THE POEMS OF CATULLUS
Of the one hundred and sixteen surviving poems of the Roman equestrian Gaius Valerius Catullus (ca. 84 – ca. 54 BC), those about love, whether of a woman or a boy, are notable for their passion. They were written in the last eight years of his life. Presented here all references to Greek love in them. The translation is by by F. W. Cornish for the Loeb Classical Library volume 6, originally published by the Harvard University Press in 1913, but revised (partly to correct important evasions on sexual matters) by G. P.Goold and republished by the same in 1987.
XV
| To you, Aurelius, I entrust my all, even my loved one,[1] and I ask a favour of you, a modest favour. If you have ever with all your soul desired to keep anything pure and free from stain, then guard my darling now in safety—I don’t mean from the vulgar throng; I have no fear of such as pass to and fro our streets absorbed in their own business. ‘Tis you I fear, you and your penis, so ready to molest good boys and bad alike. Set it in motion to your heart’s content, where and how you please when you walk abroad. This one boy I would have you spare: methinks ‘tis a modest request. And if infatuate frenzy drive you to the heinous crime of treason against me, ah! then I pity you for your sad fate. For before the city’s gaze with fettered feet you shall be tortured as cruelly as an adulterer. | Commendo tibi me ac meos amores, Aureli. veniam peto pudenter, ut, si quicquam animo tuo cupisti, quod castum expeteres et integellum, [5] conserves puerum mihi pudice, non dico a populo: nihil veremur istos, qui in platea modo huc modo illuc in re praetereunt sua occupati: verum a te metuo tuoque pene [10] infesto pueris bonis malisque. quem tu qua lubet, ut lubet, moveto, quantum vis, ubi erit foris, paratum: hunc unum excipio, ut puto, pudenter. quod si te mala mens furorque vecors [15] in tantam inpulerit, sceleste, culpam, ut nostrum insidiis caput lacessas, a tum te miserum malique fati, quem attractis pedibus patente porta percurrent raphanique mugilesque! |
XXI
| Aurelius, father of all starvations, not these only by all that have been or are or shall be in future years, you wish to sport with my favourite. And not on the quiet: you keep with him, jest in his company, you stick close to his side and leave nothing untried. All in vain: as you plot against me, I’ll have at you first. If you had your belly full I should say nothing; as it is, what annoys me is that the lad will learn how to be hungry and thirsty. Stop, then, while you decently can, or you will finish up by getting stuffed.[2] | Avreli, pater esuritionum, non harum modo, sed quot aut fuerunt aut sunt aut aliis erunt in annis. pedicare cupis meos amores. nec clam: nam simul es, iocaris una, haerens ad latus omnia experiris. frustra: nam insidias mihi instruentem tangam te prior irrumatione atque id si faceres satur, tacerem: [10] nunc ipsum id doleo, quod esurire me me puer et sitire discet. quare desine, dum licet pudico, ne finem facias, sed irrumatus. |
XXIV
| You who are the flower of the Juventii,[3] not only of those we know, but of all who either have been or shall be hereafter in other years,—I had rather you had given the riches of Midas to that fellow who has neither servant nor money-box, that so allow yourself to be courted by him. “What? is he not a fine gentleman?” you will say. Oh, yes; but this fine gentleman has neither a servant nor a money-box. You may put this aside and make as little of it as you like: for all that, he has neither a servant nor a money-box.[4] | Oqvi flosculus es Iuventiorum, non horum modo, sed quot aut fuerunt aut posthac aliis erunt in annis, mallem divitias Midae dedisses [5] isti, cui neque servus est neque arca, quam sic te sineres ab illo amari. “quid? non est homo bellus?” inquies. est: sed bello huic neque servus est neque arca. hoc tu quamlubet abice elevaque: [10] nec servum tamen ille habet neque arcam. |
XLVIII
| Your honeyed eyes, Juventius, if one should let me go on kissing still, I would kiss them three hundred thousand times, nor would I think I should ever have enough, no, not if the harvest of our kissing were thicker than the ripe ears of corn. | Mellitos oculos tuos, Iuventi, siquis me sinat usque basiare, usque ad milia basiem trecenta, nec mi umquam videar satur futurus, [5] non si densior aridis aristis sit nostrae seges osculationis. |
LVI
| O, Cato, what an absurdly funny thing, worthy for you to hear and laugh at! Laugh, as much as you love Catullus, Cato. The thing is too absurd and funny. I just now caught sweetheart’s pet masturbating, and (so help me the mother of Venus) I beat him[5] with my hard cane—in tandem![6] | Orem ridiculam, Cato, et iocosam dignamque auribus et tuo cachinno. ride, quicquid amas, Cato, Catullum: res est ridicula et nimis iocosa. [5] deprendi modo pupulum puellae trusantem: hunc ego, si placet Dionae, protelo rigida mea cecidi. |
LXI
Part of a long wedding-song (a traditional kind of verse going back to Home). The poet imagines himself as the leader of a chorus commenting on the proceedings at a particular wedding. The following lines pertain to the part of the festivities where the bride was escorted in a torchlight procession from her old home to her new one:
|
[…] Let not the merry Fescennine jesting[7] be silent long, let the favourite boy give away nuts[8] to the slaves, when he hears how his lord has left his love.[9] Give nuts to the slaves, favourite: your time is past: you have played with nuts long enough: you must now be the servant of Talassius.[10] Give nuts, beloved slave. To-day and yesterday you disdained the country wives:[11] now the barbers haves your cheeks.[12] Wretched, ah! wretched lover, throw the nuts![13] They will say that you, perfumed bridegroom, are unwilling to abstain from hairless boys[14]; but abstain. Io Hymen[15] Hymenaeus io, io Hymen Hymenaeus! We know that you are acquainted with no unlawful joys; but a husband has not the same liberty.[16] Io Hymen Hymenaeus io, io Hymen Hymenaeus! […] |
ne diu taceat procax da nuces pueris, iners sordebant tibi vilicae, diceris male te a tuis scimus haec tibi quae licent |
LXXXI
| Could there not, Juventius, be found in all this people a pretty fellow whom you might begin to like, besides that friend of yours from the sickly region of Pisaurum,[17] paler than a gilded statue, who now is dear to you, whom you presume to prefer to me, and know not what a deed you do? | Nemone in tanto potuit populo esse, Iuventi, bellus homo, quem tu diligere inciperes, praeterquam iste tuus moribunda ab sede Pisauri hospes inaurata pallidior statua, [5] qui tibi nunc cordist, quem tu praeponere nobis audes, et nescis quod facinus facias? |
XCIX
| I stole a kiss from you, honey-sweet Juventius, while you were playing, a kiss sweater than sweet ambrosia. But not unpunished; for I remember how for more than an hour I hung impaled on the top of the gallows tree, while I was excusing myself to you, yet could not with all my tears take away ever so little from your anger; for no sooner was it done, than you washed your lips clean with plenty of water, and wiped them with your dainty fingers, that no contagion from my mouth might remain, as though it were the foul spit of some filthy whore. Besides that, you made haste to deliver your unhappy lover to angry love, and to torture him in every manner, so that that kiss, changed from ambrosia, was now more bitter than bitter hellebore. Since then you impose this penalty on my unlucky love, henceforth I will never steal any kisses.[18] | Svrripvi tibi dum ludis, mellite Iuventi, saviolum dulci dulcius ambrosia. verum id non impune tuli: namque amplius horam suffixum in summa me memini esse cruce, [5] dum tibi me purgo nec possum fletibus ullis tantillum vestrae demere saevitiae. nam simul id factumst, multis diluta labella guttis abstersti mollibus articulis, ne quicquam nostro contractum ex ore maneret, [10] tamquam commictae spurca saliva lupae. praeterea infesto miserum me tradere amori non cessasti omnique excruciare modo, ut mi ex ambrosia mutatum iam foret illud saviolum tristi tristius helleboro. [15] quam quoniam poenam misero proponis amori numquam iam posthac basia surripiam. |
C
| Caelius is mad for Aufillenus and Quintius for Aufillena, one for the brother, one for the sister, both the fine flower of Veronese youth. Here’s the sweet brotherhood of the proverb![19] Which shall I vote for? You, Caelius; your priceless friendship to me passed the test of fire when a mad flame scorched my vitals. Luck to you, Caelius! success to your love![20] | Caelivs Aufillenum et Quintius Aufillenam~ flos Veronensum depereunt iuvenum, hic fratrem, ille sororem. hoc est, quod dicitur, illud fraternum vere dulce sodalicium. [5] cui faveam potius? Caeli, tibi: nam tua nobis perspectast igni tum unica amicitia, cum vesana meas torreret flamma medullas. sis felix, Caeli, sis in amore potens. |
CVI
| If one sees a pretty boy in company with an auctioneer, what is one to think but that he wants to sell himself? | Cvm puero bello praeconem qui videt esse, quid credat, nisi se vendere discupere? |
[1] It is generally assumed that Juvenal’s beloved here, “this one boy” he is pleading and warning Aurelius (evidently known to be a prolific lover of boys) not to try to seduce in both this poem and no. XXI, is the boy named as Juventius in poems XXIV, XLVIII, LXXXI and XCIX.
[2] A lampoon on Aurelius and apparently part of Catullus’s cycle of poems on Juventius, the boy named as the one he was in love with in poems XXIV, XLVIII, LXXXI and XCIX, this is a sequel to no. XV in which he warned Aurelius, a prolific boy-lover, against trying to seduce Juventius. Evidently, Catullus has since seen Aurelius making advances on his beloved and so he is now threatening to retaliate violently. Catullus’s intent here is unlikely to be entirely serious. It appears from poem XII that Aurelius was his friend.
[3] This is the first of four poems to name the boy Catullus was in love with as Juventius, besides being the one that makes it clear that he belonged to the old noble family of that name, one of whom had been consul in 163 BC (and a branch of which lived in Catullus’s home town of Verona). This makes Catullus, uniquely, an open spokesman for those who aspired to be lovers of free-born Roman boys. Other poets such as Horace and Martial wrote publicly about their liaisons with boys, but, so far as one can tell, these were always slave-boys. Other very eminent men, including emperors, made a public show of loving boys, but these too were either slave-boys or Greeks, and it is clear that such love affairs were not seen as remotely shameful. By contrast, pedicating a free-born Roman male was a stuprum, an outrage against his sexual integrity, like copulating with a free-born Roman maiden, and, at least in theory, against the Scantinian law. Even if only a fraction of the countless claims made of boys giving themselves away to lovers were true, it is clear that such liaisons were a feature of Roman life (and probably ignored when discreetly conducted) – how could there otherwise be anxiety about their occurrence? However, Catullus aside, we only hear the voices of those condemning them as shameful. Catullus invites us to imagine for a Roman what was utterly commonplace for a Greek: to be in love with a boy of the same social standing as oneself.
[4] Catullus’s unnamed rival for Juventius’s love may well be the Aurelius of poems XV and XXI, especially as he here uses the same argument against him as in XXI, that he is too poor to be worthy. In both cases, Catullus’s intent is probably largely humorous. It appears from poem XII that Aurelius was his friend.
[5] A double entendre, cecidi being understood not only as verberavi but also as pedicavi. [Translator’s footnote]
[6] The last three lines are more accurately and bluntly translated by Thomas K. Hubbard as, “just caught my girlfriend’s little slave boy / Getting it up for her, and (Venus love me!) / Split him, tandem-fashion, with my banger!” (Homosexuality in Greece and Rome, Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 2003, p. 330)
[7] The “Fescennine jesting” is the ribaldry addressed directly or indirectly to the newly married couple in the bridal procession and was seen as a means of warding off the evil eye.
[8] Walnuts were scattered among the crowd during the bride’s procession, a task here given to the boy. Nuts were also used as playthings in children’s games, so the “wretched” (in the sense of “unhappy”, the Latin is miser) boy is implictly being admonished to grow up now that he can no longer be his master’s catamite.
[9] The boy is the bridegroom’s slave and concubinus (male concubine) and thus a puer delicatus. The bridegroom is named as Manlius Torquatus and was probably the L. Manlius Torquatus praised by Cicero as a scholar and speaker who was praetor in 49 BC and killed in civil war in 47 BC. Though slightly older than Catullus, he would still have been a fairly young man at his wedding.
The master has now “left his [the boy’s] love” to get married. In other words, he is giving the boy up. Even though Catullus in his inimitable extravagant way is exaggerating in suggesting the bridegroom is now permanently bound to adhere exclusively to his wife (since we know from Catullus as well as a host of other writers that that is not how Roman men were expected to behave), it is entirely credible that, as a newly-wed, the bridegroom was expected for a considerable while to forget all about his old loves and devote himself to building a happy marriage and new family. When the day finally arrives that he is ready for amorous divertissements, the boy will surely be too old.
[10] Talassius is the Roman equivalent of Hymenaios, the Greek god of marriage ceremonies.
[11] The wives specifically referred to here were vilicae, the wives of bailiffs (supervisors) on slave-operated farms. They were proverbially dragons, of whom most young slaves would be terrified.
However, “the pampered and privileged city-bred delicatus thought himself too good for the homely bailiffs’ wives on the country estate: cf. Virg. Eel. 2. 44 […] Plin. N.H. xxxv. 88.” (C. J. Fordyce, Catullus: A Commentary, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1961, p. 249)
[12] The barber is going to cut off the boy’s long hair, characteristic feature of pueri delicati (as opposed to slave-boys kept for menial work), a ceremony symbolising his transition from a boy suitable for a man’s love to a man no longer suitable for the passive sexual role. In Martial’s Epigram XI 78 iv, the bride herself is depicted as the one who snips off the locks of her husband’s boys.
[13] The repetition twice of the order to the miser concubine (unhappy catamite) to throw the nuts is probably an indication of his misery and reluctance to enter into the spirit of the occasion. It is easy to imagine that this was much the worst day he had known in his young life: from basking in the love of the distinguished son of a great house, the wedding brought about in one heavy blow his precipitous demotion to ordinary slave. Being forced into joyous celebration of it can only have been rubbing salt into his wounds, made much worse still by the loud public commentary on his downfall. Who knows what cruel jibes, born of years of pent-up jealousy, he may have had to put up with from kitchen slave-boys too plain to have been noticed by the master (if indeed they had ever been in his presence).
[14] The translator’s highly euphemistic translation of glabris abstinere as “give up your old pleasures” has been replaced by the undisguised “abstain from hairless boys”.
[15] Hymenaios is the god of marriage ceremonies and inspirer of songs such as this one. “io Hymen Hymenaee” was a ritual formula chanted at weddings.
[16] The imagined chorus is acknowledging that there has been nothing unlawful (or, more accurately, not allowed) about the joys he has had with his boy concubine or anyone else, but now, as a husband, he must forego what is usually permissible. This grand expectation is in accord with the extravagant language and tone of wishful thinking of the whole poem, but the reader is brought back to reality with the blunt advice to the bride given in the immediately following three lines: “You too, O bride, be sure you refuse not what your husband claims, lest he go elsewhere to find it.” In other words, any expectation that the husband will adhere sexually to his wife is dependent on her satisfying him; there is no suggestion he should try to limit his urges.
[17] Pisaurum (modern Italian: Pesaro) was a town on the coast of Umbria. References by Catullus to provincial origins are generally derogatory. Here Catullus is suggesting that a man from a dull, distant and sickly town is unfit to be the special friend of a noble Roman boy. Possibly the rival he is trying to put down is the Aurelius of poems XV and XXI.
[18] It may be that Catullus’s using a real name for Juventius, in contrast to the pseudonym “Lesbia” he used for the woman he was in love with, shows an intention to embarrass explained by both Juventius’s treatment of him described in this poem and Juventius’s preference for Aurelius mentioned in previous poems.
[19] Catullus is mischievously giving a new twist to the proverbial idea of friendship as brotherhood: Caelius and Quintius are brothers from being in love with siblings.
[20] The mad flame has to be “Lesbia”, as Catullus calls the woman who is the subject of most of his love poems. Presumably the Caelius here thanked for his priceless friendship when needed is the Caelius to whom he told the story of Lesbia’s degradation in poem 58. In decisive contrast, Quintius is presumably the one of his name reproached for taking Catullus’s unnamed love (probably, but not necessarily Lesbia) from him in poem 82. Catullus’s family incidentally came from Verona, hence his knowing the flower of its youth.
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