“You’ll dine well at my house, Fabullus
In a few days, if the gods favor you, and
If you bring a fine, large meal with you.
And don’t forget: a bright-eyed girl,
Wine, salt, and every kind of cheer.
If you bring these things I ask, fine friend,
You will dine well: for your Catullus’ wallet
Is full of nothing but spider webs.
In exchange, you’ll get unmixed love,
Or something even sweeter and more elegant:
I will give you a perfume which
Venuses and Cupids gave to my girl.
The kind of thing that when you smell it, Fabullus,
You’ll beg the gods to make you all nose.”
Cenabis bene, mi Fabulle, apud me
paucis, si tibi di favent, diebus,
si tecum attuleris bonam atque magnam
cenam, non sine candida puella
et vino et sale et omnibus cachinnis.
haec si, inquam, attuleris, venuste noster,
cenabis bene; nam tui Catulli
plenus sacculus est aranearum.
sed contra accipies meros amores
seu quid suavius elegantiusve est:
nam unguentum dabo, quod meae puellae
donarunt Veneres Cupidinesque,
quod tu cum olfacies, deos rogabis,
totum ut te faciant, Fabulle, nasum.
My woman says, not even if Zeus himself asked her.
She says: but what a woman says to a lover in desire
It is better to write on the wind or running water.”
Nulli se dicit mulier mea nubere malle
quam mihi, non si se Iuppiter ipse petat.
dicit: sed mulier cupido quod dicit amanti,
in vento et rapida scribere oportet aqua.
When I was sixteen and studying for the Catullus/Horace AP (which no longer exists! O Tempora! O Mores!), I thought this poem clever in its brevity and directness. (And, oh my, I oft quoted it to ladies of my acquaintance and age!) I always liked the brusque repetition of dicit in line 3 and the classic image (‘borrowed’ I guess, from Sophocles and others) of writing on wind and water. Of course, what romantic or even cynic is ignorant of the verisimilitude of the use of hyperbole in the first line?
More than half a lifetime later, I cringe a bit at the phrase mulier mea and the implicit and structural sexism of the poem: can we read the woman’s infidelity of speech in bed as a universal human failure (because, please, don’t men lie as frequently if not more to a cupidae amanti?) or does the heft of Catullus’ comment rely too heavily on ancient misogynistic tropes to be saved?
“No woman can claim that she has been loved as much
Truly, as my Lesbia has been loved by me.
No promise has ever been made in as much faith
As can be found on my part in loving you.”
Nulla potest mulier tantum se dicere amatam
vere, quantum a me Lesbia amata mea est.
nulla fides ullo fuit umquam foedere tanta,
quanta in amore tuo ex parte reperta mea est.
Though the twenty-first century me still cringes a bit at the possessive mea Lesbia, people do still talk this way. These two poems are connected by style (hyperbole, anaphora; length), diction (nulli/mulier; nulla/mulier in the first lines) and content; but I think the latter is the superior composition both for its artistry (in its repetitions, inversions and pauses (for example, look how the pentameter stops at me and at tuo/ex; the formalist in me is losing it!) and its less possibly offensive character. Who has not felt the sting of the unequal love, the proffered faith, and the total commitment? Of course, the careful balance and brilliance of the compositions undermines claims of passion. And, yet, the integration of a passionate claim within the controlled context of a carefully built poem speaks to a poet’s power to make something out of nothing, to build order out of chaos.
And, in short, though I ply my trade now as a Homerist, it was Catullus who seduced me into Classics. The dirty bastard is still playing his tricks on the world.
“I find myself turning over and over in my mind again How I might send you some of Callimachus’ poems To soften you towards me, so you might not try To pour out your missiles on my head too. But now I see that I have taken up this task in vain, Gellius, and that my prayers are worth nothing. I will make your weapons miss me in flight But you’ll be struck fast and then pay my price.”
Saepe tibi studioso animo venante requirens
carmina uti possem mittere Battiadae,
qui te lenirem nobis, neu conarere
tela infesta mittere in usque caput,
hunc video mihi nunc frustra sumptum esse laborem,
Gelli, nec nostras hic valuisse preces.
contra nos tela ista tua evitabimus amitha
at fixus nostris tu dabis supplicium.
“Stella’s dove, his fond delight – go ahead and let Verona hear this! – is better than Catullus’ sparrow. That dove is better than the sparrow by as much as my friend Stella is better than Catullus.”
Stellae delicium mei columba,
Verona licet audiente dicam,
uicit, Maxime, passerem Catulli.
Tanto Stella meus tuo Catullo
quanto passere maior est columba.
“My Lesbia, let’s live and let’s love,
Let all the rumors of harsh old men
count for only a penny.
Suns can set and rise again:
but when our brief light sets
we must sleep a lonely endless night.
Give me a thousand kisses and then a hundred,
then another thousand and a second hundred,
And even then another thousand, a hundred more.
When we’ve had so many thousands,
we will mix them together so we don’t know,
so that no wicked man can feel envy
when he knows what a number of kisses there’ve been.”
Vivamus mea Lesbia, atque amemus,
rumoresque senum severiorum
omnes unius aestimemus assis!
soles occidere et redire possunt:
nobis cum semel occidit brevis lux,
nox est perpetua una dormienda.
da mi basia mille, deinde centum,
dein mille altera, dein secunda centum,
deinde usque altera mille, deinde centum.
dein, cum milia multa fecerimus,
conturbabimus illa, ne sciamus,
aut ne quis malus invidere possit,
cum tantum sciat esse basiorum.
As with earlier poems of Catullus I have mentioned, this one came to me when I was a teenager studying AP Latin. I don’t know if anything more ruinous or momentous could happen to a teenager in his rutting years than encountering Catullus (ok, that sentence needs a limiting phrase–“in a Latin class”). It has been twenty years since I first read this poem, but I could almost translate every line without looking at the Latin.
Perhaps there is an unpleasant serendipity in the Latin AP on Catullus no longer being offered? For better or worse, I never would have pursued classics if not for the verve and danger of Gaius Valerius Catullus. Discipuli, thank your Latin teachers!
What a Girl Wants: Mimnermus vs. Homer (Propertius 1.9.9-14)
What good to you is threnody, or crying over the walls built by Amphion’s lyre? In matters of love, a verse of Mimnermus is worth a lot more than Homer. Gentle Cupid would like to hear a softer strain. So please, put down those sad little books, and sing something that a girl would like to hear!
quid tibi nunc misero prodest grave dicere carmen
aut Amphioniae moenia flere lyrae? 10
plus in amore valet Mimnermi versus Homero:
carmina mansuetus lenia quaerit Amor.
i quaeso et tristis istos sepone libellos,
et cane quod quaevis nosse puella velit!
Greek Anthology, 5.88 (Rufinus): The Fire of Unrequited Love
“Fire-bearing love, if you haven’t the strength to light two equally afire
Either extinguish it or share the flame burning in only one.”
“Gods spare me! I didn’t believe it mattered at all
Whether I smelled Aemilius’ mouth or ass.
The former’s no cleaner and the latter’s no filthier-
No, I think his ass is cleaner and better
Since it’s lacking teeth. His teeth are six feet long,
with gums just like a rotted cart frame,
Both set upon a jaw hanging open like
The maw of a pissing mule in summer.
He screws many woman and fancies himself charming,
And he is not remanded to a grinding mill and donkey?
How can we think that any woman who touches him
Wouldn’t lick the sick ass of an executioner?”
Non (ita me di ament) quicquam referre putavi,
utrumne os an culum olfacerem Aemilio.
nilo mundius hoc, nihiloque immundius illud,
verum etiam culus mundior et melior:
nam sine dentibus est. hic dentis sesquipedalis,
gingivas vero ploxeni habet veteris,
praeterea rictum qualem diffissus in aestu
meientis mulae cunnus habere solet.
hic futuit multas et se facit esse venustum,
et non pistrino traditur atque asino?
quem siqua attingit, non illam posse putemus
aegroti culum lingere carnificis?
“Arrius would always say ‘khonvenience’ when he meant to say ‘convenience,’ and ‘hevil plots’ instead of ‘evil plots.’ He really thought that he was speaking after quite the grand fashion when he put all of his energy into his, ‘hhhhevil plots.’ I imagine that his mother, his uncle, and his maternal grandparents all spoke that way.
Then, he went to Syria, and everyone’s ears took a break. They heard these phrases now with a lighter, softer inflection. They no longer had such a dread fear of such phrases, when suddenly, we received some terrible news: the Ionian Sea, after Arrius had gone there, was now no longer ‘Ionian,’ but ‘Hionian.'”
Chommoda dicebat, si quando commoda vellet
dicere, et insidias Arrius hinsidias,
et tum mirifice sperabat se esse locutum,
cum quantum poterat dixerat hinsidias.
credo, sic mater, sic liber avunculus eius.
sic maternus auus dixerat atque avia.
hoc misso in Syriam requierant omnibus aures
audibant eadem haec leniter et leviter,
nec sibi postilla metuebant talia verba,
cum subito affertur nuntius horribilis,
Ionios fluctus, postquam illuc Arrius isset,
iam non Ionios esse sed Hionios.
NOTE: Arrius puts on this affectation in an effort to sound more Greek by (rather absurdly) adding aspiration to his C to make it sound more like Chi, and aspirating his vowels. Greek education was very much in fashion among the younger set, and there would be no better way to “hint” that you had studied in Greece than to pretend that your lengthy stay in that country had permanently altered your speech.
