Carmina

Perseus Latin · Perseus Latin · 544 sections

1.1
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,
1.5
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,
1.10
may it outlive generations more than one.
2.1
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,
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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
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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.
3.1
O mourn, you Loves and Cupids, and all men of gracious mind. Dead is the sparrow of my girl, sparrow, darling of my girl,
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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,
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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:
3.15
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.
4.1
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,
4.5
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,
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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;
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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
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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.
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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.
5.1
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:
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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.
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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.
6.1
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
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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,
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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.
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Therefore, whatever you have for good or ill, tell us! I want to call you and your loves to heaven in charming verse.
7.1
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
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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
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is enough and to spare for passion-driven Catullus: so many that prying eyes may not avail to number, nor ill tongues to bewitch.
8.1
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,
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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,
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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.
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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.
9.1
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?
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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.
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Of all men most full of bliss, who is more happy or more blissful than I?
10.1
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.
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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
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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,
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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,
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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,
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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,
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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.
11.1
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,
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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,
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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,—
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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
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, 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.
12.1
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,
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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.
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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.
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For Fabullus and Veranius sent me napkins as a gift from Iberian Saetabis; these I must love even as I do Veraniolus and Fabullus.
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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
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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,
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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!
14.1
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
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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,
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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
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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
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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.
14a.1
If by chance you ever should be readers of my triflings and you will not quake to lay your hands upon us
15.1
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—
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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,
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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
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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.
16.1
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.
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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—
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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!
17.1
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;
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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,
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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
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(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,
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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
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and to leave behind in the heavy mud his sluggish spirit, as does a mule its iron shoe in the sticky mire.
18.1
= Anth. Lat. 1700
19.1
= Anth. Lat. 1699
20.1
= Anth. Lat. 1698
21.1
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.
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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:
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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.
22.1
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,
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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
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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
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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.
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Each of us has his assigned delusion: but we see not what’s in the wallet on our back.
23.1
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,—
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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,
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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.
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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,
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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.
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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!
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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
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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:
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nevertheless, he has neither a slave nor coffer.
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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,
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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,
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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.
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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.
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O horrible and baleful wind.
27.1
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.
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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.
28.1
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?
28.6
Which in your tablets appear—the profits or expenses? So with me, who when I followed a praetor, inscribed more gifts than gains.

Perseus Latin. CTS URN phi0472.phi001.perseus-eng4. Via the Perseus Digital Library / Open Greek and Latin TEI corpora. Licence: Available under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Source.