Selected Epigrams
Page 11
7.14
Aulus, a monstrous evil has afflicted
my girl—she’s lost her plaything and her dear:
not like the one for whom Catullus’ Lesbia,
losing her naughty sparrow, shed a tear;
nor what Ianthis mourned (and Stella sang of ),
whose black dove flies now in Elysium.
My dear’s not charmed by trifles or such loves,
nor do such losses make her heart grow glum.
She’s lost a boy just twelve years old, whose dong
was not yet fully eighteen inches long.
7.16
Regulus, I’m broke. All I can try
is selling off your presents. Will you buy?
7.18
Since even a woman couldn’t fault your face
or flawless body, do you wonder why
a fucker rarely wants you and returns?
Galla, you have a glaring flaw. When I
get going and we move with loins united,
though you say nothing, your vagina’s noisy.
May the gods make you speak and it be silent!
The constant prattle of your twat annoys me.
I’d rather you farted. Symmachus says farting
is healthy, and it makes one laugh, besides.
But who can laugh at a cunt’s inane slip-slapping?
At that, one’s spirit (like one’s cock) subsides.
At least speak up; drown out your raucous twat,
or teach it how to talk if you will not.
7.19
What seems to you a scrap of useless wood
was the first keel to sail the unknown sea.
What neither Clashing Rocks nor the worse wrath
of the Black Sea could shatter formerly,
ages subdued. Though years have claimed their toll,
the small board’s more revered than the ship when whole.
7.21
This day, aware of a great birth, gave Lucan
to all the people, Polla, and to you.
Harsh Nero, loathed for no death more, this killing,
at least, the gods should not have let you do.
7.25
The epigrams you write are always bland
and paler than skin powdered with white lead,
without a grain of wit or drop of bile,
and still, you fool, you want them to be read!
A face without a dimple has no charm;
food is insipid, lacking vinegar’s zing.
Give honey apples and bland figs to toddlers;
I savor Chian figs, which know how to sting.
7.30
You sleep with Germans, Parthians, and Dacians;
Cilicians and Cappadocians get a screw;
a Memphian fucker sails to you from Pharos;
a coal-black Indian from the Red Sea, too.
You don’t shun pricks of circumcised Judeans;
a Scythian on his horse won’t pass you by.
Since you’re a Roman girl, why is it, Caelia,
you won’t give any Roman cock a try?
7.39
Loath to endure and suffer more
mornings of gadding all about
and haughty greetings from great men,
Caelius started feigning gout.
Wanting too much to prove it true,
he salves and swathes his healthy feet
and walks with paces slow and pained.
How potent is his skilled deceit!
His gout is now no longer feigned.
7.43
Cinna, to give me what I ask is best;
next best is to refuse without delay.
I love a giver, don’t resent refusers.
You neither give nor tell me no straightway.
7.46
You wish to grace your gift to me with verse
and outdo Homer with your eloquence.
Priscus, for days you torture both of us;
I suffer for your Thalia’s reticence.
Send poems and ringing elegies to those
with wealth; to poor men, give your gifts with prose.
7.48
Although he owns about three hundred tables,
Annius uses pageboys in their place.
The platters run right past; the dishes speed.
You fine lords, keep such banquets for yourselves:
a walking dinner puts me off my feed.
7.62
With doors ajar, you sodomize big youths
and would be caught, Hamillus, doing so,
lest freedmen, family slaves, and envious clients
gossip and carry stories. He who’d show
he isn’t sodomized does otherwise—
and often—when he’s sure there are no spies.
7.70
You dyke of dykes, Philaenis, rightly you
call that girl your “girlfriend” whom you screw.
7.75
You want free fucks, though you’re a hag and hideous.
You want to play and not to pay? Ridiculous!
7.76
If powerful men—at banquets, porticoes,
and plays—compete to have you by their side;
if every time they meet you, they’re delighted
to offer you a hot bath or a ride;
don’t get too vain about it, Philomusus.
They love not you, but pleasure you provide.
7.77
You demand my books as gifts. I won’t concede them.
Tucca, you want to sell them, not to read them.
7.78
One lizardfish tail, salt-cured, Papylus,
and oiled beans, if you’re dining well, are placed
before you. You send udder, mushrooms, oysters,
mullet, hare, boar. You’ve neither sense nor taste.
7.79
I just drank consular wine. You ask, Severus,
how old and generous it was? The wine
had been laid down when Priscus was the consul—
the very man with whom I’d come to dine.
7.81
“In this book, thirty poems are bad,” you state.
Lausus, if thirty are good, the book is great.
7.83
Circling Lupercus’ face, Eutrapelus cleared
his cheeks—while yet another beard appeared.
7.85
Sabellus, that you write some witty quatrains
and craft some couplets well earns my regard,
but no surprise. To write good epigrams
is easy, but to write a book is hard.
7.89
Go, lucky rose, and crown with your soft garland
my dear Appolinaris’ locks—and do
not fail to bind them when they’re white, years later.
For that, may Venus always cherish you.
7.90
Matho alleges that my book’s uneven.
He compliments my poems, if that’s true.
Calvinus and Umber write consistent books.
Consistent books are lousy through and through.
7.91
Eloquent Juvenal, look, I send you nuts
for the Saturnalia, from my small plot’s stock.
Its guardian god bestowed the rest of the crop
on wanton girls, to sate his lustful cock.
7.92
Twice or thrice daily, Baccara, you tell me,
“You know you needn’t ask, whatever you need.”
Surly Secundus duns me in harsh tones:
you hear it, and you don’t know what I need.
My rent’s sought, in your presence, loud and clear:
you hear it, and you don’t know what I need.
I grumble that my cloak is worn and chilly:
you hear it, and you don’t know what I need.
Here’s what I need: a star to strike you mute,
so that you can’t repeat “whatever you need.”
7.94
; Once perfume, while the onyx vial held it,
it’s fish sauce now that Papylus has smelled it.
Book Eight
8.1
Book, as you enter Caesar’s laureled dwelling,
learn to speak chastely and more bashfully.
Begone, nude Venus! This book’s not for you.
May you, Caesar’s Minerva, come to me.
8.5
By giving rings to girls, you lost the right,
Macer, to own the gold ring of a knight.
8.10
Buying a first-rate purple cloak
for ten grand, Bassus made
a profit. “Was it such a bargain?”
No—he never paid.
8.12
You ask why I don’t want a wealthy wife?
To be her wife is more than I could bear.
A wife should be below her husband, Priscus,
for man and wife to be a well-matched pair.
8.13
Gargilianus, return my cash! I bought
your so-called fool for twenty grand. He’s not.
8.14
So your Cilician fruit trees won’t turn pale
in fear of winter, nor harsh breezes bite
your tender grove, glass panes block cold south winds,
admitting clear sun and unsullied light.
I get a room whose window’s stuck ajar,
where Boreas himself could get no rest.
You’d have an old friend lodge like this, you brute?
I’d be more sheltered as your orchard’s guest.
8.16
You were a baker long before;
Cyperus, you’re a lawyer now.
Each year you earn two hundred thou,
but spend it all and borrow more.
You’re still a baker now, although
you’re making flour out of dough.
8.17
I pled your case for two grand, as agreed,
so, Sextus, what’s this paltry thousand for?
“You didn’t state the facts, and you lost the case.”
I blushed, though, so for that you owe me more.
8.18
Cerrinius, if your epigrams were published,
you’d be my peer or even better known.
Yet such is your respect for an old friend,
you cherish my renown beyond your own.
So Vergil did not try the odes of Horace,
though in Pindaric measures he’d have shone;
he yielded fame for tragedy to Varius,
though he could better voice the tragic tone.
A friend will often give gold, wealth, and ground;
one who will yield in talent’s rarely found.
8.19
Cinna, who makes a show of poverty,
is just as poor as he pretends to be.
8.20
You write two hundred lines a day, but don’t recite.
Varus, you are wise, if none too bright.
8.22
You invite me for boar, but pork is what I’m fed.
I’m a hybrid, Gallicus, if I’m misled.
8.23
Because I beat my cook for spoiling dinner,
you think I’m picky, Rusticus, and rash.
If that seems insufficient cause for whipping,
for what, then, does a cook deserve the lash?
8.25
When I was quite ill, you called just once on me.
I’ll visit, Oppianus, frequently.
8.27
Gaurus, you’re old and rich. Those who stop by
with gifts (could you but know) are saying “Die.”
8.29
A couplet writer tries to please by terseness.
What good is brevity in a book of verses?
8.31
Dento, when you, who have a wife, petition
for rights reserved for men who’ve fathered three,
you’re making an unsavory admission.
Go home. Stop tiring Caesar with your plea.
While searching, long and far from the wife you spurn,
for three kids, you’ll find four on your return.
8.35
You lead such matching, equal lives—
the worst of husbands, worst of wives—
that it’s a mystery to me
why you aren’t suited perfectly.
8.40
Priapus, you guard not plots or vines,
but the sparse grove where you were born
and can be born again. Keep out
thieves’ hands and save the copse, I warn,
for its master’s fireplace: if it should
run short, you too are made of wood.
8.41
“Downhearted, Athenagoras hasn’t sent us
midwinter gifts as usual.” I’ll see
whether he’s gloomy later on, Faustinus.
One thing is certain: he has saddened me.
8.43
Chrestilla buries husbands; Fabius, wives.
Each waves the funeral torch at the marriage bed.
Pair up the winners, Venus. The result
will be that both will share a bier instead.
8.47
Part of your jaws is clipped, part shaved instead,
part plucked. Who’d think it’s all a single head?
8.51
Though Asper’s love, no doubt, is shaped to please,
he’s blind. He loves, in truth, more than he sees.
8.54
Loveliest of all girls who were or are,
of all who were or are, you’re most debased.
Catulla, how I wish you would become
less beautiful or—failing that—more chaste.
8.56
You often give great gifts and will give greater,
outdoing yourself and other leaders, too,
but people don’t adore you for your bounty:
Caesar, they love your gifts because of you.
8.60
You’d match Nero’s Colossus if you might
take eighteen inches, Claudia, from your height.
8.61
Charinus turns green with envy, bursts, fumes, cries,
and seeks to hang himself from a high bough,
not that I’m read throughout the world, nor that,
adorned with bosses and cedar oil, I’m now
spread through all nations Rome controls, but that
I own a rural summer home near town
and ride my mules, not rented ones, today.
What curse on him, Severus, should I call down?
May he own mules and a place near town, I pray.
8.62
Though Picens writes verses on backs of sheets, it galls him
that Phoebus turns his back while Picens scrawls them.
8.69
Vacerra, you admire the ancients only
and praise no poets but those here no more.
I beg that you will pardon me, Vacerra,
but pleasing you is not worth dying for.
8.76
“Tell me the truth, please, Marcus,” you implore.
“Nothing could be more welcome to my ear.”
Whenever you recite your books or plead
a client’s case, you’d have me be sincere.
It’s hard for me to turn down your request.
So, Gallicus, hear this truth, loud and clear:
the truth is not what you desire to hear.
8.77
Liber, beloved by friends, worthy of living
crowned with eternal roses, if you’re clever,
let your hair glisten with Assyrian scent
and floral garlands deck your head forever.
Let old Falernian darken your clear crystal,
a charming lover warm your downy bed.
Who’s lived thus, though he die in middle age,
has stretched his life beyond its granted thread.
8.79
All of your friends are ancient hags
or eyesores uglier than those.
These are the company you drag
to banquets, plays, and porticoes.
Fabulla, when you’re seen among
such friends, you’re beautiful and young.
Book Nine
9.4
Since Galla can be fucked for two gold coins,
and sodomized for merely twice that sum,
why, Aeschylus, does she get ten from you?
She sucks for less. For what, then? Staying mum.
9.6
Since your return from Libya, five days straight
I sought to greet you, Afer. On each try,
I’m told “He’s busy,” “He’s asleep.” Enough!
You don’t want greetings, Afer? Then goodbye.