Complete Works of Catullus

by Catullus

suaviolum dulci dulcius ambrosia.

  verum id non impune tuli: namque amplius horam

  suffixum in summa me memini esse cruce,

  dum tibi me purgo nec possum fletibus ullis

  tantillum vestrae demere saevitiae.

  XCIX

  I STOLE a kiss from you, honey-sweet Juventius, while you were playing, a kiss sweeter than sweet ambrosia. But not unpunished; for I remember how for more than an hour I hung impaled on the top of the gallows tree, while I was excusing myself to you, yet could not with all my tears take away ever so little from your anger;

  nam simul id factum est, multis diluta labella

  guttis abstersisti omnibus articulis,

  ne quicquam nostro contractum ex ore maneret,

  tamquam commictae spurca saliva lupae.

  for no sooner was it done, than you washed your lips clean with plenty of water, and wiped them with all your fingers, that no contagion from my mouth might remain....

  praeterea infesto miserum me tradere amori

  non cessasti omnique excruciare modo,

  ut mi ex ambrosia mutatum iam foret illud

  suaviolum tristi tristius elleboro.

  quam quoniam poenam misero proponis amori,

  numquam iam posthac basia surripiam.

  Besides that, you made haste to deliver your unhappy lover to angry Love, and to torture him in every manner, so that that kiss, changed from ambrosia, was now more bitter than bitter hellebore. Since then you impose this penalty on my unlucky love, henceforth I will never steal any kisses.

  C. ad Marcum Caelium furum

  Caelius Aufillenum et Qvintius Aufillenam

  flos Veronensum depereunt iuvenum,

  hic fratrem, ille sororem. hoc est, quod dicitur, illud

  fraternum vere dulce sodalicium.

  C

  CAIUS is mad for Aufilenus and Quintius for Aufilena, one for the brother, one for the sister, both the fine flower of Veronese youth. Here’s the sweet brotherhood of the proverb!

  cui faveam potius? Caeli, tibi: nam tua nobis

  perspecta ex igni est unica amicitia,

  cum vesana meas torreret flamma medullas.

  sis felix, Caeli, sis in amore potens.

  Which shall I vote for? You, Caelius; your friendship to me was excellently shown — it was unique! when a mad flame scorched my vitals. Luck to you, Caelius! success to your loves!

  CI. ad inferias

  Multas per gentes et multa per aequora vectus

  advenio has miseras, frater, ad inferias,

  ut te postremo donarem munere mortis

  et mutam nequiquam alloquerer cinerem.

  quandoquidem fortuna mihi tete abstulit ipsum.

  CI

  WANDERING through many countries and over many seas I come, my brother, to these sorrowful obsequies, to present you with the last guerdon of death, and speak, though in vain, to your silent ashes, since fortune has taken your own self away from me — alas, my brother, so cruelly torn from me!

  heu miser indigne frater adempte mihi,

  nunc tamen interea haec, prisco quae more parentum

  tradita sunt tristi munere ad inferias,

  accipe fraterno multum manantia fletu,

  atque in perpetuum, frater, ave atque vale.

  Yet now meanwhile take these offerings, which by the custom of our fathers have been handed down — a sorrowful tribute — for a funeral sacrifice; take them, wet with many tears of a brother, and for ever, O my brother, hail and farewell!

  CII. ad Cornelium Nepotem

  Si quicquam tacito commissum est fido ab amico,

  cuius sit penitus nota fides animi,

  meque esse invenies illorum iure sacratum,

  Corneli, et factum me esse puta Arpocratem.

  CII

  IF ever any secret whatsoever was entrusted in confidence by a faithful friend, the loyalty of whose heart was fully known, you will find that I am consecrated by their rite, Cornelius, and you may think that I am become a very Harpocrates.

  CIII. ad Silonem

  Aut sodes mihi redde decem sestertia, Silo,

  deinde esto quamvis saevus et indomitus:

  aut, si te nummi delectant, desine quaeso

  leno esse atque idem saevus et indomitus.

  CIII

  PRITHEE, Silo, either give me back the ten sestertia, and then you may be as violent and overbearing as you like: or, if the money gives you pleasure, don’t try, I beg, to ply your trade and be at the same time violent and overbearing.

  CIV.

  Credis me potuisse meae maledicere vitae,

  ambobus mihi quae carior est oculis?

  CIV

  Do you think that I ever could have spoken ill of my life, of her who is dearer to me than both my eyes? No, I could never have done it;

  non potui, nec, si possem, tam perdite amarem:

  sed tu cum Tappone omnia monstra facis.

  nor, if I could help it, would I be so ruinously in love. But you and Tappo make out everything to be prodigious.

  CV. ad Mentulam

  Mentula conatur Pipleium scandere montem:

  Musae furcillis praecipitem eiciunt.

  CV

  MENTULA strives to climb the Piplean mount: the Muses with pitchforks drive him out headlong.

  CVI.

  Cum puero bello praeconem qui videt esse,

  quid credat, nisi se vendere discupere?

  CVI

  IF one sees a pretty boy in company with an auctioneer, what is one to think but that he wants to sell himself?

  CVII. ad Lesbiam

  Si quicquam cupido optantique optigit umquam

  insperanti, hoc est gratum animo proprie.

  quare hoc est gratum nobis quoque carius auro

  quod te restituis, Lesbia, mi cupido.

  CVII

  IF anything ever happened to any one who eagerly longed and never hoped, that is a true pleasure to the mind. And so to me too this is a pleasure more precious than gold, that you, Lesbia,

  restituis cupido atque insperanti, ipsa refers te

  nobis. o lucem candidiore nota!

  quis me uno vivit felicior aut magis hac est

  optandus vita dicere quis poterit?

  restore yourself to me who longed for you, restore to me who longed, but never hoped, yes, you yourself give yourself back to me. O happy day, blessed with the whiter mark! What living wight is more lucky than I; or who can say that any fortune in life is more desirable than this?

  CVIII. ad Cominium

  Si, Comini, populi arbitrio tua cana senectus

  spurcata impuris moribus intereat,

  non equidem dubito quin primum inimica bonorum

  lingua exsecta avido sit data vulturio,

  effossos oculos voret atro gutture coruus,

  intestina canes, cetera membra lupi.

  CVIII

  IF, Cominius, your gray old age, soiled as it is by an impure life, should be brought to an end by the choice of the people, I for my part do not doubt that first of all your tongue, the enemy of all good people, would be cut out and quickly given to the greedy vulture, your eyes torn out and swallowed down the raven’s black throat, while the dogs would devour your bowels, the rest of your members the wolves.

  CIX. ad Lesbiam

  Iucundum, mea vita, mihi proponis amorem

  hunc nostrum inter nos perpetuumque fore.

  CIX

  You promise to me, my life, that this love of ours shall be happy and last for ever between us.

  di magni, facite ut vere promittere possit,

  atque id sincere dicat et ex animo,

  ut liceat nobis tota perducere vita

  aeternum hoc sanctae foedus amicitiae.

  Ye great gods, grant that she may be able to keep this promise truly, and that she may say it sincerely and from her heart, so that it may be our lot to extend through all our life this eternal compact of hallowed friendship.

  CX. ad Aufilenam

  Aufilena, bonae sem
per laudantur amicae:

  accipiunt pretium, quae facere instituunt.

  tu, quod promisti, mihi quod mentita inimica es,

  quod nec das et fers saepe, facis facinus.

  CX

  AUFILENA, kind mistresses are always well spoken of; they get their price for what they purpose to do. You are no true mistress, for you promised and now you break faith; you take and do not give, and that is a scurvy trick.

  aut facere ingenuae est, aut non promisse pudicae,

  Aufillena, fuit: sed data corripere

  fraudando officiis, plus quam meretricis avarae

  quae sese toto corpore prostituit.

  To comply were handsome, not to promise were to be chaste; but to take all you can get and cheat one of his due shows a woman more greedy than the most abandoned harlot.

  CXI. ad Aufilenam

  Aufilena, viro contentam vivere solo,

  nuptarum laus ex laudibus eximiis:

  CXI

  AUFILENA, to live content with one her husband and no other husband is a glory for brides one of the most excellent:

  sed cuivis quamvis potius succumbere par est,

  quam matrem fratres efficere ex patruo…

  but ’tis better to be company for every one, than that a mother with an uncle should conceive brothers.

  CXII. ad Nasonem

  Multus homo es, Naso, neque tecum multus homo

  te scindat: Naso, multus es et pathicus.

  CXII

  You are many men’s man, Naso, but not many men go down town with you: Naso, you are many men’s man and minion.

  CXIII. ad Gaium Helvium Cinnam

  Consule Pompeio primum duo, Cinna, solebant

  Maeciliam: facto consule nunc iterum

  manserunt duo, sed creverunt milia in unum

  singula. fecundum semen adulterio.

  CXIII

  WHEN Pompey first was consul, Cinna, there were two that had Maecilia’s favours: now he is consul again, there are still two, but three noughts have grown up beside each one. A fruitful seed has adultery.

  CXIV. ad Mentulam

  Firmanus saltu non falso Mentula diues

  fertur, qui tot res in se habet egregias,

  aucupium omne genus, piscis, prata, arva ferasque.

  CXIV

  MENTULA is truly said to be rich in the possession of the grant of land at Firmum, which has so many fine things in it, fowling of all sorts, fish, pasture, corn-land, and game.

  nequiquam: fructus sumptibus exsuperat.

  quare concedo sit diues, dum omnia desint.

  saltum laudemus, dum modo ipse egeat.

  All to no purpose; he outruns the produce of it by his expenses. So I grant that he is rich, if you will allow that he lacks everything. Let us admire the advantages of his estate, so long as he himself is in want.

  CXV. ad Mentulam

  Mentula habet instar triginta iugera prati,

  quadraginta arui: cetera sunt maria.

  CXV

  MENTULA has something like thirty acres of grazing land, forty of plough-land: the rest is salt water.

  cur non divitiis Croesum superare potis sit,

  uno qui in saltu tot bona possideat,

  prata arva ingentes silvas saltusque paludesque

  usque ad Hyperboreos et mare ad Oceanum?

  How can he fail to surpass Croesus in wealth, who occupies so many good things in one estate, pasture, arable, vast woods and cattle-ranges and lakes as far as the Hyperboreans and the Great Sea?

  omnia magna haec sunt, tamen ipsest maximus ultro,

  non homo, sed vero mentula magna minax.

  All this is wonderful: but he himself is the greatest wonder of all, not a man like the rest of us, but a monstrous menacing Mentula.

  CXVI. ad Gellium

  Saepe tibi studioso animo venante requirens

  carmina uti possem mittere Battiadae,

  qui te lenirem nobis, neu conarere

  tela infesta mittere in usque caput,

  hunc video mihi nunc frustra sumptum esse laborem,

  Gelli, nec nostras hic valuisse preces.

  CXVI

  I HAVE often cast about with busy questing mind how I could send to you some poems of Callimachus with which I might make you placable to me, and that you might not try to send a shower of missiles to reach my head; but now I see that this labour has been taken by me in vain, Gellius, and that my prayers have here availed nothing.

  contra nos tela ista tua evitabimus amitha

  at fixus nostris tu dabis supplicium.

  Now in return I will parry those missiles of yours by wrapping my cloak round my arm; but you shall be pierced by mine and punished.

  FRAGMENTS

  I.

  At non effugies meos iainbos.

  1.

  But you shall not escape my iambics.

  II.

  Hunc lucum tibi dedico consecroque Priape,

  qua domus tua Lampsacist quaque [silva], Priape,

  nam te praecipue in suis urbibus colit ora

  Hellespontia ceteris ostreosior oris.

  2.

  This inclosure I dedicate and consecrate to thee, O Priapus, at Lampsacus, where is thy house and sacred grove, O Priapus. For thee specially in its cities the Hellespontian coast worships, more abundant in oysters than all other coasts.

  III.

  de meo ligurrire libidost.

  3.

  It is my fancy to taste on my own account.

  IV.

  [et Lario imminens Comum.]

  4.

  And Comum built on the shore of Lake Larius.

  V.

  Lucida qua splende[n]t [summi] carchesia mali.

  5.

  With which shines the bright top of the mast.

  The Biographies

  Ruins at Nicomedia, ancient capital of Bithynia — Catullus spent the provincial command year summer 57 to summer 56 BC in Bithynia on the staff of the commander Gaius Memmius.

  INTRODUCTION TO CATULLUS by Francis Warre Cornish

  GAIUS VALERIUS CATULLUS, whose name stands not lower than third on the roll of Roman poets, was born at Verona B.C. 84; the son of a wealthy Veronese gentleman, a friend of Julius Caesar. He came from Verona to Rome about 62 B.C. Among his friends and contemporaries were C. Licinius Calvus, the poet, and M. Caelius Rufus, the latter of whom became his rival and enemy.

  About 61 B.C., when he was twenty-two, he made the acquaintance of Clodia, wife of Q. Metellus Celer, the most beautiful, powerful, and abandoned woman in Rome, and the bulk of his poems is the history of his fatal love. Lesbia, as he calls her, was as unfaithful to him as to her husband, the consul Q. Metellus Celer, and gave herself for a time to Caelius, the friend of her lover. Her infidelity made havoc of Catullus’s life, and his unhappiness was completed by the death of his brother in Asia. Little else is known of him. He travelled in the suite of the praetor Memmius, Lucretius’s patron; he quarrelled and made friends with Caesar; he lived in and enjoyed the best society, in all senses, of Rome.

  The manuscripts of Catullus, with the exception of Cod. Thuaneus of the ninth century, containing only Carm. LXII., are derived directly or indirectly from a manuscript designated V (Veronensis), which is known to have been at Verona early in the fourteenth century, and which disappeared before the end of the century. Two transcripts of this exist: Cod. Sangermanensis (G), at Paris, dated October 29, 1375, and Cod. Oxoniensis or Canonicianus (O), at Oxford, written about 1400. The symbol V represents the readings of the lost Cod. Veronensis, as established by G and O. Other MSS. which stand in a near relation to G and O and throw light on V are Cod. Datanus (D), at Berlin, written 1463, to which a high value is given by Professor Ellis; Cod. Venetus (M), in the Biblioteca Mareiana at Venice; Cod. Romanus (R), discovered in the Ottoboni collection of the Vatican library in 1896 by Professor W. G. Hale of Chicago, and collated by him, as well as by Professor Ellis, but not yet published: it is nearly allied to O and G. By the kindness of Professors Hale an
d Ellis I have been able to consult the collation of R. O, G, and R are nearly akin, but their exact relations to each other and of each of them to V are not completely made out.

  The existing editions are based on these and other (later) MSS., and also on conjectural emendations made by the scholars of the Renaissance, chiefly Italian, among whom Avantius, Muretus, J. C. Scaliger, Calphurnius, Statius, Lambinus, may be mentioned, and among later critics Heinsius, Bentley, Lachmann, Doering, Baehrens, Haupt, Schwabe, Munro, and Ellis. The present text is substantially that of Professor Postgate; in most cases where I have departed from the text Professor Postgate’s reading is given in the notes with the symbol P.

  As regards this edition, as well as my former text and translation of Catullus, published in 1904, my grateful thanks are due to Professor Postgate, who has most kindly and carefully helped in the revision of the Latin text, though I must not claim his authority or approval of everything that is printed.

  The translator is not responsible for the following poems, in whole or in part: XV., XXI., XXXVII., LXIX., LXXI., LXXIV., LXXVIII., LXXIX., LXXX., LXXXIX., XCIV., XCVN., C., CX., CXI., CXII., CXIII. These have been paraphrased by W. H. D. Rouse.

  I wish also again to express my obligations to Professors Ellis and Hale, to my Eton friends, Mr. H. Macnaghten, Mr. A. B. Ramsay, and Mr. Rawlins, and to Mr. Oliffe L. Richmond, Fellow of King’s College, Cambridge, for much help freely given.

  FRANCIS WARRE CORNISH

  THE CLOISTERS, ETON COLLEGE August 1912

  CATULLUS by J. W. Mackail

  Contemporary with Lucretius, but, unlike him, living in the full whirl and glare of Roman life, was a group of young men who were professed followers of the Alexandrian school. In the thirty years which separate the Civil war and the Sullan restoration from the sombre period that opened with the outbreak of hostilities between Caesar and the senate, social life at Rome among the upper classes was unusually interesting and exciting. The outward polish of Greek civilisation was for the first time fully mastered, and an intelligent interest in art and literature was the fashion of good society. The “young man about town,” whom we find later fully developed in the poetry of Ovid, sprang into existence, but as the government was still in the hands of the aristocracy, fashion and politics were intimately intermingled, and the lighter literature of the day touched grave issues on every side. The poems of Catullus are full of references to his friends and his enemies among this group of writers. Two of the former, Cinna and Calvus, were poets of considerable importance. Gaius Helvius Cinna — somewhat doubtfully identified with the “Cinna the poet” who met such a tragical end at the hands of the populace after Caesar’s assassination — carried the Alexandrian movement to its most uncompromising conclusions. His fame (and that fame was very great) rested on a short poem called Zmyrna, over which he spent ten years’ labour, and which, by subject and treatment alike, carried the method of that school to its furthest excess. In its recondite obscurity it outdid Lycophron himself. More than one grammarian of the time made a reputation solely by a commentary on it. It throws much light on the peculiar artistic position of Catullus, to bear in mind that this masterpiece of frigid pedantry obtained his warm and evidently sincere praise.