To whom do I give this charming new little book, just now polished up with dry pumice? To you, Cornelius; for you used to think my trifles were something, even back then, when you alone of Italians dared to unfold all the ages in three scrolls — learned ones, by Jupiter, and laborious! So keep for yourself this bit of a book, whatever it is, such as it is; and may it, O patron Maiden, last on, perennial, more than a single lifetime.

Sparrow, my girl’s darling, whom she plays with, whom she holds in her lap, to whose pecking she offers a fingertip and provokes its sharp bites, when it pleases my bright longing to make some dear little game — a small solace, I think, for her ache, so the heavy ardor in her quiets — if only I could play with you as she does and lighten the sad cares of my heart! It is as welcome to me as they say the golden apple was to the swift-footed girl, which loosed the girdle bound so long.

Mourn, O Venuses and Cupids, and every one of you of more grace among men! My girl’s sparrow is dead — the sparrow, my girl’s darling, whom she loved more than her own eyes; for he was honey-sweet, and knew his mistress as surely as a girl knows her own mother, nor would he stir from her lap, but hopping around, now here, now there, he would chirp on, to his mistress alone. Now he goes along the road of shadow to that place from which they say none returns. But a curse on you, evil shadows of Orcus, that devour every pretty thing — you have taken so pretty a sparrow from me. O cruelly done! O poor little sparrow! It is your doing that now my girl’s swollen little eyes are red with weeping.

That little yacht you see there, my guests, says she was once the swiftest of vessels, and that the surge of no swimming timber she could not overtake, whether the need was to fly by oar-blades or by canvas. And this, she says, the shore of the menacing Adriatic does not deny, nor the Cycladic isles, nor noble Rhodes, nor the bristling Thracian Propontis, nor the brutal Pontic gulf, where she, the later yacht, was earlier a leafy wood: for on the ridge of Cytorus she often gave out a hiss with talking foliage. Pontic Amastris and box-bearing Cytorus, to you these things were and are best known, the yacht declares; from her earliest beginning she stood, she says, upon your summit, dipped her oar-blades first in your waters, and from there, through so many headstrong straits, carried her master, whether the breeze called from the left hand or the right, or whether Jupiter fell favorable on both sheets at once; and that no vows to the gods of the shore were ever made for her, as she came from the sea at the very last to this clear lake. But these things were before: now, laid away, she grows old in quiet, and dedicates herself to you, twin Castor and twin of Castor.

Let us live, my Lesbia, and let us love, and the mutterings of stern old men let us reckon, all of them, at a single penny. Suns can go down and come back again: for us, once the brief light has gone down, there is one unbroken night to be slept through. Give me a thousand kisses, then a hundred, then another thousand, then a second hundred, then yet another thousand, then a hundred, then, when we have made up many thousands, we will shake them into confusion, so we lose the count, so no one wicked can envy us when he knows how great the sum of kisses is.

Flavius, your sweetheart — unless she were witless and graceless — you would want to tell Catullus of, and could not keep silent. But it is some feverish whore you love: that is what shames you to confess. For that you do not lie through widowed nights your bed cries out, vainly mute, fragrant with garlands and Syrian oil, and the cushion dented evenly on this side and that, and the shaken creak and the pacing of the rattled, trembling couch. For it is no use, none, to hush your whoring. Why? You would not flaunt such fucked-out flanks unless you were busy at something foolish. So whatever you have, of good or bad, tell us: I want to call you and your love up to the sky in charming verse.

You ask how many of your kissings, Lesbia, are enough and more for me. As great as the number of the Libyan sand that lies in silphium-bearing Cyrene, between the oracle of sweltering Jove and the sacred tomb of old Battus, or as many as the stars, when night is silent, that look on the stolen loves of men — to kiss you with kisses that many is enough and more for your mad Catullus, kisses no busybody could tally up, nor an evil tongue bewitch.

Wretched Catullus, stop playing the fool, and what you see has perished, count as lost. Once the suns shone bright for you, when you kept coming where the girl led, loved by us as no girl will be loved. There, then, those many playful things were done that you wanted and the girl did not refuse. Truly the suns shone bright for you. Now she wants no more: you too, powerless one, want no more, do not chase what flees, do not live wretched, but with a set mind hold out, harden. Goodbye, girl! Now Catullus hardens, he will not seek you out, will not ask you against your will. But you will grieve, when you are asked by no one. Damned woman, pity you! What life is left for you! Who will come to you now? To whom will you seem lovely? Whom will you love now? Whose will you be called? Whom will you kiss? Whose lips will you bite? But you, Catullus, resolved, hold hard.

Veranius, foremost of all my friends — yes, ahead of three hundred thousand to me — have you come home to your household gods, your like-minded brothers and your aged mother? You have come! O happy news for me! I shall see you safe, and hear you tell of the places, the deeds, the peoples of the Iberians, as is your way, and leaning to your neck I shall kiss your dear mouth and eyes. O, of all there is of happier men, who is gladder or more blessed than I?

Varus had taken me, idle from the Forum, to see his love — a little tart, as she seemed to me at first glance, by no means without charm or grace. When we came there, various talk fell upon us, and among it, what Bithynia was now like, how it was faring, whether it had done me any good in cash. I answered the truth: that there was nothing for the people themselves, nor the praetors, nor the staff, why anyone should come back with a sleeker head — especially men whose praetor was a face-fucker and did not care a hair for his cohort. "But surely, even so," they say, "you got what they say is bred there — men for the litter." I, to make myself out to the girl the one luckier than the rest, say, "It did not go so meanly with me that, though a bad province fell to my lot, I could not lay hold of eight straight men." But I had not one, here or there, who could heave onto his neck the broken leg of an old camp-bed. At this she, as suited the slut, says, "Lend me, my dear Catullus, those men a little: I want to be carried to the temple of Serapis." "Wait," I say to the girl, "what I just said I had — my reckoning slipped: my comrade, Gaius Cinna — he got them for himself. But whether his or mine, what is it to me? I use them as well as if I’d got them. But you live tasteless and a thorough nuisance, the kind by whom one is never let off his guard."

Furius and Aurelius, companions of Catullus, whether he will press to the farthest Indians, where the shore is beaten by the far-resounding eastern wave, or among the Hyrcanians or the soft Arabs, or the Sacae or the arrow-bearing Parthians, or the waters that the sevenfold Nile stains with its color, or whether he will stride across the high Alps to look on the monuments of great Caesar, the Gallic Rhine, that bristling water, and the far- off Britons — ready as you are to brave all these with him, whatever the will of the gods above may bring, carry to my girl a few words, and not kind ones. Let her live and fare well with her adulterers, three hundred of them she holds at once in her embrace, loving none truly, but again and again bursting the loins of them all; and let her not look back, as before, for my love, which by her fault has fallen, like a flower at the meadow’s edge, after the passing plow has touched it.

Marrucinus Asinius, that left hand of yours you do not use prettily, amid the jokes and the wine: you lift the napkins of people off their guard. You think this is witty? You’re wrong, you fool! The thing is as sordid as it is graceless. You don’t believe me? Believe Pollio, your brother, who would gladly have your thefts bought off, even for a talent; for he is a boy fluent in charm and clever turns. So either look out for three hundred hendecasyllables, or send me back my napkin — which moves me not by its market value, but is a keepsake of my comrade. For Saetaban cloths from the Iberians Fabullus and Veranius sent me as a gift: these I must love, both my little Veranius and Fabullus.

You will dine well at my house, my Fabullus, in a few days, if the gods are kind to you, if you bring with you a good and ample dinner — and not without a fair girl and wine and wit and every kind of laughter. If, I say, you bring these, my charming friend, you will dine well; for your Catullus’s little purse is full of cobwebs. But in return you will get pure love, or whatever is sweeter or more elegant: for I will give you a perfume that the Venuses and Cupids gave to my girl, and when you smell it, you will beg the gods to make you, Fabullus, all nose.

Were I not to love you more than my own eyes, my most delightful Calvus, for that gift I would hate you with a Vatinian hatred: for what have I done, or what have I said, that you should kill me off with so many poets? May the gods send many evils on that client who sent you such a heap of the impious. But if, as I suspect, this fresh, ingenious gift is given you by Sulla the schoolmaster, then it is not bad for me, but well and blessed, that your labors do not go to waste. Great gods, a horrible, accursed little book! And this, of course, you sent to your Catullus, so he might die at once, on that very day, at the Saturnalia, the best of days! No, no, this will not get off so, you trickster: for, when day breaks, I will run to the booksellers’ cases, gather up the Caesii, the Aquinii, Suffenus, all the poisons, and pay you back with these tortures. Meanwhile, you here — goodbye, be off, back there where you brought your wretched foot from, plagues of the age, you worst of poets.

If by chance there shall be any of you readers of my foolish trifles, and you do not shrink from laying your hands on us —

I commend myself to you, and my love, Aurelius. I ask a modest favor: if ever in your heart you have desired a thing you sought chaste and untouched, keep this boy for me, decently — not, I mean, from the crowd: I have no fear of those who pass in the street, now this way, now that, busy, taken up with their own affairs; no, it is you I dread, you and your prick, a menace to good boys and bad alike. Set it going wherever you please, however you please, as much as you like, when it is rigged and ready outdoors: this one alone I except, decently, I think. But if an evil mind and a senseless frenzy drive you, you criminal, to so great a crime that you harass my person with your snares, ah then — wretched, ill-fated you, whom, with feet hauled back and the door wide open, radishes and mullets will run through.

I’ll sodomize you and I’ll face-fuck you, Aurelius the pathic and Furius the catamite, who, from my little verses, because they are soft, have judged me hardly decent. For it befits the devoted poet himself to be chaste; his little verses need not be — which only then, in the end, have salt and charm if they are soft and hardly decent, and can stir up what itches — not in boys, I mean, but in these hairy men who cannot move their stiff loins. Because you read of many thousands of kisses, do you think me less a man? I’ll sodomize you and I’ll face-fuck you.

O Colonia, you that long to revel on a long bridge, and stand ready to dance — but you fear the unfit legs of the little bridge propped on resurrected planks, lest it go flat on its back and lie down in the hollow marsh: so may a good bridge come to be for you, as you wish, one on which even the rites of Salisubsilus might be taken up, grant me this gift, Colonia, of the greatest laughter. A certain townsman of mine I want, from your bridge, to go headlong into the mud, over head and heels, just there where, of the whole lake and the rotting marsh, the chasm is most livid and deepest of all. The man is an utter dolt, with no more sense than a child of two years, asleep in his father’s rocking arms: though married to a girl in the freshest flower (a girl daintier than a tender little kid, to be guarded more carefully than the blackest grapes), he lets her play as she likes, cares not a single hair, nor stirs on his own part, but lies like an alder felled in a ditch by a Ligurian axe, feeling everything just as much as if she were nowhere at all: this clod of mine sees nothing, hears nothing, what he himself is, whether he is or is not, that too he does not know. Now I want to pitch him headlong from your bridge, if it can suddenly rouse the stupid old sluggard and make him leave his dull spirit behind in the heavy mire, as a mule leaves an iron shoe in the clinging slough.

Aurelius, father of famishings — not these alone, but as many as ever were or are or will be in years to come — you want to bugger my love. And not in secret: for you’re at his side, you joke together, you cling to his flank and try everything. No use: for as you lay your snares against me I’ll get you first, with a face-fucking. And if you did it on a full belly, I’d say nothing: but as it is, this is just what galls me — that my boy will learn to starve and thirst. So stop, while you still decently can, or you’ll come to your finish — face-fucked.

That Suffenus, Varus, whom you know well, is a charming man, witty and urbane, and likewise makes by far the most verses. I reckon he has ten thousand or more written out in full, and not, as is the way, set down on a palimpsest: royal paper, new rolls, new bosses, straps, a red parchment wrapper, all ruled with lead and smoothed even with pumice. But when you read these, that elegant, urbane Suffenus seems instead a mere goatherd or ditch-digger: so much he jars and alters. What are we to make of this? The man who just now seemed a wit, or sharper than that at such things, turns out clumsier than the clumsy countryside the moment he lays hold of poetry — and yet never is he so happy as when he writes a poem: so he delights in himself, so he admires himself. No doubt we are all deceived the same way, and there is no one whom you could not, in some respect, see to be a Suffenus. To each is assigned his own failing; but we do not see the part of the pack that rides on our own back.

Furius, you who have no slave, no strongbox, no bedbug, no spider, no fire, but do have a father and a stepmother whose teeth could chew through even flint, you do beautifully with your father and with your father’s wooden wife. No wonder: for you are all in fine health, you digest beautifully, you fear nothing — no fires, no heavy collapses, no wicked thefts, no plots of poison, no other hazards of danger. And besides, you have bodies drier than horn, or than whatever is more parched still, with sun and cold and starving. So why should you not be well and blessed? From you sweat is absent, spittle is absent, the snot and foul rheum of the nose. To this cleanliness add a cleaner thing: that your asshole is purer than a saltcellar, and you shit not ten times in a whole year; and it is harder than bean and pebbles, so that if you rubbed and crumbled it in your hands, you could never dirty a finger. These advantages, so blessed, Furius, do not scorn, nor reckon of little worth, and stop praying, as you do, for your hundred thousand sesterces: you are blessed enough.

O you who are the little flower of the Juventii, not of these alone, but as many as ever were or hereafter shall be in other years, I would rather you had given the riches of Midas to that man who has no slave, no strongbox, than let yourself be loved by him this way. "What? Is he not a fine fellow?" you will say. He is: but this fine fellow has no slave, no strongbox. Brush this off and make light of it as you please: still, he has neither slave nor strongbox.

Thallus, you catamite, softer than a rabbit’s fur or goose-down or the lowest little earlobe or an old man’s limp prick and its cobwebbed mold, and yet, Thallus, greedier than a churning squall when she shows up the yawning women off their guard, give me back my cloak that you snatched, and my Saetaban napkin and the figured Bithynian cloths, you fool, which you parade in the open as if heirlooms. Now unglue them from your claws and send them back, lest the whips, branded shamefully on you, scribble over your woolly little flank and your soft little hands, and you toss as you are not used to, like a tiny ship caught on a great sea by a raving wind.

Furius, your little villa is set against no blast of the South Wind, nor the West, nor the savage North Wind or the East, but against fifteen thousand two hundred sesterces. O what a horrible and pestilent wind!

Boy server of the aged Falernian, pour me the more bitter cups, as the law of Postumia, our mistress of the revels, commands, she drunker than the drunken grape. But you, waters, be off from here wherever you please, you ruin of wine, and migrate to the puritans: here it is the unmixed god himself.

Companions of Piso, an empty cohort with your packs handy and light, best Veranius, and you, my Fabullus, how are things going with you? Have you had enough of cold and hunger with that good-for-nothing? Does any little gain show in your ledgers as money out — as it does for me, who, following my praetor, enter what I spent under "profit"? O Memmius, well and at length you laid me on my back and slowly face-fucked me with that whole beam of yours. But, as far as I can see, you met the same fate: for you were stuffed with a prick no smaller. Go seek out noble friends! But on you may the gods and goddesses send many evils, you disgraces to Romulus and Remus.

Who can look on this, who can endure it, unless he is shameless and a glutton and a gambler: that Mamurra should hold what long-haired Gaul once held, and farthest Britain? Romulus, you catamite, will you see this and bear it? And will he now, proud and overflowing, stroll through everyone’s bedrooms like a little white dove, or an Adonis? Romulus, you catamite, will you see this and bear it? You are shameless and a glutton and a gambler. Was it for this name, peerless commander, that you were on the farthest island of the West, so that this fucked-out prick of yours might eat through twenty millions, or thirty? What is misguided generosity, if not this? Has he squandered too little, or guzzled too little? First his father’s goods were ripped through; the second plunder was the Pontic; then the third the Iberian, which the gold-bearing Tagus knows. Now Gaul and Britain fear for theirs. Why do you cherish this evil? Or what can he do but devour fat patrimonies? Was it for this name, O most opulent of the city, father-in-law and son-in-law, that you have ruined everything?

Alfenus, forgetful and false to friends of one mind, have you now no pity, hard man, for your sweet little comrade? Now you do not hesitate to betray me, to deceive me, traitor? The impious deeds of treacherous men do not please the gods; you ignore that, and abandon me, wretched, in my troubles. Alas, tell me, what are men to do, in whom are they to trust? You, surely — unjust man — bade me hand over my soul, leading me into love, as if all were safe for me. Now the same man draws back, and lets all your words and deeds be carried off, void, by the winds and the airy mists. If you have forgotten, yet the gods remember, Faith remembers, who will yet make you repent of your deed hereafter.

Sirmio, jewel of peninsulas and islands, of all that either Neptune bears on clear standing pools and the vast sea, how gladly and how happily I look on you again, scarcely believing myself that I have left Thynia and the Bithynian plains and see you safe! O what is more blessed than cares set loose, when the mind lays down its burden, and worn out by foreign toil we come home to our own hearth and rest in the bed we longed for? This is the one thing worth such great labors. Hail, lovely Sirmio, and rejoice in your master; and rejoice, you waters of the Lydian lake; laugh out, every laugh you have at home.

Please, my sweet Ipsithilla, my darling, my delight, bid me come to you for the noon siesta. And if you bid it, grant this too: let no one bolt the panel of your door, and don’t take it into your head to go out; but stay at home and make ready for us nine fucks, one after another. But if you mean to, give the word at once: for I lie here lunched and full, flat on my back, poking up through tunic and cloak.

O best of bath-house thieves, Vibennius the father, and you, his catamite son (for the father has the filthier right hand, the son the greedier arse) — why not be off into exile, to some wicked shore, since the father’s robberies are known to the people, and you, son, cannot sell your hairy buttocks for a penny?

We are in Diana’s keeping, unspoiled girls and boys; of Diana, unspoiled boys and girls, let us sing. O daughter of Latona, great offspring of greatest Jove, whom your mother set down beside the Delian olive, that you might be mistress of the mountains and the greening woods and the secluded glades and the sounding rivers: you are called Lucina-Juno by women in the pains of childbirth, you are called powerful Trivia, and Luna, with your borrowed light. You, goddess, measuring by your monthly course the journey of the year, fill the farmer’s country house with good harvests. Be hallowed by whatever name you please, and as of old you were wont, keep safe with your good help the people of Romulus.

Papyrus, I would have you tell the tender poet, my friend Caecilius, to come to Verona, leaving behind the walls of New Comum and the Larian shore: for I want him to take in certain thoughts of a friend of his and mine. So, if he is wise, he will devour the road, though a radiant girl call him back a thousand times as he goes, and, throwing both arms about his neck, beg him to linger — she who now, if I am told the truth, is dying for him with helpless love: for from the hour she read his unfinished Mistress of Dindymus, ever since, the fires have eaten the poor girl’s inmost marrow. I forgive you, girl more learned than the Sapphic Muse: for charmingly is the Great Mother begun by Caecilius.

Annals of Volusius, shat-on paper, discharge a vow on my girl’s behalf: for she vowed to holy Venus and to Cupid that if I were given back to her and stopped brandishing my savage iambics, she would give the choicest writings of the worst of poets to the slow-footed god, to be burned on ill-omened wood. And the worst of girls saw she was vowing this to the gods wittily and charmingly. Now, O you born of the blue sea, who haunt holy Idalium and open Urii, who dwell in Ancona and reedy Cnidus, in Amathus and in Golgi, and in Dyrrachium, the tavern of the Adriatic — record the vow received and discharged, if it is not graceless or unlovely. And meanwhile, into the fire with you, you load of boorishness and clumsiness, Annals of Volusius, shat-on paper.

Lecherous tavern, and you, its regulars, ninth pillar from the brothers in the felt caps — do you think you alone have pricks, that you alone are licensed to fuck every girl there is, and reckon the rest of us goats? Or, because you sit in a row, a hundred or two hundred dolts, do you think I won’t dare to face-fuck the whole two hundred of you where you sit? Think it, then: for I’ll scrawl the front of the whole tavern over with cocks. For my girl, who has fled my embrace, loved as much as no woman will ever be loved, for whom great wars have been fought by me, has set herself up there. Her you all love, you fine and prosperous men — and indeed, the shame of it, all you petty back-alley adulterers; you above all, you one among the long-haired, son of rabbit-ridden Celtiberia, Egnatius, whom a shadowy beard makes handsome, and teeth scrubbed with Iberian piss.

It goes badly, Cornificius, with your Catullus, badly, by Hercules, and wearisomely, and more and more by the day and the hour. And you — with what word of comfort, the smallest and easiest thing — have you consoled him? I am angry at you. Is this how you treat my love? Just a little word of comfort, any you like, sadder than the tears of Simonides.

Egnatius, because he has white teeth, grins everywhere, without stop. If the bench is reached at a trial, when the pleader stirs up weeping, he grins. If there is mourning at the pyre of a devoted son, when the bereft mother weeps for her only boy, he grins. Whatever it is, wherever he is, whatever he does, he grins. He has this disease, neither elegant, I think, nor urbane. So I must give you warning, my good Egnatius. If you were a Roman, or a Sabine, or a man of Tibur, or a thrifty Umbrian, or a fat Etruscan, or a Lanuvine, swarthy and big-toothed, or a Transpadane — to touch on my own people too — or anyone you like who cleans his teeth properly, still I would not want you grinning everywhere; for there is nothing sillier than a silly laugh. As it is, you are a Celtiberian: and in the Celtiberian land, whatever each man has pissed, with that he is wont in the morning to scrub his teeth and his red gums, so that the more polished those teeth of yours are, the more piss you proclaim yourself to have drunk.

What ill intent, poor little Ravidus, drives you headlong into my iambics? What god, ill invoked by you, is set to stir up a senseless quarrel? Is it to come into the mouths of the crowd? What do you want? You wish to be known on any terms? You shall be — since you have chosen to love my love at the price of a long penalty.

Ameana, that fucked-out girl, demanded ten thousand whole from me — that girl with the ugly little nose, the mistress of the bankrupt of Formiae. You relatives who have the girl in your care, call in her friends and her doctors: the girl is not well, and she’s not in the habit of asking the image-filled bronze what she looks like.

Come, hendecasyllables, all of you, from every side, however many, all of you. A filthy adulteress takes me for a joke and refuses to give me back your writing-tablets — if you can stand for that. Let us go after her and dun them out of her. You ask which one? That one you see strutting in her ugly way, laughing like an actress, hideously, with the muzzle of a Gallic puppy. Surround her, and dun her again: "Rotten adulteress, give back the tablets, give them back, rotten adulteress, the tablets!" You don’t care a penny? O filth, O brothel, or whatever more depraved a thing you can be! But still this must not be thought enough. And if nothing else will do, let us at least squeeze a blush from the bitch’s brazen face. Shout out again, in a louder voice: "Rotten adulteress, give back the tablets, give them back, rotten adulteress, the tablets!" But we get nowhere; nothing moves her. We must change our method and our manner, if you can make any further progress: "Chaste and upright lady, give back the tablets."

Greetings, girl with no small nose, no pretty foot, no dark eyes, no long fingers, no dry mouth, and certainly no over-elegant tongue, mistress of the bankrupt of Formiae. Is it you the Province calls beautiful? Is it with you our Lesbia is compared? O tasteless and witless age!

O farm of mine, whether Sabine or Tiburtine (for those who don’t care to wound Catullus declare you Tiburtine; but those who do will bet anything you’re Sabine) — but whether Sabine or, more truly, Tiburtine, I was glad to be at your suburban villa, and coughed the bad cough out of my chest, which my belly gave me — and I deserved it — while I hankered after lavish dinners. For, wanting to be a guest of Sestius, I read his speech against the candidate Antius, full of poison and pestilence. At this a chill and constant cough shook me, heavy, until I fled into your bosom and cured myself with rest and nettle-broth. So, restored, I give you my greatest thanks, because you did not avenge my fault. And I make no plea now: if I ever take up Sestius’s wicked writings again, let their chill bring its cold and cough not to me but to Sestius himself, who invites me only when I’ve read his bad book.

Septimius, holding Acme, his love, in his lap, said: "My Acme, if I do not love you to desperation, and stand ready to go on loving you, year after year, as much as a man can to the utmost, then alone in Libya or sun-scorched India may I meet a grey-eyed lion face to face." As he said this, Love, as before on the left, sneezed approval on the right. But Acme, lightly bending back her head and kissing with that rosy mouth the swimming eyes of her sweet boy, said: "So, my life, my little Septimius, let us serve this one master always, for a far greater, fiercer fire burns for me in my soft marrow." As she said this, Love, as before on the left, sneezed approval on the right. Now, set out from a good omen, they love and are loved with mutual hearts. Poor little Septimius prefers Acme alone to whole Syrias and Britains; in Septimius alone faithful Acme takes her delights and her desires. Who has seen any people more blessed, who a more auspicious love?

Now spring brings back the thawing warmth, now the rage of the equinoctial sky falls silent in the kind breezes of Zephyr. Let the Phrygian plains be left behind, Catullus, and the rich field of sweltering Nicaea: let us fly to the bright cities of Asia. Now the mind, all aflutter, longs to roam, now the glad feet quicken with eagerness. Farewell, sweet gatherings of companions, who, setting out together far from home, are carried back by sundry, various roads.

Porcius and Socration, the two left hands of Piso, the world’s mange and famine — did that circumcised Priapus prefer you to my little Veranius and Fabullus? Do you throw lavish, costly banquets from early in the day, while my comrades must hunt the crossroads for an invitation?

Your honeyed eyes, Juventius, if someone would let me kiss and kiss, I would kiss three hundred thousand times, and never seem likely to be sated, not if the harvest of our kissing were thicker than the dry ears of grain.

Most eloquent of the grandsons of Romulus, of all that are and all that have been, Marcus Tullius, and all that will be in years to come, Catullus gives you his greatest thanks — Catullus, the worst poet of all, as much the worst poet of all as you are the best advocate of all.

Yesterday, Licinius, at our leisure we played long over my tablets, since we had agreed to be at our ease. Each of us, writing little verses, sported now in this meter, now in that, trading turns through joke and wine. And I came away from there afire with your charm, Licinius, and your wit, so that food gave no relief to my misery, nor did sleep cover my eyes with quiet, but wild, ungoverned, I tossed all over the bed longing to see the light of day, to talk with you and to be with you. But after my limbs, worn out with the effort, lay half-dead on the little couch, I made this poem for you, my delight, that from it you might make out my pain. Now don’t be reckless, and our prayers — I beg you — do not spurn them, my darling, lest Nemesis exact the penalty from you. She is a violent goddess: take care not to cross her.

He seems to me to be equal to a god, he, if it is right to say it, to surpass the gods, who sitting across from you, again and again, watches and hears you sweetly laughing — which tears away every sense from wretched me: for the moment I look on you, Lesbia, nothing is left to me; but my tongue grows numb, a thin flame seeps down through my limbs, with their own ringing my ears resound, and twin night covers my eyes. Idleness, Catullus, is your trouble: in idleness you riot and exult too much. Idleness has before now ruined both kings and prosperous cities.

What is it, Catullus? Why do you put off dying? Nonius the wen sits in the curule chair, Vatinius forswears himself by his consulship: what is it, Catullus? Why do you put off dying?

I laughed just now at someone in the crowd who, when my Calvus had marvelously laid out the charges against Vatinius, said in admiration, raising his hands: "Great gods, an eloquent little squirt!"

Otho’s head is exceedingly small, and Herius’s legs are boorish and half-washed; Libo’s fart is subtle and soft — if not all of these, I would want at least to displease you and Fuficius, that warmed-over old man. You will be angry again at my iambics, undeserving though they are, peerless commander.

I beg you, if it happens to be no trouble, show me where your dark hiding-place is. I have looked for you in the lesser Campus, in the Circus, in all the booksellers’ stalls, in the hallowed temple of highest Jove. In Magnus’s colonnade, my friend, I stopped all the little women I met — though their faces, I saw, stayed serene. "You there," I kept demanding of them, "give me my Camerius, you wretched girls!" One of them, baring her breast, said: "Look, here he hides between my rosy nipples." But to put up with you by now is a labor of Hercules: not if I were fashioned that guardian of Crete, not if I were borne on Pegasus’s flight, not as Ladas, or wing-footed Perseus, not as the snowy, swift team of Rhesus — add to these the feather-footed and the flying, and ask besides for the rush of the winds, and harness them all, Camerius, and give them to me: worn out even so to my inmost marrow and eaten through with many faintings, I would be, my friend, in searching you out. Do you deny yourself with so much pride, my friend? Tell us where you mean to be; out with it, boldly, risk it, trust it to the light. Do the milk-white girls hold you now? If you keep your tongue shut up in your mouth, you will throw away all the fruits of love: Venus delights in talk full of words. Or, if you like, you may bolt up your palate, so long as I have a share in your love.

O what a ridiculous thing, Cato, and funny, worthy of your ears and of your laughter. Laugh, Cato, as much as you love Catullus: the thing is ridiculous and too funny. Just now I caught a girl’s little boy going at it: him — if it please Dione — I cut down, my stiff one for a spear.

They go together nicely, the shameless perverts, Mamurra and the catamite Caesar. No wonder: matching stains on the pair, one of the city, the other of Formiae, are set deep in and will not be washed out: diseased alike, the pair of twins, both little pedants on one little couch, neither a greedier adulterer than the other, rival partners in the little girls: they go together nicely, the shameless perverts.

Caelius, our Lesbia, that Lesbia, that very Lesbia whom Catullus loved more than himself and more than all his own, now at the crossroads and in the back alleys peels the grandsons of great-hearted Remus.

Rufa of Bononia sucks off Rufulus — Menenius’s wife, whom you have often seen in the graveyards snatching a meal off the very pyre, chasing a loaf that rolled down out of the fire, and getting cuffed by the half-shaven cremator.

Was it a lioness on the Libyan mountains, or Scylla barking from her nethermost parts, that bore you with a mind so hard and foul that you hold the voice of a suppliant, in his utmost need, in contempt — ah, too savage of heart?

O dweller on the Heliconian hill, offspring of Urania, you who carry off the tender maiden to her man — O Hymen Hymenaeus, O Hymen Hymenaeus — bind your brows with the flowers of sweet-smelling marjoram, take up the flame-veil, and gladly here, here come, wearing on snow-white foot the yellow slipper, and roused by the joyful day, singing the wedding songs in a ringing voice, beat the ground with your feet, and with your hand shake the pinewood torch. For Vinia weds Manlius — as Venus, who dwells in Idalium, came before the Phrygian judge — a good maiden with a good omen, shining like the Asian myrtle with its flowering boughs, which the hamadryad goddesses nourish with dewy moisture for their own delight. So come, make your way here, leave behind the Aonian caves of the Thespian crag, over which the nymph Aganippe pours her cooling streams, and call the mistress home to her new husband, eager for him, binding her mind with love as the clinging ivy, wandering this way and that, entwines the tree. And you as well, unspoiled maidens, for whom a like day is coming, in measure sing out: O Hymen Hymenaeus, O Hymen Hymenaeus — so that, the more gladly, hearing himself summoned to his office, he may make his way here, the leader of good Venus, the joiner of honest love. What god is more to be sought by anxious lovers? Which of the heaven-dwellers will men worship more? O Hymen Hymenaeus, O Hymen Hymenaeus. You the trembling parent invokes for his own; for you the maidens loosen the girdle of their robes; for you, in fear and longing, the new husband strains to hear. You yourself give into the hands of the fierce young man the blossoming girl from her mother’s lap, O Hymen Hymenaeus, O Hymen Hymenaeus. Without you Venus can take no advantage that good repute would approve: but she can when you will it. Who would dare be compared to this god? Without you no house can give children, nor any parent rest upon his stock: but it can when you will it. Who would dare be compared to this god? A land that lacks your rites could give no guardians for its borders: but it could when you will it. Who would dare be compared to this god? Open the bars of the door: the bride is here. Do you see how the torches shake their shining tresses? Let inborn modesty hold her back; yet, heeding it the more, she weeps that she must go. Stop your weeping. There is no danger for you, Aurunculeia, that any woman lovelier has seen the bright day coming from Ocean. Such, in the many-colored garden of a rich master, is wont to stand the hyacinth flower. But you delay; the day departs: come forth, new bride. Come forth, new bride, if now you are willing, and hear our words. See how the torches shake their golden tresses: come forth, new bride. Your husband — no fickle man given to some wicked adulteress, not chasing shameful disgraces — will not wish to lie apart from your tender breasts, but as the pliant vine entwines the trees planted beside it, he will be entwined in your embrace. But the day departs: come forth, new bride. O marriage-bed, that to all... on the gleaming foot of the couch, what joys come to your lord, how great, to be his in the roaming night, and in the midst of day, his to enjoy! But the day departs: come forth, new bride. Raise high the torches, boys: I see the flame-veil coming. Go, sing in measure: O Hymen Hymenaeus io, O Hymen Hymenaeus. Let the saucy Fescennine joking not be silent long, and let the favorite-boy, hearing that his master’s love has forsaken him, not refuse the nuts to the children. Give the nuts to the children, idle favorite: long enough have you played with nuts: now it is time to serve Talasius. Favorite, give the nuts. The bailiffs’ wives were beneath you, favorite, today and yesterday: now the hair-curler shaves your face. Wretch, ah wretched favorite, give the nuts. They say that you, perfumed bridegroom, can scarcely keep from your smooth boys: but keep from them. O Hymen Hymenaeus io, O Hymen Hymenaeus. We know that these are the only pleasures you have known as licit: but for a husband those same things are not licit. O Hymen Hymenaeus io, O Hymen Hymenaeus. Bride, you too — what your husband seeks, take care not to refuse, lest he go to seek it elsewhere. O Hymen Hymenaeus io, O Hymen Hymenaeus. See how powerful and prosperous is your husband’s house: let it serve you (O Hymen Hymenaeus io, O Hymen Hymenaeus), all the way until white-haired old age, nodding its trembling temples, says yes to everything for everyone. O Hymen Hymenaeus io, O Hymen Hymenaeus. Carry, with a good omen, your golden feet across the threshold, and pass beneath the polished door. O Hymen Hymenaeus io, O Hymen Hymenaeus. See how your husband, reclining alone on the Tyrian couch, leans wholly toward you. O Hymen Hymenaeus io, O Hymen Hymenaeus. In him no less than in you a flame burns deep in the breast — but more deeply within. O Hymen Hymenaeus io, O Hymen Hymenaeus. Let go the smooth little arm of the girl, you boy in the bordered gown: now let her come to her husband’s bed. O Hymen Hymenaeus io, O Hymen Hymenaeus. O good women, well known to husbands grown old, settle the girl in her place. O Hymen Hymenaeus io, O Hymen Hymenaeus. Now you may come, bridegroom: your wife is in the bedchamber, her face shining and flower-fresh, like white feverfew or the yellow poppy. But you, bridegroom — so may the gods help me — are no less beautiful, nor does Venus neglect you. But the day departs: on with it, do not delay. You have not delayed long, now you come. May good Venus help you, since openly you desire what you desire, and your honest love you do not hide. Let him first reckon up the number of the African sands and the glittering stars, who would count the many thousands of your play. Play as you please, and soon give children. It is not fitting that so old a name be without children, but that from one stock it always be engendered. I want a little Torquatus, from his mother’s lap stretching out his tender hands, to smile sweetly at his father with half-parted lips. Let him be like his father Manlius, and easily, by all who do not know him, be known, and let his face proclaim his mother’s chastity. Let such praise, from a good mother, approve his birth, as the matchless renown that stays with Telemachus from his most excellent mother Penelope. Close the doors, maidens: we have played enough. But, good spouses, live well, and in constant duty exercise your vigorous youth.

Evening is here: young men, rise up. At last, from Olympus, Evening barely lifts the lights so long awaited. Now it is time to rise, now to leave the laden tables; now the bride will come, now the wedding-hymn be sung. Hymen O Hymenaeus, Hymen, be here, O Hymenaeus. Do you see the young men, unwed girls? Rise up to face them: surely the Night-bringer shows his Oetean fires. So it is, surely: do you see how nimbly they have sprung up? Not for nothing they sprang: they will sing what is worth the winning. Hymen O Hymenaeus, Hymen, be here, O Hymenaeus. No easy prize is set before us, companions: look how the unwed girls go over what they have rehearsed. Not in vain do they rehearse; they have something to remember. No wonder — they labor deep, with the whole mind. We have split our minds one way, our ears another: rightly, then, we will be beaten; victory loves care. So now at least turn your spirits to it: soon they will begin to speak, and it will be fitting to answer. Hymen O Hymenaeus, Hymen, be here, O Hymenaeus. Hesperus, what crueler fire moves in the sky? You who can tear the daughter from her mother’s embrace, tear from her mother’s clasp the daughter who clings, and give the chaste girl to a burning youth. What crueler thing do enemies do when a city is taken? Hymen O Hymenaeus, Hymen, be here, O Hymenaeus. Hesperus, what more welcome fire shines in the sky? You who with your flame seal the betrothed marriage, which the men have pledged, which the parents pledged before, yet did not join until your fire rose. What is given by the gods more longed-for than the happy hour? Hymen O Hymenaeus, Hymen, be here, O Hymenaeus. Hesperus has taken one of us away, companions. For at your coming the watch is always wakeful. By night the thieves lie hidden, whom — returning the same, Hesperus, under a changed name — you catch, the very same. But the unwed girls like to chide you with feigned complaint. What of it, if they chide the one they secretly long for? Hymen O Hymenaeus, Hymen, be here, O Hymenaeus. As a flower springs up secret in a walled garden, unknown to the flock, torn up by no plough, which the breezes caress, the sun strengthens, the rain raises — many boys, many girls have longed for it; but when, plucked by a fine nail, it has shed its bloom, no boys, no girls have longed for it: so a maiden, while she stays untouched, stays dear to her own; when, her body defiled, she has lost the chaste flower, she remains neither pleasing to boys nor dear to girls. Hymen O Hymenaeus, Hymen, be here, O Hymenaeus. As an unwedded vine that grows in a bare field never lifts itself, never brings forth the mellow grape, but, bending its tender body down under its own weight, now all but touches its topmost shoot with its root — no farmers, no oxen have tended it; but if by chance the same is joined to an elm as husband, many farmers, many oxen have tended it: so a maiden, while she stays untouched, grows old uncultivated; when in due season she has won a fitting match, she is dearer to a husband and less hateful to a parent. And you, do not fight with such a husband, girl. It is not right to fight the one to whom your father himself, your father with your mother, has given you — and them you must obey. Your maidenhood is not all your own: a part belongs to your parents. A third part is your father’s, a third part is your mother’s, only a third is yours. Do not fight the two who with the dowry gave the son-in-law their rights as well. Hymen O Hymenaeus, Hymen, be here, O Hymenaeus.

Carried over the deep seas in his swift ship, Attis, when eagerly with hurrying foot he reached the Phrygian wood and came to the goddess’s places, dark, wreathed with forest, there, driven by raving frenzy, his mind astray, with a sharp flint he cast down from himself the burden of his groin. And so, when she felt her limbs left without their manhood, still staining the face of the ground with fresh blood, in haste she took up with snow-white hands the light tambourine — the tambourine, your trumpet, Cybele, your rite, O mother — and shaking the hollow bull’s-hide with her tender fingers, trembling she began to sing this to her companions: "Come, go together to the high groves of Cybele, Gallae, together go, you straying herd of the Lady of Dindymus, who, seeking strange places like exiles, following my course, my companions under my lead, have borne the racing brine and the savage seas and unmanned your bodies in too great a loathing of Venus, gladden your mistress’s heart with swift wanderings. Let dull delay leave your minds; go together, follow to the Phrygian house of Cybele, to the Phrygian groves of the goddess, where the voice of the cymbal sounds, where the drums boom back, where the Phrygian piper sings deep on his curved reed, where the ivy-crowned Maenads toss their heads with violence, where they ply the holy rites with shrill howls, where that wandering troop of the goddess is wont to flutter — there it befits us to hasten with rapid dances." As soon as Attis, the counterfeit woman, had sung this to her companions, the rout suddenly howls with quivering tongues, the light drum bellows again, the hollow cymbals clash, and the swift chorus with hurrying foot makes for green Ida. Raving, panting, wandering, gasping out her breath, Attis goes, drum in hand, the leader through the dark groves, like an unbroken heifer shunning the burden of the yoke: the swift Gallae follow their quick-footed leader. And so, when they reached Cybele’s house, worn and weary, from too much toil they take their sleep without Ceres. A sluggish drowsiness covers their eyes with drooping faintness: in soft quiet the raging frenzy of the mind departs. But when the Sun with golden face and radiant eyes surveyed the white sky, the hard ground, the wild sea, and drove off the shadows of night with fresh-hooved horses, then Sleep, fleeing from wakened Attis, swiftly was gone: the goddess Pasithea took him to her fluttering breast. So, out of soft quiet, the swift madness gone, as soon as Attis in her own heart turned over her deeds again, and with a clear mind saw what she had lost and where she was, with a seething soul she made her way back again to the shore. There, gazing on the vast seas with weeping eyes, sadly she addressed her homeland, in a pitiful voice, thus: "Homeland, O you who made me, homeland, O you who bore me, whom I, wretched, deserting — as runaway slaves desert their masters — set my foot toward Ida’s groves, to be amid the snow and the frozen lairs of beasts, and in my frenzy to go to all their hiding-places — where, in what region, do I suppose you to lie, my homeland? My very eye longs to turn its gaze toward you, while for a brief while my mind is free of savage frenzy. Shall I be carried off into these groves, far from my home? Shall I be absent from homeland, from goods, friends, parents? Absent from the forum, the wrestling-ground, the racetrack, the gymnasia? Wretched, ah wretched, I must grieve again and again, my soul. For what form of being is there that I have not passed through? I a woman, I a young man, I a youth, I a boy; I was the flower of the wrestling-ground, I was the glory of the oil: for me the doorways were thronged, for me the thresholds warm, for me the house was wreathed with garlands of flowers, when at sunrise I had to leave my chamber. Shall I now be called the gods’ handmaid, the slave of Cybele? Shall I be a Maenad, I a part of myself, I a sterile man? Shall I haunt the green, cold places of Ida, clad in snow? Shall I pass my life beneath the high peaks of Phrygia, where the woodland doe, where the forest-roaming boar? Now, now I grieve for what I have done; now, now I repent." As the swift sound went off from her rosy lips, carrying fresh tidings to the twin ears of the gods, Cybele, loosing the yoke that bound her lions and goading the left-hand one, that foe of the herd, speaks thus: "Come now," she says, "go, fierce one, go, make frenzy drive him, make him, struck by madness, take his way back to the woods — he who too freely longs to flee my rule. Come, lash your back with your tail, endure your own blows, make every place resound with your bellowing roar, shake fierce on your brawny neck your tawny mane." So speaks threatening Cybele, and unties the yoke with her hand. The beast, urging himself on, rouses his raging spirit, he goes, he roars, he breaks the brushwood with wandering foot. But when he reached the wet places of the whitening shore and saw tender Attis near the marble of the sea, he charges: she, out of her mind, flees into the wild woods: there, forever, for all the span of her life, she was a slave. Great goddess, goddess Cybele, goddess mistress of Dindymus, far from my house be all your frenzy, my Lady: drive others to their goading, drive others to their raving.

Pines born long ago on Pelion’s peak are said to have swum through Neptune’s clear waters to the waves of Phasis and the realm of Aeëtes, when the chosen young men, the flower of Argive manhood, longing to carry off the golden fleece from Colchis, dared to course the salt shallows in their swift stern, sweeping the blue level with blades of fir. For them the goddess who keeps the citadels on the cities’ heights herself made a chariot to fly with a light breeze, joining the woven pine to the curved keel. That ship first broke raw Amphitrite to the voyage. And as soon as she clove the windy plain with her beak and the wave, churned by the oars, whitened with foam, faces rose from the gleaming swell of the sea, the sea-nymphs, the Nereids, marveling at the wonder. On that day, if ever on another, mortals saw with their own eyes the sea-nymphs, their bodies bared, standing breast-high out of the white swell. Then Peleus, they say, took fire with love for Thetis, then Thetis did not scorn a mortal wedding, then the Father himself knew Peleus must be joined to Thetis. O heroes born in that too-much-longed-for age of the world, hail, race of gods, O good offspring of your mothers, hail again — you I shall often address in my song, and you above all, greatly blessed with the happy wedding-torches, Peleus, pillar of Thessaly, to whom Jupiter himself, the very father of the gods, yielded his own love. Did Thetis hold you, loveliest daughter of Nereus? Did Tethys grant you to wed her granddaughter, and Oceanus, who girdles the whole earth with sea? When at the appointed end of waiting those longed-for days had come, all Thessaly throngs the house in assembly, the palace is filled with a rejoicing crowd: they bring gifts before them, they show their joy in their faces. Cieros is deserted, they leave Phthiotic Tempe and the homes of Crannon and the walls of Larisa, they gather at Pharsalus, they throng the roofs of Pharsalia. No one works the land; the necks of the bullocks grow soft, the low vine is not cleansed with curved rakes, no bull tears the clod with downturned ploughshare, no pruner’s hook thins the tree’s shade, squalid rust creeps over the abandoned ploughs. But the king’s own dwelling, far as the rich palace ran back, gleams bright with shining gold and silver. Ivory shines white on the thrones, the cups glitter on the table, the whole house rejoices, splendid with royal treasure. And the goddess’s bridal couch is set in the midst of the dwelling, polished with Indian tusk, covered with purple steeped in the rosy dye of the shellfish. This coverlet, embroidered with the ancient figures of men, shows the heroes’ virtues with wondrous art. For, gazing out from the wave-resounding shore of Dia, Ariadne watches Theseus going off with his swift fleet, bearing untamed frenzies in her heart, and does not yet believe she sees what she sees, since then, just roused from deceiving sleep, she finds herself, poor wretch, abandoned on the lonely sand. But the heedless youth, fleeing, strikes the shallows with his oars, leaving his empty promises to the gusty gale. At him, far off across the seaweed, with sorrowing eyes, the daughter of Minos, like a stone image of a bacchant, gazes — alas — gazes, and tosses on great waves of cares, not keeping the fine headband on her golden hair, not covered as to her veiled breast by a light wrap, not bound as to her milk-white breasts by the smooth band — all of which, slipped from her whole body, here and there the salt waves were lapping before her very feet. But she, caring then neither for headband nor for floating wrap, hung on you, Theseus, with all her heart, with all her soul, with all her mind — lost. Ah wretched one, whom with unceasing griefs Erycina maddened, sowing thorny cares in her breast, in that hour, from the time when fierce Theseus, setting out from the curved shores of the Piraeus, reached the Gortynian halls of the unjust king. For they tell that once, forced by a cruel plague to pay the penalty for the slaying of Androgeos, Cecropia was wont to give chosen youths, and with them the flower of her unwed girls, as a feast to the Minotaur. And when his narrow walls were vexed by these ills, Theseus chose to throw down his own body for his dear Athens rather than that such deaths — not deaths, but the living dead — of Cecropia be carried off to Crete. And so, pressing on with light ship and gentle breezes, he comes to great-hearted Minos and his proud halls. As soon as the royal maiden looked on him with longing eye — she whom the chaste little bed, breathing out sweet scents, still nourished in her mother’s soft embrace, like the myrtles the streams of Eurotas bring forth or the colors the spring breeze draws out distinct — she did not turn her blazing eyes away from him before she caught fire deep in her whole body and burned, utterly, all aflame in her inmost marrow. Alas, you who cruelly stir up frenzies with merciless heart, holy boy, who mingle the joys of men with cares, and you who rule Golgi and leafy Idalium, on what billows you tossed the girl, her mind ablaze, sighing again and again for the golden-haired stranger! What fears she bore in her fainting heart, how much paler she often grew than the gleam of gold, when Theseus, longing to close with the savage monster, went to seek either death or the prizes of glory. Yet, not unwelcome to the gods, promising little gifts in vain, she kindled her vows with silent lip. For as a whirlwind, untamed, twisting the oak with its blast, or the cone-bearing pine with its sweating bark, on the height of Taurus, shaking its arms, uproots it — and it, torn out far off by the roots, falls headlong, shattering whatever lies in its path — so Theseus laid the savage thing low, its body tamed, as it tossed its horns in vain at the empty winds. Then, safe, with much glory, he retraced his step, guiding his wandering tracks by a fine thread, lest, coming out from the windings of the labyrinth, the untraceable maze should baffle him. But why should I, straying further from my first song, recount how the daughter, leaving her father’s face, the embrace of her sister, and at last of her mother, who, wretched, took her ruinous joy in her child, preferred to all of these the sweet love of Theseus? Or how, borne by ship to the foaming shores of Dia, she came? Or how her husband, departing with heedless heart, left her, her eyes bound fast in sleep? Often, they say, raving with burning heart, she poured clear-ringing cries from the depths of her breast, and now, in grief, would climb the sheer mountains from where to strain her gaze over the vast surges of the sea, now would run out to meet the waves of the trembling brine, lifting the soft covering of her bared calf, and said this, sorrowing, in her last laments, raising chill sobs from her wet face: "Was it for this, faithless one, that you carried me off from my father’s altars, faithless one, to leave me on a deserted shore, Theseus? Is it thus that, departing, scorning the will of the gods, forgetful — ah — you carry home your accursed perjuries? Could nothing bend the purpose of your cruel mind? Was no mercy at hand within you, that your pitiless heart might wish to take pity on me? But these were not the promises you once gave me with coaxing voice, not these the hopes you bade me, wretched, hold, but happy marriage, but the longed-for wedding — all of which the airy winds tear to nothing. Now let no woman believe a man who swears, let none hope that the words of a man are faithful: while their mind, in its desire, longs to gain something, they fear to swear nothing, they spare nothing to promise; but as soon as the lust of their greedy mind is sated, they remember nothing they said, they care nothing for their perjuries. Surely I snatched you, as you whirled in the very midst of death, and chose rather to lose a brother than to fail you, false one, in your utmost need: and for this I shall be given to beasts and birds to be torn, a prey, and shall not be buried, dead, with earth cast over me. What lioness bore you beneath a lonely crag, what sea, conceiving you, spat you out from its foaming waves, what Syrtis, what ravening Scylla, what vast Charybdis, you who give such rewards for your sweet life? If our marriage had not been to your liking, because you dreaded the savage commands of your old father, still you could have led me into your halls, to serve you as a slave with glad toil, soothing your white feet with clear water or spreading your couch with the purple cloth. But why, distraught with woe, do I complain in vain to the unknowing breezes — which, endowed with no senses, can neither hear the words I send nor return them? He, meanwhile, is already tossing almost in mid-sea, and no mortal appears on the empty seaweed. So cruel fortune, exulting too much in my last hour, has even begrudged ears to my complaints. Almighty Jupiter, would that in the first place the Cecropian ships had never touched the Gnosian shores, nor the faithless sailor, bearing dread tribute to the untamed bull, had bound his cable in Crete, nor that this evil guest, hiding cruel designs beneath a sweet form, had rested in our dwelling! For where am I to turn? On what hope, lost, do I lean? Shall I make for the mountains of Ida? But the broad gulf, the savage deep of the sea, divides and sunders us. Or shall I hope for my father’s help — whom I myself left, following a youth spattered with my brother’s blood? Or console myself with a husband’s faithful love — who flees, bending his pliant oars in the deep? And besides — no shelter on the shore, a lonely island, no way out, with the waves of the sea encircling: no means of flight, no hope: all is mute, all is desolate, all things show forth death. Yet my eyes shall not grow faint in death before me, nor shall my senses withdraw from my weary body, before, betrayed, I demand from the gods a just penalty and pray, in my last hour, for the faith of the heaven-dwellers. Therefore, you Eumenides, who punish the deeds of men with avenging penalty, you whose brows, wreathed with snaky hair, carry forth the wrath of your breathing breast, here, here come, hear my complaints, which I — alas, wretched — am forced to bring forth from my inmost marrow, helpless, burning, blind with senseless frenzy. Since they are born true from the bottom of my heart, do not let my grief come to nothing, but with whatever mind Theseus left me alone, with such a mind, goddesses, let him bring death on himself and his own." After she poured these cries from her grieving breast, anxiously demanding punishment for the savage deeds, the ruler of the heaven-dwellers nodded with unconquered will, and at that nod the earth and the bristling seas trembled, and the firmament shook the glittering stars. But Theseus himself, his mind sown with blind darkness, let slip from his forgetful breast all the charges that he had before held with steadfast mind, and, not hoisting the sweet signals for his grieving father, did not show that he saw the Erechthean harbor in safety. For they tell that once, when Aegeus was entrusting his son to the winds as he left the goddess’s walls with his fleet, he embraced the youth and gave him such charges: "My son, my only one, dearer to me by far than long life, my son, whom I am forced to send into doubtful hazards, restored to me but now at the very end of my old age, since my fortune and your burning valor tear you from me against my will — me, whose failing eyes are not yet sated with my son’s dear form — I will not send you off rejoicing, with a glad heart, nor let you carry the signs of favorable fortune, but first I will pour out many laments from my mind, fouling my white hair with earth and scattered dust, then I will hang dyed sails upon your wandering mast, so that the canvas, darkened with Iberian rust, may tell of our grief and the burning of our mind. But if she who dwells in holy Itonus, who has consented to defend our race and the seats of Erechtheus, grants you to spatter your right hand with the bull’s blood, then indeed see to it that these charges, stored in your remembering heart, stay strong, and that no length of time blot them out: that as soon as your eyes come in sight of our hills, the yardarms lay down their funereal cloth on every side, and the twisted cords raise white sails, so that, seeing it as soon as may be, I may know my joy with a glad mind, when a happy hour sets you here, returned." These charges, which Theseus had at first held with steadfast mind, left him, as clouds driven by the breath of the winds leave the airy summit of a snowy mountain. But the father, as he sought his lookout from the citadel’s top, wasting his anxious eyes in unceasing weeping, as soon as he caught sight of the cloth of the swelling sail, hurled himself headlong from the peak of the rocks, believing Theseus lost to a merciless fate. So fierce Theseus, entering the halls of his house made funereal beneath his father’s roof, received such grief himself as he had brought to the daughter of Minos with heedless mind. She then, gazing sadly at the departing keel, turned over manifold cares in her wounded soul. But on another part the blooming Iacchus flew, with his rout of satyrs and the Sileni born of Nysa, seeking you, Ariadne, and afire with love for you. They then, eager, ran wild on all sides with frenzied mind, crying euhoe, euhoe, tossing back their heads. Some of them brandished thyrsi with shrouded tip, some flung about the limbs of a torn bullock, some girded themselves with writhing serpents, some thronged the dark mysteries with hollow caskets — mysteries which the profane long in vain to hear — others beat the drums with their tall palms or roused thin ringings from the rounded bronze; for many the horns blared their hoarse-sounding blasts, and the barbarian pipe shrilled with a horrid tune. With such figures the cloth, richly adorned, clothed the bridal couch, enfolding it in its embrace. After the Thessalian youth had gazed their fill on it, eager, they began to give place to the holy gods. Here, as the West Wind, ruffling the calm sea with its morning breath, drives on the sloping waves at the rising of the dawn, beneath the threshold of the wandering sun — waves which, slow at first, struck by the gentle breeze, move forward and softly sound with a plash of laughter, then, as the wind grows, throng more and more, and, floating far off, shine back from the crimson light — so then, leaving the royal halls of the forecourt, each went off this way and that, with wandering foot. After their departure, first from Pelion’s peak came Chiron, bearing woodland gifts: for whatever flowers the plains bear, whatever the Thessalian land brings forth on its great mountains, whatever, beside the river’s waters, the fertile breeze of warm Favonius brings to birth, these he himself carried, woven in mingled garlands, soothed by which the house smiled with their glad scent. At once Peneus is there, leaving green Tempe, Tempe which the woods, overhanging from above, encircle, to be thronged by the Dorian Naiads in their dances, not empty-handed: for he brought, roots and all, tall beeches and straight, towering laurels, not without the nodding plane and the pliant sister of flame-struck Phaethon and the airy cypress. These he set, woven wide, around the dwelling, that the forecourt, veiled with soft foliage, might grow green. After him follows Prometheus of crafty heart, bearing the faded traces of his old punishment, which once, his limbs bound to the flint with a chain, he paid, hanging from the sheer crags. Then the father of the gods came with his holy wife and children, leaving you, Phoebus, alone in heaven, and with you your twin-born, the dweller in the mountains of Idrus: for, equally with you, your sister scorned Peleus and would not grace the wedding-torches of Thetis. After they had bent their limbs on the snowy seats, the tables were heaped high with manifold feast, while meanwhile, swaying their bodies with palsied motion, the Fates began to pour out their truth-telling chants. A white robe, enfolding their trembling bodies all round, girt their ankles with its crimson border, and rosy bands rested on their snowy heads, and their hands plied, as is due, the eternal task. The left hand held the distaff clothed with soft wool, the right, lightly drawing the threads down with upturned fingers, shaped them, then, twisting with the downturned thumb, spun the balanced spindle with its rounded whorl, and so, plucking, the tooth ever made the work even, and the bitten-off wool clung to their dry little lips, the wool that before had stood out from the smooth thread. And before their feet the soft fleeces of white wool were kept safe in wicker baskets. These then, plucking the fleeces, with clear-ringing voice poured forth such fates in a divine song, a song which no later age shall convict of falsehood: "O you who crown your great virtues with surpassing honor, guardian of Emathian power, most renowned for the son to come, hear what the sisters reveal to you on this glad day, a truth-telling oracle. But you — run, drawing the threads, which the fates follow — run, you spindles. Soon Hesperus will come to you, bearing what husbands long for, the wife will come with a favoring star, to flood your mind with soul-bending love and make ready to join with you in languid slumbers, laying her smooth arms beneath your sturdy neck. Run, drawing the threads, run, you spindles. No house ever sheltered such loves, no love joined lovers in such a bond as is here for Thetis, as is the harmony for Peleus. Run, drawing the threads, run, you spindles. To you will be born Achilles, stranger to fear, known to his enemies not by his back but by his brave breast, who, victor very often in the ranging contest of the race, will outstrip the flame-swift footprints of the fleet hind. Run, drawing the threads, run, you spindles. No hero will match himself against him in war, when the Phrygian plains shall run with Teucrian blood, and, besieging the Trojan walls in a long war, the third heir of perjured Pelops shall lay them waste. Run, drawing the threads, run, you spindles. His surpassing virtues and bright deeds mothers shall often own at the funerals of their sons, when they loose their unkempt hair from their white heads and bruise their withered breasts with feeble palms. Run, drawing the threads, run, you spindles. For as a reaper, cropping the thick ears of grain under the burning sun, mows down the yellow fields, so he will lay low with hostile iron the bodies of Troy’s sons. Run, drawing the threads, run, you spindles. The wave of Scamander shall bear witness to his great virtues, the wave that pours itself far and wide into the swift Hellespont, whose course, narrowed by him with heaped piles of slain bodies, he will make warm in its deep streams, mingled with slaughter. Run, drawing the threads, run, you spindles. At the last, witness too shall be the prize awarded even to his death, when the rounded tomb, heaped on a high mound, receives the snow-white limbs of the smitten maiden. Run, drawing the threads, run, you spindles. For as soon as fortune gives the weary Achaeans the power to loose Neptune’s bonds of the Dardanian city, the high tomb shall be wetted with Polyxena’s blood, who, like a victim sinking beneath the two-edged iron, will throw down her headless body on a bent knee. Run, drawing the threads, run, you spindles. Therefore come, join the longed-for loves of your hearts. Let the husband receive the goddess in a happy bond, let the bride, long awaited now, be given to the eager groom. Run, drawing the threads, run, you spindles. The nurse, revisiting her at the rising light, will not be able to circle her neck with yesterday’s thread (run, drawing the threads, run, you spindles), nor will the anxious mother, sad that her quarreling daughter sleeps apart, give up hope of dear grandchildren. Run, drawing the threads, run, you spindles." Such songs of happiness, foretelling these things, the Fates once sang for Peleus from their divine breast. For in former times the heaven-dwellers, present in person, were wont to visit the chaste homes of heroes and show themselves to a mortal gathering, while piety was not yet scorned. Often the father of the gods, in his shining temple, when the yearly rites had come on the festal days, looked on a hundred bulls fall to the ground. Often wandering Liber, on the topmost peak of Parnassus, drove the Thyiads, crying euhoe with streaming hair, while the Delphians, rushing in rivalry from the whole city, gladly received the god at their smoking altars. Often in the death-dealing strife of war Mavors, or the mistress of swift Triton, or the Rhamnusian maiden, present in person, urged on armed companies of men. But after the earth was steeped in unspeakable crime and all drove justice from their greedy minds, brothers drenched their hands in brothers’ blood, the son ceased to mourn his parents dead, the father longed for the death of his firstborn son, that he might freely possess the flower of an unwed stepmother, the impious mother, lying beneath her unwitting son, impious, did not fear to defile the household gods — all things speakable and unspeakable, confounded in evil madness, have turned away from us the justice-dealing mind of the gods. Wherefore they neither deign to visit such gatherings nor suffer themselves to be touched by the clear light of day.

Although wasting grief calls me, worn out by unceasing pain, away from the learned maidens, Hortalus, and my mind’s thought cannot bring forth the sweet offspring of the Muses — so it tosses on troubles so great — for lately, in the Lethean flood, the welling wave has washed over the pale little foot of my brother, whom the Trojan earth, beneath the Rhoetean shore, crushes, torn away from our eyes. Never again, brother more lovable than life, shall I look on you hereafter; yet surely I will always love you, always sing songs saddened by your death, such as, under the dense shades of the branches, the Daulian bird sings, mourning the fate of slain Itylus — yet even in such great sorrows, Hortalus, I send you these verses of the son of Battus, turned into Latin, lest you think your words, entrusted in vain to the wandering winds, have perhaps slipped from my mind, as an apple, sent as a secret gift from her betrothed, rolls out from the chaste lap of a maiden, which, tucked by the poor forgetful girl beneath her soft dress, is shaken loose when she starts up at her mother’s coming; and it is driven headlong in a downward rush, while a telltale blush spreads over her sorry face.

He who scanned all the lights of the great firmament, who learned the risings and the settings of the stars, how the flaming brightness of the swift sun is darkened, how the constellations recede at fixed seasons, how sweet love, stealthily banishing Trivia beneath the Latmian rocks, calls her down from her airy round — that same Conon saw me in the light of heaven, a lock from the head of Berenice, shining bright, which she, stretching out her smooth arms, had vowed to all the gods, at the season when the king, made greater by his new marriage, had gone to lay waste the Assyrian borders, carrying the sweet traces of the nightly struggle that he had waged for her virgin spoils. Is Venus hateful to new brides? And are parents’ joys balked with false little tears, which they pour abundantly within the chamber’s threshold? No — so may the gods help me — their groans are not true. This my queen taught me with her many laments, when her new husband went off to grim battles. And did you not weep, deserted, for an empty bed, but for the tearful parting from a dear brother? How deeply the care gnawed your sad marrow! How then, distressed with all your heart, your senses snatched away, your mind fell from you! Yet I at least had known you, from a small girl, to be great-hearted. Have you forgotten the noble deed by which you won a royal marriage, that none braver would dare? But then, sending off your husband, what words you spoke! Jupiter, how often you wiped your eyes with your hand! What great god changed you? Or is it that lovers do not wish to be far from the dear body? And there you vowed me to all the gods for your sweet husband, not without the blood of a bull, if only he should win his return. In no long time he had added captured Asia to the borders of Egypt. For which deeds, given over to the assembly of heaven, I discharge your former vows with a new gift. Unwilling, O queen, I left your head, unwilling: I swear by you and by your head; may anyone who swears in vain by it bear what is fitting — but who would claim to be a match for iron? That mountain too was overthrown, the greatest on those shores, over which the bright offspring of Thia rides, when the Medes made a new sea, and the barbarian youth sailed with a fleet through the middle of Athos. What shall locks of hair do, when such things yield to iron? Jupiter, may the whole race of the Chalybes perish, and he who first set himself to seek out veins beneath the earth and to forge the hardness of iron! My sister-locks, cut off a little before, were mourning my fate, when the brother of Ethiopian Memnon, beating the air with waving wings, the winged horse of Locrian Arsinoe, presented himself, and he, lifting me, flies off through the airy shadows and lays me in the chaste lap of Venus. Zephyritis herself had sent her servant on that errand, the Greek dweller on the Canopic shores. Then, that not in the dappled light of heaven alone the golden crown from Ariadne’s temples should be fixed, but that we too might shine, the dedicated spoils of a golden head, the goddess, as I came wet with weeping to the temples of the gods, set me as a new star among the old: for, touching the lights of the Virgin and of the fierce Lion, joined to Callisto, daughter of Lycaon, I turn toward my setting, leading slow Boötes before me, who scarcely sinks, late, into the deep of Ocean. But though by night the footsteps of the gods press upon me, and the light gives me back to white-haired Tethys — (by your leave let me say this here, Rhamnusian maiden: for out of no fear will I hide any truth, nor, even if the stars should tear me with hostile words, will I forbear to unfold the secrets of my true heart) — I do not so much rejoice in all this as I am tormented, tormented that I shall be forever apart, forever apart from my mistress’s head, with whom, while once she was a girl, untouched by all perfumes, I drank many thousand draughts together. Now you whom the wedding-torch has joined in the longed-for light, do not yield up your bodies to your loving husbands, baring your breasts with the robe thrown back, before the onyx jar pours out its glad offerings to me, your onyx, you who keep the rites of a chaste bed. But she who has given herself to foul adultery — ah, let the light dust drink up her bad gifts, made void: for I ask no rewards from the unworthy. Rather, O brides, may harmony forever, may love forever dwell unceasing in your homes. And you, queen, when, gazing at the stars, you appease the goddess Venus with festal lights, do not suffer me, who am yours, to go without perfume, but rather endow me with rich gifts. Why do the stars hold me back? Would that I might be the royal lock again: then let Orion shine close beside Aquarius.

"O pleasing to a sweet husband, pleasing to a father, greetings, and may Jupiter increase you with good help, Door, who, they say, once served Balbus kindly when the old man himself held the house, yet who, they say, served grudgingly, against your vow, after, the old man laid out, you were made a married door: come, tell us why you are said to be changed, to have abandoned your old loyalty to your master." "(So may I please Caecilius, to whom I have now been handed over,) it is not my fault, though it is said to be mine, nor can anyone say that any wrong has been done by me: but such is the way of the people, who make you their Door — who, wherever anything is found done amiss, all cry out at me: ’Door, the fault is yours.’" "It is not enough for you to say that in a single word, but so to do that anyone may feel it and see it." "How can I? No one asks or troubles to learn." "We wish to: do not hesitate to tell us." "First, then: that a virgin is said to have been handed to us — that is false. Not that her former man touched her, he whose little dagger, hanging limper than a tender beet, never raised itself to the middle of his tunic: but they say his father defiled his own son’s bed and shamed the wretched house, either because his impious mind burned with blind love, or because the son was begotten, impotent, of barren seed, and one had to be sought, more sinewy, from whom might come that which could loosen the virgin’s girdle." "You tell of a father remarkable in wondrous devotion, who himself pissed into his own son’s lap." "And yet Brixia says she knows not this alone — Brixia, set beneath the Cycnean watchtower, past which the yellow Mella runs with its gentle stream, Brixia, beloved mother of my own Verona — but tells too of Postumius and of the love of Cornelius, with whom that woman did her wicked adultery." "Here someone may ask: ’What? You, Door, know these things, you who may never be away from your master’s threshold, nor listen to the people, but, fixed here under the beam, are wont only to shut the house or open it?’" "Often I have heard her, speaking in a furtive voice, alone with her maids, of these her own disgraces, naming by name those I have named, as one who hoped that I had neither tongue nor ear. Besides, she would add a certain man, whom I do not wish to name, lest he raise his red eyebrows. He is a tall man, against whom once a false childbirth brought great lawsuits, out of a lying belly."

That you, weighed down by fortune and a bitter chance, send me this letter written in tears, that I may lift you, a castaway thrown up by the foaming waves of the sea, and bring you back from the threshold of death — you whom neither holy Venus lets rest in soft sleep, deserted in a celibate bed, nor do the Muses delight with the sweet song of the old writers, while your anxious mind keeps watch — this is welcome to me, since you call me your friend and seek of me here the gifts of the Muses and of Venus. But that my own troubles may not be unknown to you, Manlius, and that you not think I hate the duty of a host, hear by what waves of fortune I myself am drowned, that you may no longer seek glad gifts from a wretched man. At the time when the pure toga was first handed to me, when my flowering age was keeping its glad spring, I played enough; the goddess is not unacquainted with me who mixes a sweet bitterness with cares: but this whole pursuit the death of my brother took from me in grief. O brother torn from wretched me, you, you in dying have broken my well-being, brother, with you our whole house is buried together, all our joys have perished together with you, which your sweet love nourished in life. At his death I have driven from my whole mind these pursuits and all the delights of the spirit. So, as for what you write — that it is a disgrace for Catullus to be at Verona, because here anyone of the better sort must warm his cold limbs in a deserted bed — that, Manlius, is no disgrace; it is rather a misery. You will forgive me, then, if these gifts, which grief has taken from me, I do not give you, since I cannot. For that I have no great store of writers by me, this happens because I live at Rome: that is my house, that my seat; there my time is spent; here only one little book-box, out of many, follows me. And since it is so, I would not have you think I do this from a grudging mind, or a spirit not generous enough, because the store of neither thing was provided to you on your asking: I would offer it unbidden, if any store were at hand.

I cannot keep silent, goddesses, of the matter in which Allius helped me, or with how great services he helped me, lest fleeting time, in forgetful ages, hide this devotion of his in blind night: but I will tell you, and you in turn tell it to many thousands, and make this paper speak when it is old, and let him grow known, dead, more and more, nor let the spider, weaving its thin web aloft, do its work over the deserted name of Allius. For you know what care the two-faced Amathusia gave me, and in what fashion she brought me down, when I burned as much as the Trinacrian rock and the Malian water at Oetean Thermopylae, and my sad eyes did not cease to waste with unceasing weeping, nor my cheeks to be wet with the sad shower — as, on the airy peak of a high mountain, a shining stream leaps out from a mossy rock, which, when it has rolled headlong down the sloping valley, crosses through the midst of a crowded road, a sweet relief to the weary traveler in his sweat, when the heavy heat splits the parched fields — here, as to sailors tossed in a black whirlwind a fair wind comes, breathing more gently, implored now by the prayer of Pollux, now of Castor, such was the help of Allius to me. He opened up the closed field with a wide path, he gave me a house, and gave me its mistress, where we might practice our shared loves. There my radiant goddess brought herself on soft foot, and set her shining sole on the worn threshold, pressing it on the creaking sandal, as once, burning with love for her husband, came Laodamia to the house of Protesilaus, begun in vain, since not yet had the victim appeased the lords of heaven with sacred blood. May nothing please me so much, Rhamnusian maiden, as is rashly taken up against the will of the lords. How the starved altar craves the pious blood, Laodamia learned, having lost her husband, forced to let go the neck of her new husband before one winter and a second, coming round again, had sated her greedy love in the long nights, that she might live, the marriage broken off — which the Fates knew would not be far away, if he went as a soldier to the Ilian walls: for by then, by the rape of Helen, Troy had begun to summon to itself the chief men of the Argives, Troy (the horror) — the common grave of Asia and Europe, Troy, the bitter ash of men and of all their valor, which brought even on our own brother a pitiable death. Alas, brother taken from wretched me, alas, sweet light taken from a wretched brother, with you our whole house is buried together, all our joys have perished together with you, which your sweet love nourished in life. Whom now, so far off, not among familiar graves, nor laid near kindred ashes, but buried in foul Troy, ill-starred Troy, an alien earth holds at the world’s farthest soil. To which, then, hurrying from every side, they say the Greek youth deserted their household hearths, lest Paris, rejoicing in his stolen adulteress, should pass an untroubled leisure in a peaceful bedchamber. By that chance, then, most beautiful Laodamia, was your marriage, sweeter to you than life and breath, torn away: so great an eddy of love, sucking you down, had carried you into a sheer abyss, such as the Greeks say, at Pheneus near Cyllene, drains the rich soil by draining off the marsh, which once the false-fathered son of Amphitryon is said to have dug, cutting through the mountain’s marrow, at the time when with sure arrow he smote the Stymphalian monsters at the command of a lesser master, that the gate of heaven might be trodden by more gods, and Hebe not be long in her virginity. But your deep love was deeper than that abyss, which taught you, untamed, to bear the yoke. For not so dear to a father worn out with age is the one head of a late-born grandson by his daughter, who, scarcely at last found as heir to ancestral wealth, has had his name entered in the witnessed tablets, and, taking away the impious joys of a mocked kinsman, drives the vulture from the white-haired head: nor has any mate rejoiced so much in her snow-white dove, the dove that is said, far more wantonly, ever to pluck kisses with nipping beak than any woman, however many-desiring she may be — but you alone outdid the great frenzies of these once you were joined to your golden-haired man. Worthy then to yield to her in nothing, or in little, my light brought herself into my lap, about whom, running here and there, often Cupid shone bright in his saffron tunic. And though she is not content with Catullus alone, I will bear the rare strayings of my discreet mistress, that I be not too troublesome, in the manner of fools: often even Juno, greatest of the heaven-dwellers, has choked down her blazing wrath at her husband’s fault, learning the very many strayings of all-desiring Jove. And yet it is not right to compare men with gods — take off the thankless burden of a trembling parent. And yet she did not come to me, led on her father’s right hand, into a house fragrant with Assyrian scent, but gave me, in the wondrous night, her stolen little gifts, taken from the very lap of her husband himself. Therefore it is enough, if to me alone is given the day she marks with a whiter stone. This gift, finished as best I could in verse, is rendered, Allius, to you, for your many services, that this day and that, and another and another, may not touch your name with scaly rust. To this the gods will add as many gifts as Themis once was wont to bring to the pious men of old: may you be happy, both you and at once your life, and the house in which we played, my mistress and I, and he who at the first gave us the ground we stood on, from whom first all good things were born for me, and far before all, she who is dearer to me than my own self, my light, by whose living it is sweet to me to live."

Don’t wonder, Rufus, why no woman wants to lay her tender thigh beneath you, not even if you undermine her with the gift of a rare dress or the delights of a translucent gem. A certain ugly tale hurts you, that in the valley of your armpits a fierce goat is said to live. Everyone fears him. No wonder: for he is a very bad beast, one no pretty girl would lie with. So either kill off that cruel plague of noses, or stop wondering why they flee.

My woman says she would rather marry no one than me, not if Jupiter himself should court her. She says it: but what a woman says to her eager lover should be written on the wind and the running water.

If anyone is rightly thwarted by the cursed goat of the armpits, or if anyone is justly racked by crippling gout, that rival of yours, who shares your love, has marvelously caught both ills from you. For every time he fucks, he punishes the two of them: he afflicts her with the smell, and dies himself of the gout.

You used to say once that you knew Catullus alone, Lesbia, that you would not hold Jove before me. I loved you then not only as the common man his mistress, but as a father loves his sons and his sons-in-law. Now I have come to know you: so, though I burn the more fiercely, yet you are much cheaper and slighter to me. How can that be? you ask. Because such an injury drives a lover to love the more, but to wish well the less.

Stop wishing to earn any thanks from anyone, or thinking that anyone can be made loyal. All is thankless; to have done a kindness counts for nothing — no, it even wearies, it wearies and harms the more: as with me, whom no one presses harder or more bitterly than the man who lately held me his one and only friend.

Gellius had heard that his uncle was wont to scold if anyone spoke or did anything lewd. That this might not happen to himself, he kneaded thoroughly the uncle’s own wife, and made the uncle a Harpocrates. He did what he wished: for now, though he face-fuck the uncle himself, the uncle will not say a word.

To this my mind has been brought down by your fault, my Lesbia, and so has ruined itself by its own devotion, that now it can neither wish you well, were you to become the best, nor cease to love you, whatever you do.

If a man has any pleasure in recalling kindnesses done before, when he thinks himself to have been loyal, not to have broken sacred faith, nor in any pact to have abused the gods’ power to deceive men, then many joys remain in store for you in a long life, Catullus, out of this thankless love. For whatever men can say or do well to anyone, these have been said and done by you: all of which, entrusted to a thankless mind, have perished. Why, then, torment yourself any longer? Why not steel your heart and draw yourself back from there, and cease, the gods unwilling, to be wretched? It is hard to lay down a long love all at once; it is hard, but accomplish it however you can. This is the one salvation, this must be carried through by you; do this, whether it can be done or cannot. O gods, if it is yours to pity, or if to any you have ever brought aid at the very point of death, look on wretched me, and, if I have lived purely, tear this plague and ruin from me! Ah me, how, creeping like a numbness into my deepest joints, it has driven the gladness out of my whole breast. No longer do I ask this, that she love me in return, or — what cannot be — that she be willing to be chaste: I myself long to be well and to lay down this foul sickness. O gods, grant me this in return for my devotion.

Rufus, trusted by me as a friend in vain and to no purpose (in vain? no — at a great and bitter price), is it thus you crept up on me and, burning my inmost parts, ah, snatched from wretched me all our goods? You snatched them — alas, the cruel poison of our life, alas, the plague of our friendship.

Gallus has brothers: of the one, the wife is most charming, of the other, the son is charming. Gallus is a fine fellow: for he joins sweet loves, so that a pretty girl may lie with a pretty boy. Gallus is a fool, and does not see he is a husband, who, an uncle, teaches an uncle’s adultery. But now what grieves me is that the pure little kisses of a pure little girl your foul saliva has befouled. But you will not bear it unpunished: for all the ages will know you, and aged Rumor will tell what you are.

Lesbius is pretty. Why not? Lesbia would rather have him than you, Catullus, with your whole clan. But still, let this pretty one sell Catullus, clan and all, if he can find three kisses from men who know him.

What am I to say, Gellius, why those rosy little lips of yours grow whiter than wintry snow, when you leave home in the morning, and when the eighth hour rouses you from soft rest in the long day? Something is certainly wrong: does Rumor truly whisper that you devour the great strained middle of a man? So it surely is: poor little Victor’s burst loins cry it out, and your lips marked with drained-off whey.

Could there be no fine fellow in so great a people, Juventius, whom you might begin to love, besides that guest of yours from the dying seat of Pisaurum, paler than a gilded statue? He is now dear to your heart; him you dare to set before us, and you do not know what a crime you commit.

Quintius, if you want Catullus to owe you his eyes, or anything dearer, if there is anything dearer than eyes, do not snatch from him what is far dearer to him than his eyes, or than whatever is dearer than eyes.

Lesbia says many bad things about me before her husband: this is the greatest delight to that fool. Mule, you notice nothing. If, forgetting me, she kept silent, she would be cured: but as it is, since she snarls and rails, she not only remembers, but — what is far sharper — she is angry: that is, she burns, and so she speaks.

Chommodious, Arrius would say, whenever he wished to say commodious, and ambush — hambush; and then he marvelously hoped he had spoken finely when he had said hambush with all his might. So, I suppose, his mother, so his free-born uncle, so his mother’s father and mother had spoken. When he was sent to Syria, everyone’s ears had a rest: they heard these same words, smooth and light, and feared no such words for themselves thereafter, when suddenly a horrible message is brought — that the Ionian waves, after Arrius had gone there, were now no longer Ionian, but Hionian.

I hate and I love. Why I do so, perhaps you ask. I do not know, but I feel it happen, and I am tormented.

Quintia is beautiful to many; to me she is fair, tall, straight. These single points I grant. That whole — "beautiful" — I deny: for there is no charm, no grain of salt in so great a body. Lesbia is beautiful, who, being wholly the loveliest, has also stolen every Venus from all other women.

No woman can say she was so truly loved as much as you, my Lesbia, were loved by me. No faith was ever found in any bond so great as has been found, on my side, in your love.

What does he do, Gellius, who with mother and sister itches and keeps awake all night with his tunic thrown off? What does he do, who will not let his uncle be a husband? Do you know how much guilt he takes upon himself? He takes on, Gellius, as much as neither farthest Tethys nor Oceanus, father of the nymphs, can wash away: for there is no crime he could go beyond, not if, head bowed, he should devour himself.

Gellius is thin. Why not? With so good a mother, and one so vigorous and so charming a sister, and so good an uncle, and the whole world full of girl cousins, why should he stop being lean? Even though he touch nothing but what it is forbidden to touch, you will find as many reasons as you like why he is lean.

Let a Magus be born from the unspeakable union of Gellius and his mother, and let him learn Persian divination: for a Magus must be begotten of mother and son, if the impious religion of the Persians is true, that he may worship the gods with an acceptable hymn, melting the fat caul in the flame.

Not for this, Gellius, did I hope you would prove faithful to me in this wretched, this ruined love of ours — because I knew you well or thought you steadfast, or able to hold your mind back from base disgrace, but because I saw that she was neither mother nor sister to you, she whose great love was eating me. And although I was bound to you by much intimacy, I had not believed that cause enough for you. You thought it cause enough: so great is your joy in every fault in which there is anything of crime.

Lesbia says bad things about me always, and never falls silent about me: I’ll be damned if Lesbia does not love me. By what sign? Because mine are just the same: I curse her constantly, but I’ll be damned if I do not love her.

I am not too eager to wish to please you, Caesar, nor to know whether you are a white man or a black.

Prick commits adultery. The prick commits adultery, sure enough. This is the saying: the pot itself picks the greens.

The Zmyrna of my Cinna, at last in the ninth harvest after it was begun, and published in the ninth winter, while meanwhile Hortensius pours out five hundred thousand in a single... The Zmyrna will be sent deep to the hollow waves of the Satrachus, the Zmyrna the grey ages will long pore over. But the Annals of Volusius will die at Padua itself, and often give loose tunics to the mackerel. Let the small monuments of my friend be dear to me: let the crowd take its joy in swollen Antimachus.

If anything pleasing or welcome, Calvus, can come to the silent tombs out of our grief, through the longing with which we renew old loves and weep for friendships once let go, surely Quintilia does not grieve so much for her untimely death as she rejoices in your love.

I did not think — so may the gods love me — that it made any difference whether I smelled Aemilius’s mouth or his arse. The one no cleaner, the other no filthier: but in fact the arse is the cleaner and the better, for it has no teeth. The mouth has teeth a foot and a half long, and gums, truly, like an old wagon-box, and besides a gape such as the split cunt of a pissing she-mule is wont to have in the heat. He fucks many women, and makes himself out to be charming, and is not handed over to the mill and the donkey? If any woman touches him, must we not think she could lick the arse of a sick hangman?

Of you, if of anyone, it can be said, foul Victius, what is said of the windy and the foolish: with that tongue of yours, should the need arise, you could lick arseholes and rawhide clogs. If you want to ruin us all utterly, Victius, just gape: you will fully do what you desire.

I stole from you, while you played, honeyed Juventius, a little kiss sweeter than sweet ambrosia. But I did not take it unpunished: for more than an hour, I remember, I hung fixed on the top of the cross, while I cleared myself to you, and could not with any tears take away the least bit of your cruelty. For as soon as it was done, you wiped your lips, washing them with many drops, with all your fingers, lest anything caught from my mouth should remain, as if it were the foul spittle of a pissed-on whore. Besides, you did not cease to hand wretched me over to hostile Love and to torment me in every way, so that for me that little kiss, changed now from ambrosia, was sadder than sad hellebore. Since you set such a penalty for my wretched love, never after this will I steal kisses again.

Caelius loves Aufilenus, and Quintius Aufilena, the flower of Veronese youth, to distraction — this one the brother, that one the sister. This is what is meant by the truly sweet brotherhood of comrades. To whom shall I rather wish well? To you, Caelius: for your matchless friendship was proved to us by your deeds, when the maddening flame scorched my marrow. Be happy, Caelius, be mighty in love.

Carried through many peoples and over many seas, I come, brother, to these wretched funeral rites, to present you with the last gift of death and to speak, in vain, to your silent ash, since fortune has taken your very self from me — alas, poor brother, undeservedly torn from me. Yet now, meanwhile, these offerings, which by the ancient custom of our fathers were handed down as a sad gift for the rites, receive — dripping much with a brother’s weeping — and forever, brother, hail and farewell.

If anything has ever been entrusted by a faithful friend in silence, one whose loyalty of heart is well known, you will find that I too am bound, sacred, by their law, Cornelius, and think me made a Harpocrates.

Either, please, give me back my ten thousand sesterces, Silo, and then be as savage and ungovernable as you like: or, if the money delights you, stop, I beg, being a pimp and savage and ungovernable both.

Do you believe I could have cursed my life, who is dearer to me than both my eyes? I could not, nor, if I could, would I love so desperately: but you, with Tappo, make a monster of everything.

Prick tries to climb the Piplean mountain: the Muses with their pitchforks throw him out headlong.

When a man sees a pretty boy together with an auctioneer, what is he to think, but that the boy is longing to sell himself?

If anything ever falls to one who desires and longs for it beyond his hope, that is welcome to the heart in a special way. So this is welcome to us too, more precious than gold, that you restore yourself, Lesbia, to me, who long for you: you restore yourself to one longing and unhoping; of yourself you bring yourself back to us. O day to be marked with a brighter sign! Who lives happier than I alone, or who will be able to name things more to be wished for than this life of mine?

If, Cominius, your grey old age, fouled with impure ways, should die by the people’s verdict, I do not doubt that first your tongue, enemy of the good, cut out, would be given to the greedy vulture, your gouged-out eyes the raven would devour with black throat, your guts the dogs, the rest of your limbs the wolves.

You promise me, my life, that this love of ours between us will be sweet and everlasting. Great gods, grant that she can truly promise it, and say it sincerely and from the heart, so that it may be ours to draw out, our whole life long, this eternal pact of sacred friendship.

Aufilena, good mistresses are always praised: they take the price for what they undertake to do. You, since you promised me what you then lied about, are no friend; since you neither give and yet often take, you do a wrong. To do it would befit a frank woman, or not to have promised, a chaste one, Aufilena: but to snatch the gifts by cheating does more than the greediest whore who prostitutes herself with her whole body.

Aufilena, to live content with a single man is, among the highest praises of wives, a praise: but it is better to lie under anyone you please, whoever, than to bear, from an uncle, brothers for your own mother.

You are much of a man, Naso, and yet not much of a man goes down with you: Naso, you are much — and a catamite.

In Pompey’s first consulship, Cinna, two men used to frequent Maecilia: now, his consulship made again, the two have stayed, but the thousands have grown, each one into a thousand. Adultery is a fertile seed.

Firmanus, in his estate, is reported rich — Prick, and not falsely so, who holds in it so many splendid things: fowling of every kind, fish, meadows, fields, and game. In vain: he outruns the income with his spending. So I grant he is rich, so long as everything is lacking; let us praise the estate, so long as the man himself goes wanting at home.

Prick has nearly thirty acres of meadow, forty of plough-land: the rest is sea. Why should he not be able to outdo Croesus in riches, who in a single estate owns so many goods — meadows, fields, vast woods and pastures and marshes all the way to the Hyperboreans and the Ocean sea? All these are great, yet he himself is the greatest of all, not a man, but truly a great, menacing prick.

Often, searching with eager and hunting mind how I might be able to send you songs of the son of Battus, to soften you toward us, so that you would not try to send your hostile shafts against my very head, I see now that this labor was taken up in vain, Gellius, and that here my prayers have availed nothing. Against those shafts of yours I guard myself with my cloak: but, pierced by mine, you shall pay the penalty."