep abyss, as the Greeks say Pheneus near Cyllene

drains off the soil from the rich swampland. Once the falsely-born son of Amphitryon is heard to have dug this soil, having cut through the marrow of the mountain, at the time when he knocked down the Stymphalian monsters with sure arrows at the command of his inferior lord,

so that the gate of heaven might be pressed by a greater number of deities, and Hebe might not remain in long virginity. But deeper than that abyss was your deep love which taught you then, untamed, to bear the yoke. For not as dear to the parent consumed with age

is the head of the late-born grandchild an only daughter rears, who, [an heir] found at last for the ancestral wealth, scarcely having brought his name into the public records, casts off the impious joys of mocking kinsmen and stirs away the vulture from the whitened head;

nor so much does any dove rejoice in her snow-white consort, which they say is always plucking kisses with her nibbling beak: more shamelessly than a woman who is especially passionate. But you alone surpassed the great frenzies of these,

when you were once united to your yellow-haired husband. Worthy to yield to her in no respect or in little, my light brought herself into my embrace, round whom Cupid, often running here and there, gleamed radiantly in his saffron tunic.

Although she is not content with Catullus alone, we will bear the rare intrigues of our coy lady, lest we may be too much a bother, after the manner of fools. Often even Juno, greatest of heaven-dwellers, boiled with flaring wrath at her husband’s fault,

knowing the many intrigues of passionate Jove. Yet it is not fair to compare men with the gods bear up the ungrateful burden of a trembling father. After all she was not handed to me by a father’s right hand when she came to my house fragrant with Assyrian perfume,

but she gave me her stolen favors in the wondrous night, taken away from the embrace of her own husband. Therefore it is enough if to us alone she gives that day which she marks with a whiter stone.

This gift to you, Allius, completed in what verse I can, is in return for many services, so that this day and that, and other and other of days may not touch your name with flaking rust. To this the gods will add the many gifts, which Themis once used to bring to the pious of old.

May you be happy, both you and your life’s-love together, and your home in which we have sported, and its mistress, and he who first gave us earth takes it away, from whom all my good fortunes were first born, and lastly she whose very self is dearer to me than all these,—

my light, who living, living is sweet to me.

Don’t wonder why no woman, Rufus, wants to place her tender thigh beneath you, not even if you tempt her with the gift of a rare robe or with the delights of a crystal-clear gem.

A certain ill tale injures you, that you bear housed in the valley of your armpits a grim goat. This everyone fears. It’s no wonder: for it is an exceeding ill beast, with whom no fair girl will sleep. Therefore, either murder that cruel plague of their noses,

or cease to marvel, Why do they fly?

No one, says my lady, would she rather wed than myself, not even if Jupiter himself sought her. Thus she says! but what a woman says to a desirous lover ought fitly to be written on the breezes and in running waters.

If ever anyone was deservedly cursed with an atrocious goat-stench from armpits, or if limping gout did justly gnaw one, it is your rival, who occupies himself with your love, and who wondrously has obtained each these ills from you.

For as often as he takes his pleasure, he just as often takes vengeance on both; herself he prostrates by his stink, he is slain by his gout.

Once you used to say you knew only Catullus, Lesbia , that you would not hold Jove before me. I loved you then, not only as a fellow his mistress, but as a father loves his own sons and sons-in-law.

Now I do know you: so if I burn at greater cost, you are nevertheless to me far viler and of lighter thought. How can this be? you ask. Because such wrongs drive a lover to love the more, but less to respect.

Cease to wish you well deserve anything from anyone, or to think anyone can become pious. All things are unpleasant, it is of no avail to have done deeds of kindness, but rather it wearies me, wearies me and proves the greater ill:

so with me, whom no one oppresses more heavily nor more bitterly than he who a little while ago held me his one and only friend.

Gellius had heard that his uncle used to scold anyone who spoke of or practised the delights of love. That this should not happen to him, he kneaded deeply his uncle’s wife herself, and turned his uncle into a Harpocrates.

He did whatever he wanted; for now, even if he boned his uncle, the uncle wouldn’t say a word.

Now is my mind brought down to this point, my Lesbia , by your fault, and has so lost itself by its devotion, that now it cannot wish you well, were you to become most perfect, nor can it cease to love you, whatever you do.

If there is any pleasure in a man’s recalling the good deeds of the past, when he knows that he is pious and has not violated any sacred trust or abused the divinity of the gods to deceive men in any pact,

great store of joys awaits you during your length of years, Catullus, from this thankless love of yours. For whatever people can say or do well for someone, such have been your sayings and your doings, and all your confidences have been squandered on a thankless mind.

So then why do you torture yourself further? Why don’t you strengthen your resolve and lead yourself out of this and, since the gods are unwilling, stop being miserable? It is difficult suddenly to set aside a love of long standing; it is difficult, this is true, no matter how you do it.

This is your one salvation, this you must fight to the finish; you must do it, whether it is possible or impossible. O gods, if it is in you to have pity, or if ever you brought help to men in death’s very extremity, look on pitiful me, and if I have lived my life with purity,

snatch from me this canker and pest! Ah! like a numbness creeping through my inmost veins it has cast out every happiness from my breast. Now I no longer pray that she may love me in return, or (what is not possible) that she should become chaste:

I wish but for health and to cast aside this foul disease. O gods, grant me this in return for my piety.

Rufus , believed by me a friend, in vain and worthlessly, (in vain? yes, and in fact at an ill and grievous price) you have thus stolen upon me, and burning my innards, ah! snatched from wretched me all our good?

you have snatched it, alas, you cruel venom of our life! alas, you plague of our friendship.

Gallus has brothers, one of whom has a most charming spouse, the other a charming son. Gallus is a nice man: for he joins together their sweet loves, so that the nice girl beds with the nice boy.

Gallus is a foolish man not to see that he is himself a husband who as an uncle shows how to cuckold an uncle.

But now I grieve that the pure kisses of a pure girl have mingled with your filthy spit. But in truth you will not come off with impunity; for every age

will know you, and Old Lady Fame will tell who you are.

Lesbius is handsome: why not so? whom Lesbia prefers to you, Catullus, and to your whole family. Yet this handsome one can sell Catullus and his family if he can find three acquaintances he can gain greet with a kiss.

What shall I say, Gellius, how those rosy-red lips have become whiter than winter snow, when you leave home in the morning and when the eighth hour stirs you from a gentle nap amid the long day?

Something is certain: perhaps Rumor whispers true that you are devouring the well-grown tenseness of a man’s middle? So for certain it must be! the ruptured guts of poor little Victor and your lips marked with what was lately-drained cry it aloud.

Could no one in this great people, Juventius, be a nice man you could fall in love with except for this guest of yours, paler than a gilded statue, from the dying town of Pisaurum ?

He who now has your heart, whom you dare to place before us; and you know not what crime you commit.

Quintius, if you want Catullus to owe you his eyes, or another thing dearer than his eyes, if such there is, do not snatch from him what is much dearer to him than his eyes, or what is dearer than his eyes.

Lesbia in her husband’s presence says the utmost ill about me: this gives the fool the greatest pleasure. Mule, you perceive nothing! If she had forgotten about us and were silent, she would be all right: now becasuse she snarls and scolds,

not only does she remember, but, what is far more to the point, she is angry. That is, she is enflamed and is speaking.

Chommodious Arrius would say, whenever he wanted to say commodious, and for insidious hinsidious, and then hoped that he had spoken with accent wondrous fine, when aspirating hinsidious to the full of his lungs.

I believe that his mother, his free uncle, his maternal grandfather and grandmother all spoke thus. When he was sent to Syria , everyone’s ears were rested, hearing these words spoken smoothly and slightly, nor after that did folk fear such words from him,

when suddenly is brought the horrible news that th’ Ionian waves, after Arrius had come there, no longer are Ionian, but are now the Hionian Hocean.

I hate and I love. Why I do this, perhaps you ask. I know not, but I feel it happening and I am tortured.

Quintia is lovely to many; to me she is radiant, tall, and straight. Each of these qualities I grant, but deny the whole of these is loveliness: for there is no charm, not a grain of salt in so great a body.

Lesbia is lovely, for not only is the whole of her most beautiful, but she has stolen all the Venus-charm from everybody together.

No woman can say truly that she has been loved as much as you, Lesbia , have been loved by me: no trust in any pact has ever been found so great as was that on my part in the love of you.

What is he doing, Gellius, who has an itch with mother and sister and stays up all night with tunics cast aside? What is he doing, who does not allow his uncle to be a husband? Do you know the weight of crime he undertakes?

He undertakes, O Gellius, so much as neither furthest Tethys nor Oceanus, father of nymphs, can cleanse: for there is no crime which can go further, not even if with lowered head he swallowed himself.

Gellius is thin: why not? He who lives with so good a mother, so healthy and so beauteous a sister, and who has such a good uncle, and a world-full of girl cousins, why would he cease to be skinny?

who if he touched nothing but what is not lawful to touch—you will find ample reason why he is skinny.

Let there be born a Magus from the unspeakable coupling of Gellius and his mother, and let him learn the Persian art of divination. For if Persia ’s impious religion is true, a pleasing Magus ought to be begotten from a mother and son,

so that, when the chant has been learned, he may worship gods while melting the fat innards in the sacred flame.

For no other reason, Gellius, did I hope for your faith to me in this our unhappy, this our desperate love, (not because I knew you well or thought you constant or able to restrain your mind from a shameless act)

, but because I saw this girl whose love kept gnawing at me was neither your mother nor your sister. And although I have had many mutual dealings with you, I did not believe this case to be enough cause for you. You considered it enough: so great is your joy in every

kind of wrongdoing in which there is some vice.

Lesbia forever speaks ill of me nor is ever silent about me: I’ll be damned if Lesbia doesn’t love me! By what sign? because mine are just the same: I exsecrate her constantly, yet may I be damned if I do not love her in sober truth.

I am not over anxious, Caesar, to please you greatly, or to know whether you are a white or a black man.

Mentula fornicates. Of course a mentule fornicates! This is what they say—the pot itself gathers the vegetables.

My Cinna’s Zmyrna finally, after the ninth harvest it was begun, and after the ninth winter it was published, when Hortensius meanwhile five hundred thousand [lines] in one [year]

Zmyrna will be sent to the curving waves of innermost Satrachus, hoary ages will roll out Zmyrna long hence. But Volusius’ Annals will die at Padua itself, and will often furnish loose wrappings for mackerel. May the short works of my comrade remain in my heart;

as for the people, let them rejoice in bloated Antimachus.

Calvus, if anything pleasing or welcome from our grief can have an effect on silent graves, then with its longing we renew old loves and weep friendships once lost,

surely Quintilia does not mourn her premature death as much as she rejoices in your love.

So may the Gods love me, I did not think it made any difference whether I smelled Aemilius’ mouth or his arse. In no respect is the latter cleaner, the former filthier; as a matter of fact, his backside is cleaner and better—

for it comes without teeth. His mouth has teeth a foot and a half long, gums truly like an old wagon-box, and besides, he usually has a maw like the split twat of a she-mule pissing in the summer heat. This man has sex with many girls, and makes himself out to be charming,

and is not condemned to the mill [to drive] the mule? Any girl who would touch him we would think could lick the arse of a diseased hangman.

What can be said to you, if to anyone, stinking Victius, is said to wind bags and fools. For with that tongue, if the occasion should arise, you could lick arses and farmers’ boots.

If you want to destroy us altogether, Victius, yawn: you will accomplish what you want altogether.

I stole from you, while you were playing, honeyed Juventius, a kiss sweeter than sweet ambrosia. But I bore it off not unpunished; for more than an hour I remember I was nailed to the top of a cross,

while I purged myself [for my crime] to you, nor could any tears in the least remove your cruelty. For as soon as it was done, you washed your lips with many drops, and wiped them off with every finger, lest anything contracted from our mouth remain,

as though it were the filthy spittle of a piss-wet whore. Besides, you have handed wretched me over to spiteful Love, nor have you ceased to torture me in every way, so that for me that kiss is now changed from ambrosia to be harsher than harsh hellebore.

Since you award such punishment to wretched lover, never more after this will I steal kisses.

Caelius and Quintius, the flower of the Veronese youth, madly in love with Aufilenus, madly in love with Aufilena—the one with the brother; the other with the sister. This is, as one would say, true brotherhood and sweet friendship.

To whom shall I incline the more? Caelius, to you; for your single devotion to us was shown by its deeds, when the raging flame scorched my marrow. Be happy, Caelius, be potent in love.

Through many nations and through many seas borne, I come, brother, for these sad funeral rites, that I may give the last gifts to the dead, and may vainly speak to your silent ashes,

since fortune has taken yourself away from me. Ah, poor brother, undeservedly snatched from me. But now receive these gifts, which have been handed down in the ancient manner of ancestors, the sad gifts to the grave, drenched with a brother’s tears,

and for ever, brother, hail and farewell.

If anything was entrusted in a pledge of silence by a friend whose inmost loyalty of spirit is known, you will find that I am one of those rightfully devoted, Cornelius, and think that I have become a Harpocrates.

Come, Silo, either return me my ten thousand sesterces, and then be to your content surly and boorish: or, if you like the money, please stop being a pimp—and being surly and boorish.

Do you believe that I could curse my life, she who is dearer to me than are both my eyes? I could not, nor if I could, would my love be so desperate: but you and Tappo make a monstrosity out of everything.

Mentula tries to climb Mount Pimpla: the Muses with their forks chuck him headlong down.

When you see an auctioneer with a comely lad, what do believe other than that he longs to sell himself?

If ever something happens that you long for and want and is unhoped for, this is genuinely pleasing to the soul. And thus is it pleasing to us and far dearer than gold, that you have returned, Lesbia, to longing me,

you have returned to me, longing and without hope, you brought yourself back to us. O day of whiter note! Who lives more happily than I alone, or who can name things greater to be wished for in this life?

If, Cominius, by the judgment of the people your white hair made filthy by unclean practices should perish, to be sure I do not doubt that first your tongue, hostile to goodness, cut out, will be given to the greedy vulture,

the crow will gorge your eyes, gouged out, down his black throat, the dogs will gorge down your entrails, the wolves your remaining members.

My life, you declare to me that this love of ours will be an everlasting joy between us. Great Gods! grant that she may promise truly, and say this in sincerity and from her soul,

and that through all our lives we may be allowed to prolong together this bond of holy friendship.

Aufilena, good professional girls are always praised: they receive their pay for what they intend to do. Because you promised me—which was a lie—you are unprofessional; because you do not give and often bring [home the pay], you do wrong.

Either to do it is honest, or not to have promised was chaste, Aufilena: but to steal what was given by deceiving, proves you worse than the greedy whore who prostitutes herself with her whole body.

Aufilena, that a bride live content in her husband alone is praise of exceptional praise: but it is preferable to lie beneath any lover you choose, rather than as mother to bring forth brothers [cousins] out of your uncle.

He is a lot of man, Naso , and he who descends with you is not a lot of man: Naso you are a lot—and sexually submissive.

In the first consulate of Pompey, Cinna, two used to frequent Mucilla: now again made consul, the two remain, but to each one has accrued a thousand. The seed of adultery is fruitful.

With his estate not falsely is Mentula of Firmum said to be rich, which has everything in it of such excellence, game preserves of every kind, fish, meadows, plowland and beasts. In vain: the yield is overcome by the expense.

Therefore I grant that he is rich, while everything is lacking. Let us praise the estate, while its owner is a needy man.

Mentula has something like thirty acres of meadow land, forty under cultivation: the rest are as the sea. Why can he not surpass Croesus in wealth, he who in one estate possesses so much?

Meadow, arable land, immense woods, and open fields and marshes, even to the uttermost north and to the Ocean sea! All things great are here, yet is the owner most great beyond all; not a man, but in truth a mentule mighty, menacing!

Often seeking, my mind hunting how I could send to studious you the poems of Battiades, whereby I might soften you towards us, and you might not try to send hostile weapons at my head all the time—

I see now that this effort was undertaken by me in vain, Gellius, and that our prayers to this end were of no avail. Your weapons against us we will ward off with our cloak; but, transfixed with ours, you will pay the punishment.