Complete Works of Catullus

by Catullus

I HOPED, Gellius, that you would be true to me in this miserable, this ruinous love of mine, not on the ground that I knew you, or thought that you were truly honourable or could restrain your mind from baseness or villainy, but because I saw that she, whose mighty love was consuming me, was neither mother nor sister of yours. And although I was connected with you by much familiar friendship, I had not thought that that was reason enough for you. You thought it enough: so much delight do you take in any vice in which there is something of dishonour.

  XCII

  LESBIA always speaks ill of me, and is always talking about me. May I perish if Lesbia does not love me. By what token? because it is just the same with me. I am perpetually crying out upon her, but may I perish if I do not love her.

  XCIII

  I HAVE no very great desire to make myself agreeable to you, Caesar, nor to know whether your complexion is light or dark.

  XCIV

  ROGER plays the gallant: say you so in truth? Sure enough this is the proverb, the pot finds its own herbs.

  XCV

  MY friend Cinna’s Smyrna, published at last nine harvest-tides and nine winters after it was begun, whilst Hortensius [has brought out] five hundred thousand [verses] in one [year].

  Smyrna will travel as far away as the deep-channelled streams of Satrachus. But the Annals of Volusius will die by the river Padua where they were born, and will often furnish a loose wrapper for mackerels. Let the modest memorials of my friend be dear to me, and let the vulgar rejoice in their windy Antimachus.

  XCVI

  IF the silent grave can receive any pleasure, or sweetness at all from our grief, Calvus, the grief and regret with which we make our old loves live again, and weep for long-lost friendships, surely Quintilia feels less sorrow for her too early death, than pleasure from your love.

  XCVII

  I SWEAR I didn’t think it mattered one straw whether I sniffed Aemilius’s head or his tail: neither was better or worse than t’other; or rather his tail was the better and smarter of the two, for it has no teeth. His mouth has teeth half a yard long, gums, moreover, like an old cart-frame, gaping like a mule in summer. He courts many a woman and makes himself out a charmer, and yet he is not passed over to the grinding-mill and its ass. If any woman touches him, don’t we think that she is capable of fondling a sick hangman?

  XCVIII

  You if any man, disgusting Victius, deserve what is said about chatterboxes and idiots. With a tongue like that, given the chance you might lick a rustic’s clogs. If you wish to destroy us all utterly, Victius, just utter a syllable: you’ll utterly do what you wish.

  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; 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.... 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

  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! 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

  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! 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

  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

  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

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

  CV

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

  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

  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, 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

  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

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

  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. 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

  AUFILENA, to live content with one her husband and no other husband is a glory for brides one of the most excellent: but ’tis better to be company for every one, than that a mother with an uncle should conceive brothers.

  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

  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

  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. 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

  MENTULA has something like thirty acres of grazing land, forty of plough-land: the rest is salt water. How can he fail to surpass Croesus in wealth, who occupies so many good things i
n one estate, pasture, arable, vast woods and cattle-ranges and lakes as far as the Hyperboreans and the Great Sea? 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

  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. 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

  1. But you shall not escape my iambics.

  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.

  3. It is my fancy to taste on my own account.

  4. And Comum built on the shore of Lake Larius.

  5. With which shines the bright top of the mast.

  VERSE TRANSLATION

  Translated by Robinson Ellis

  CONTENTS

  PREFACE.

  I.

  II.

  III.

  IV.

  V.

  VI.

  VII.

  VIII.

  IX.

  X.

  XI.

  XII.

  XIII.

  XIV.

  XIVB.

  XV.

  XVI.

  XVII.

  XXI.

  XXII.

  XXIII.

  XXIV.

  XXV.

  XXVI.

  XXVII.

  XXVIII.

  XXIX.

  XXX.

  XXXI.

  XXXII.

  XXXIII.

  XXXIV.

  XXXV.

  XXXVI.

  XXXVII.

  XXXVIII.

  XXXIX.

  XL.

  XLI.

  XLII.

  XLIII.

  XLIV.

  XLV.

  XLVI.

  XLVII.

  XLVIII.

  XLIX.

  L.

  LI.

  LII.

  LIII.

  LIV.

  LV.

  LVII.

  LVIII.

  LIX.

  LX.

  LXI.

  LXII.

  LXIII.

  LXIV.

  LXV.

  LXVI.

  LXVII.

  LXVIII.

  LXIX.

  LXX.

  LXXII.

  LXXIII.

  LXXIV.

  LXXVIII.

  LXXIX.

  LXXXI.

  LXXXII.

  LXXXIII.

  LXXXIV.

  LXXXV.

  LXXXVI.

  LXXVI.

  LXXVII.

  LXXXVIII.

  LXXXIX.

  XC.

  XCI.

  XCII.

  XCIII.

  XCIV.

  XCV.

  XCVI.

  XCVIII.

  XCIX.

  C.

  CI.

  CII.

  CIII.

  CIV.

  CV.

  CVI.

  CVII.

  CVIII.

  CIX.

  CX.

  CXI.

  CXII.

  CXIII.

  CXIV.

  CXV.

  CXVI.

  FRAGMENTS.

  II.

  IV.

  V.

  THE

  POEMS AND FRAGMENTS

  OF

  CATULLUS,

  TRANSLATED IN THE METRES OF THE ORIGINAL

  BY

  ROBINSON ELLIS,

  FELLOW OF TRINITY COLLEGE, OXFORD,

  PROFESSOR OF LATIN IN UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, LONDON.

  LONDON:

  JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET.

  1871.

  LONDON:

  BRADBURY, EVANS, AND CO., PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.

  TO ALFRED TENNYSON.

  PREFACE.

  The idea of translating Catullus in the original metres adopted by the poet himself was suggested to me many years ago by the admirable, though, in England, insufficiently known, version of Theodor Heyse (Berlin, 1855). My first attempts were modelled upon him, and were so unsuccessful that I dropt the idea for some time altogether. In 1868, the year following the publication of my larger critical edition[A] of Catullus, I again took up the experiment, and translated into English glyconics the first Hymenaeal, Collis o Heliconici. Tennyson’s Alcaics and Hendecasyllables had appeared in the interval, and had suggested to me the new principle on which I was to go to work. It was not sufficient to reproduce the ancient metres, unless the ancient quantity was reproduced also. Almost all the modern writers of classical metre had contented themselves with making an accented syllable long, an unaccented short; the most familiar specimens of hexameter, Longfellow’s Evangeline and Clough’s Bothie of Tober-na-Vuolich and Amours de Voyage were written on this principle, and, as a rule, stopped there. They almost invariably disregarded position, perhaps the most important element of quantity. In the first line of Evangeline —

  This is the forest primeval, the murmuring pines and the hemlocks,

  there are no less than five violations of position, to say nothing of the shortening of a syllable so distinctly long as the i in primeval. Mr. Swinburne, in his Sapphics and Hendecasyllables, while writing on a manifestly artistic conception of those metres, and, in my judgment, proving their possibility for modern purposes by the superior rhythmical effect which a classically trained ear enabled him to make in handling them, neglects position as a rule, though his nice sense of metre leads him at times to observe it, and uniformly rejects any approach to the harsh combinations indulged in by other writers. The nearest approach to quantitative hexameters with which I am acquainted in modern English writers is the Andromeda of Mr. Kingsley, a poem which has produced little effect, but is interesting as a step to what may fairly be called a new development of the metre. For the experiments of the Elizabethan writers, Sir Philip Sidney and others, by that strange perversity which so often dominates literature, were as decidedly unsuccessful from an accentual, as the modern experiments from a quantitative point of view. Sir Philip Sidney has given in his Arcadia specimens of hexameters, elegiacs, sapphics, asclepiads, anacreontics, hendecasyllables. The following elegiacs will serve as a sample.

  Unto a caitif wretch, whom long affliction holdeth,

  And now fully believ’s help to bee quite perished;

  Grant yet, grant yet a look, to the last moment of his anguish,

  O you (alas so I finde) caus of his onely ruine:

  Dread not awhit (O goodly cruel) that pitie may enter

  Into thy heart by the sight of this Epistle I send:

  And so refuse to behold of these strange wounds the recitall,

  Lest it might m’ allure home to thyself to return.

  In these the classical laws of position are most carefully observed; every dactyl ending in a consonant is followed by a word beginning with a vowel or h — afflīctĭŏn holdeth, momēnt ŏf hĭs anguish, caūse ŏf hĭs onely; affliction wasteth, moment of his dolour, cause of his dreary, would have been as impossible to Sir Philip Sidney as moērŏr tĕnebat, momēntă pĕr curae, caūsă vĕl sola in a Latin writer of hexameters. Similarly where the dactyl is incided after the second syllable, the third syllable beginning a new word, the utmost care is taken that that word shall begin not only with a syllable essentially short, but, when the second syllable ends in a consonant, with a vowel: ōf thĭs ĕpistle, but not ōf thĭs dĭsaster, still less ōf thĭs dĭrection. The other element of quantity is less rigidly defined; for (1) syllab
les strictly long, as I, thy, so, are allowed to be short; (2) syllables made long by the accent falling upon them are in some cases shortened, as rŭīne, pĕrĭshēd, crŭēl; (3) syllables which the absence of the accent only allows to be long in thesi, are, in virtue of the classical laws of position, permitted to rank as long elsewhere — momēnt of his, ōf this epistle. It needs little reflection to see that it is to one or other of these three peculiarities that the failure of the Elizabethan writers of classical metres must be ascribed. Pentameters like

  Gratefulness, sweetness, holy love, hearty regard,

  That the delights of life shall be to him dolorous,

  And even in that love shall I reserve him a spite;

  sapphics like

  Are then humane mindes privileg’d so meanly

  As that hateful death can abridg them of power

  With the vow of truth to record to all worlds

  That we bee her spoils?

  hexameters like

  Fīre nŏ lĭquor can cool: Neptūne’s reālm would not avail us.

  Nurs inwārd mălădiēs, which have not scope to bee breath’d out.

  Oh nŏ nŏ, worthie shephērd, worth cān never enter a title;

  are too alien from ordinary pronunciation to please either an average reader or a classically trained student. The same may be said of the translation into English hexameters of the two first Eclogues of Virgil, appended by William Webbe to his Discourse of English Poetrie (1586, recently reprinted by Mr. Arber). Here is his version of Ecl. I., 1-10.

  MELIBAEUS.

  Tityrus, happilie then lyste tumbling under a beech tree,

  All in a fine oate pipe these sweete songs lustilie chaunting: