Book_^EsCil_„ THE POEMS OF VALERIUS CATULLUS, TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH VERSE. WITH LIFE OF THE POET, EXCURSUS, AND ILLUSTRATIVE NOTES. BY JAMES CRANSTOUN, B.A. - spirat adhuc amor.' EDINBURGH: WILLIAM P. NIMMO. 1867. i*$ JOANNI CARMICHAEL, A.M., EDIMB., IN SCHOLA REGIA EDIMBURGENSI MAGISTRO, VIRO OPTIMO ET ERUDITISSIMO, PIETATIS CAUSA, CATULLI VERONENSIS LIBELLUM, AB SE INTERPRETATUM, D. D. D. JACOBUS CRANSTOUN. PREFACE. The following version of the Poems of Catullus — executed during the translator's leisure hours — is submitted to the public, not with the view of super- seding existing translations, but of more widely diffusing an acquaintance with a poet who is now beginning to meet with some degree of the atten- tion he deserves. The plan of reproducing all the poems may appear objectionable to some ; but to the translator it seemed preferable to that of mutilating the poet, and presenting him in a totally different aspect from that in which he has revealed himself in his writings. Moreover, a translator, if he is anxious to give anything like an exact reflex of his author — which ought surely to be his highest aim — can never be justified in suppressing the one vi PREFACE. half of his works merely to give him a more respect- able appearance. Of all the Latin poets, Catullus, perhaps, can least afford to submit to this excising process. His expressions, it is true, are often in- tensely sensuous, sometimes even grossly licentious, but to obliterate these and to clothe him in the garb of purity would be to misrepresent him entirely. He would be Atys, not Catullus. In the present translation, except in very rare in- stances, no omission, even to the extent of a line, has been made, and this has occurred only when it has been deemed inexpedient to give the English equivalents. Some of the poems, for obvious reasons, have not been rendered with the same verbal accuracy as others, but in all of them it has been the aim of the translator to preserve, so far as possible, the force and spirit of the original. The notes and excursus in the latter part of the volume, and more especially the translations of pas- sages, principally from the Augustan and post-Augus- tan poets, will, it is hoped, prove interesting to those who are engaged in the actual study of Catullus. PREFACE. vii These could easily have been multiplied, and parallels and imitations introduced from modern poets, but they would have swelled the bulk of the volume to an extent never contemplated. The translator would here gratefully acknowledge his obligations to the notes contained in the admir- able edition of "Catullus' 7 by Doering, to the "Ro- man Poets of the Republic" by Professor Sellar, and to the articles on Latin poetry, by the Rev. Henry Thompson, in the Encyclopaedia Metropolitan^ as well as to the Observationes Criticae (Catullianae) of Haupt, the Quaestiones Catullianae of Schwabe, and the few but valuable textual remarks of Rossbach, prefixed to his careful edition of Catullus. To Professor Sellar of the University of Edinburgh, to Professor Nichol of the University of Glasgow, and to his much-esteemed friend Mr John Carmichael of the High School of Edinburgh, the translator's special thanks are due, for much valuable assist- ance, most cordially given, during the progress of the work. The text principally followed, although every avail- able one has been consulted, is that of Doering. vin PREFACE, When it has been materially departed from, the edition which has been followed is specified. Should this translation be the means of making the works of Catullus better known, or of affording some slight aid to the youthful student, the trans- lator will consider himself amply repaid for his self- imposed and by no means irksome toil. Grammar School, Kirkcudbright, March 1867. CONTENTS. PAGE Life of Catullus, 3 I. To Cornelius Nepos, 27 II. To Lesbia's Sparrow, 28 III. On the Death of the Sparrow, 29 IV. Dedication of his Pinnace, . 30 V. To Lesbia, .... 3i VI. To Flavius, 32 VII. To Lesbia, .... 33 VIII. To Himself, on Lesbia's Inconstancy, 34 IX. To Verannius, on his Return from Spain, 35 X. On the Mistress of Varus, 35 XI. To Furius and Aurelius — the Farewell Mes sage to Lesbia, 37 XII. To Asinius, . . 38 XIII. To Fabullus — Invitation to Dinner, 39 XIV. To Licinius Calvus, 40 XV. To Aurelius, 41 XVI. To Aurelius and Furius, 42 XVII. To a Certain Town, 43 tVIII. To the Garden God, 45 XIX. The Garden God, 45 XX. The Garden God, 46 XXI. To Aurelius, 47 CONTENTS. XXII. To Varus, .... PAGE 43 XXIII. To Furius, .... 49 XXIV. To a Beauty, ■ . 5o XXV. To Thallus, .... 5o XXVI. To Furius, .... 5* XXVII. To his Cupbearer— Two Versions, . 52 XXVIII. To Verannius and Fabullus, 53 XXIX. On Mamurra, Addressed to Caesar, 54 XXX. To AlpHenus, 55 XXXI. To the Peninsula of Sirmio, on his Returr to his Villa there, 1 56 XXXII. To Ipsithilla, 57 XXXIII. On the Vibennii, 58 XXXIV. Hymn to Diana, 59 XXXV. To Caecilius, 60 XXXVI. On the Annals of Volusius, 61 XXXVII. To the Frequenters of a Certain Tavern, 62 XXXVIII. To Cornificius, 63 XXXIX. On Egnatius, 64 XL. To Ravidus, 65 XLI. On the Mistress of Formianus, 65 XLII. On a Certain Female, 66 XLIII. On the Mistress of Formianus, 67 XLIV. To his Farm, 67 XLV. On Acme and Septimhis, 68 XLVI. To Himself, on the Return of Spring, 70 XLVII. To Porcius and Socration, 70 XLVIII. On a Beauty, 7i XLIX. To Cicero, .... 7i L. To Licinius, 72 LI. a To Lesbia, .... 73 LI. b Fragment, .... 74 LII. To Himself, on Struma and Vatinius, 74 LIII. On Somebody and Calvus, 74 LIV. To Caesar, .... 75 LV. To Camerius, . 75 CONTENTS. xi PAGE LVI. To Cato, .... 77 LVII. To Mamurra and Caesar, 77 LVIII. To Coelius, Concerning Lesbia, 78 LIX. On Rufa and Rufulus, 78 LX. Fragment, .... 79 LXI. Nuptial Song in Honour of Junia and Man lius, .... 79 LXII. Nuptial Song, 89 LXIII. Atys, 94 LXIV. The Nuptials of Peleus and Thetis, IOI LXV. To Hortalus, 130 LXVI. Beronice's Hair, 131 LXVII. Dialogue between Catullus and a Door, 135 LXVIII. a Epistle to Manlius, . 137 LXVIII. 1 \ To Allius, .... 139 LXIX. To Rufus, .... 145 LXX. On the Inconstancy of Woman's Love, 145 LXXI. To Virro, . 146 LXXII. To Lesbia, .... 146 LXXIII. On an Ingrate, 147 LXXIV. On Gellius, .... 148 LXXV. To Lesbia, .... 148 LXXVI. To Himself. — The Lover's Petition, 149 LXXVII. To Rufus, . . . 150 LXXVIII. On Gallus, . . . . 151 LXXIX. On Lesbius, . . . 152 LXXX. To Gellius, .... 152 LXXXI. To a Beauty, 153 LXXXII. To Quintius, . 154 LXXXIII. On the Husband of Lesbia, . 154 LXXXIV. On Arrius, . 155 LXXXV. On his Love — Two Versions, 155, 156 LXXXVI. Quintia and Lesbia Compared, 156 LXXXVII. To Lesbia (translated in lxxv.), 157 LXXXVIII. On Gellius, . 157 LXXXIX. On Gellius, . 157 xii CONTENTS. PAGE xc. On Gellius, .... • 158 XCI. On Gellius, .... • 158 xcn. On Lesbia, .... 159 xciii. On Caesar, .... *59 xciv. On Mamurra, 160 xcv. On " Smyrna," a Poem by Cinna, . 160 xcvi. To Calvus, on the Death of Quintilia, 161 xcvu. On Aemilius, 161 xcviii. To Vettius, .... 162 xcix. The Kiss. — To a Beauty, . 163 C On Coelius and Quintius, 164 CI. The Poet at his Brother's Grave — Two Ver sions, .... 165 CI I. To Cornelius, ... 166 cm. To Silo, .... 167 civ. On Lesbia, .... 167 cv. On Mamurra, 167 cvi. On an Auctioneer and a Pretty Girl, 1 68 evil. To Lesbia. — The Reconciliation, 168 cvin. On Cominius, 169. cix. To Lesbia, .... 169 ex. To Aufilena, 170 cxi. To Aufilena, 171 cxn. To Naso, 171 cxin. To Cinna, . 171 cxiv. On Mamurra, . 172 cxv. On Mamurra, . . . . 172 cxvi. To Gellius, . 173 Excursus and Illustrative Notes, CATULLUS. LIFE OF CATULLUS. Ifpl^OME, during the first five centuries of her ||m>pij existence, had nothing worthy of the name v ^^ ?\ f a poetical literature. The fanciful theory propounded by Perizonius, and energetically and plausibly defended by Niebuhr, Macaulay, and others, receives no support from the relics of antiquity. Rome had, doubtless, a rich legendary history, but it was mainly traditional ; and her re- cords probably owe more of their charm to the ima- ginative genius of Livy than to the ballads and poetic essays of early bards. The ritual hymns, Fescennine lays, Saturae, festal and funeral songs, which constituted the autochthonous literature of the country, were rude compositions in primitive and inartistic metres, and destitute alike of imagination and poetic fire. They even failed to excite any ad- LIFE OF CATULLUS. miration in the cultivated minds of immediately suc- ceeding generations. Ennius has written the character of his country- men in a single line — " Bellipotentes sunt magi' quam sapientipotentes." They were essentially a people of arms, not of arts; yet their warlike power was ultimately the means of bringing them under the refining influences of the literature inherited or possessed by the con- quered nations. The war with Pyrrhus, and the long siege of Tarentum, were the immediate causes that led to this great change in the national character. But the subtle genius of the Greek had long been insinuating itself into the southern states of Italy, and from these parts come the first writers who com- mand our attention. These writers stood in the position of aliens to Rome, and owed their culture not to her, but to Magna Graecia. They imbibed the philosophy of Greece ; they accepted her theo- gony ; they developed a closely imitative literature — a literature that even among themselves was judged by the Grecian standard, and esteemed in proportion to the accuracy and taste with which the writer re- produced the graces of the Grecian mind. To this period belong the names of Livius Andronicus, Naevius, Ennius, Plautus, Caecilius, Terence, Pacu- vius, Attius, and Lucilius. Livius Andronicus was a LIFE OF CATULLUS. Greek, and deserves notice here more from his having been the medium through which the Romans firs became acquainted, in their own tongue, with the works of his countrymen, than from any original power or merits of his own. Naevius, in his epic poem on the first Punic war, was the last of the Roman poets who employed the old Saturnian or native measure. Ennius produced an epic, Greek in type, but Roman in subject and spirit, that furnished matter for reproduction and imitation to all who afterwards essayed the same task. But, apart from their indebted- ness to Greek literature, these last two were men ot vigorous mind, and are in every way entitled to rank as great poets. Plautus, Caecilius, Terence, Pacuvius, andAttius — all born outside the boundaries of Latium, and deriving from foreign influences their culture and knowledge of the poetic art, were mainly employed in adapting to the Roman stage the works of the Greek dramatists." Lucilius alone was a Latin by birth ; but he was in an equal degree indebted to Greek literature. He has, however, the high merit of developing a distinct species of poetry. Formal satire had hitherto been unknown both to the Greeks and Romans. Among the former, satire had been confined to the comic drama ; indeed, among a people like the Greeks, of fine sensibilities, whose ideal of life naturally sought LIFE OF CATULLUS. visible representation in dramatic display, comedy would seem to have been the proper form of satiric composition. Among the latter, it sprung up in the primitive scenic medley, and partook more of the nature of low buffoonery and coarse scurrility than of the wit, verve, and caustic humour of the brilliant Attic comedy. It was next adapted to the Roman taste in the pieces which the above-mentioned writers had borrowed from Greek originals. But with the blunt, straightforward, . matter-of-fact Roman — the man of practicality, far excellence, — satire, in order to its complete development and intelligent appreciation, required to take the form of a direct empiric philosophy. It did so with Lucilius, and what was the consequence % Unlike the borrowed forms of literature, it had a vigorous youth, a vigorous manhood a vigorous age. The genius of comedy disappeared with Plautus, Terence, and Attius, and the productions of these writers were soon forced to give place to the beast-fights and man-fights of the amphitheatre and the games of the circus. The Epic of Ennius and the Epic of Virgil — themselves inferior to their model — were succeeded by feebler efforts. The original and profound speculations of Plato and Aristotle awoke no deeper echo in the Roman mind than the fine oratorical treatises of Cicero. Catullus and Horace were the only poets who worthily struck the ^Eolian lyre. It was different in the case of Satire. This native product of Roman LIFE OF CATULLUS. genius, strong, keen, Roman-like in Lucilius, attained unequalled perfection in Horace, and, as if catching fresh fire from the hell of Roman depravity, re- appeared long afterwards with unabated power and the despairing earnestness of righteous ire in the great satirist of the empire. After Lucilius, nearly half a century elapsed before another luminary appeared in the poetical horizon. The language, however, was becoming gradually moulded for the purposes of the artist ; conquered Greece had yielded up the poetry and philosophy of ages as an everlasting heritage to her barbarian conquerors; the Grecising tendency of past genera- tions was still on the increase, when two poets of rare genius appeared : Titus Lucretius Cams, the author of the noblest didactic poem of ancient or modern times, and Q. or C. Valerius Catullus. 1 According to the Eusebian Chronicle, Catullus 1 He is called Quintus by Pliny the Elder, {Nat. Hist, xxxvii. cap. 6,) and Caius by Appuleius, (in Apologia.) If reliance could be placed on Jos. Scaliger's reading of a very corrupt line, (Carm. lxvii. 12,) which he testifies to finding clearly written on the copy of James Cujas or Cujacius, a French jurist of the sixteenth century, Quintus is undoubtedly his praenomen. Scaliger's reading of the line is — " Verum istis populi naenia, Quinte, facit." Lachmann conjectures — " Verum istud populi fabula, Quinte, facit." We leave it to the reader to set what value he pleases on the readings of these two scholars. 8 LIFE OF CATULLUS. was born b.c. 87, in the consulship of Cneius Octa- vius and Lucius Cornelius Cinna, and died at the age of thirty, b.c 57. The latter date is clearly incorrect, as one of his poems 1 plainly testifies that he was alive in the consulship of Vatinius, b.c 47. This fact is enough to throw doubt on the date there as- signed to his birth, and, indeed, when all the circum- stances are considered, we are led to the conclusion that the error in the one case is as great as in the other. 2 The mistake of the chronicler may have arisen from the name of the consul, for it is extremely prob- able that he was born in the consulship of another Cneius Octavius, who held office with Marcus Scri- bonius Curio b.c. 76. Assuming this to be the case, there is no difficulty in believing that he died at the age of thirty, as there is nothing in his writings to show that he was living after B.C. 46. Catullus was born at Verona, 3 or in its immediate vicinity. Whether he belonged to a branch of the illustrious family of the Valerii it is impossible to say; but it is evident that his father must have been a person 2 Many of the poems of Catullus were clearly written after B.C. 56, while only one can with certainty be dated before that year, viz., the 46th, which appears to have been written in B.C. 57. 3 Ixvii. 34. Ov. Amor, in., EL xv. 7. Mart. i. 62 ; x. 103 ; xiy 195. LIFE OF CATULLUS. of considerable position, as we learn from Suetonius 1 that he was the friend and frequent entertainer of Julius Caesar. He probably remained in his native place till he assumed the toga virilis, which we can- not far err in supposing he did about the age of fifteen or sixteen. He then went to Rome, where, in all likelihood, for two years he led a gay and extravagant life. 2 His expenditure at this time would seem to have equalled, perhaps even exceeded, his income, if we are to put anything like a literal construction on his occasional outcries against poverty. 3 This we can hardly do, for about this time, or very shortly after it, a splendid villa at Sirmio, 4 if not, indeed, the whole peninsula, either by inheritance or by purchase, came into his possession. On the other hand, it must be admitted that such a banker as Silo, 5 and companions like Furius and Aurelius 6 — if they were really among the poet's acquaintances at this time — must have drawn heavily on even great re- sources. Whether on account of the unsatisfactory state of his finances, or from the desire to amass a fortune, he set out with a number of especial friends for Bithynia, in the suite of Memmius, 7 B.C. 58. The expedition, however, proved a complete failure, and tired of the service, and disgusted with the meanness 1 Suet, in Julio, cap. J3. 2 Cf. lxviii. 1 6-1 8. 3 Vide'xiu,, xxvi., &c. 4 xxxi. 5 ciii. 6 xxi. 7 x. and xxviii. I O LIFE OF CA TULL US. and rapacity of his chief, he bade Bithynia and his companions farewell, and set out to visit the great Asiatic cities. 1 After completing his tour in the East he would seem to have had a yacht built expressly for himself at Amastris, 2 on the shores of the Euxine. In it he sailed to Italy, and up the Padus and its tri- butary, u the smooth-sliding Mincius," till he reached Lake Benacus, (Lago di Garda,) on the bosom of whose waters lay his villa and estate. 3 He probably returned to Italy in B.C. 56, and had cer- tainly settled down in Rome before the impeach- ment of Vatinius by Calvus, (b.c. 54,) for he tells us that he was present on the occasion, and in a short epigrammatic effusion he pays a humorous tribute to the talents of that distinguished orator. 4 While Catullus had been seeking an El Dorado in the East, his dear companions, Verannius and Fabullus, had been doing the same in the West They had vainly tried the province of Spain in the company of Piso, 5 and returned shortly after 6 the arrival of Catullus in Italy, with no better success. This Piso is generally identified with Cn. Calpurnius Piso, who having taken part with Catiline in his first con- spiracy, b.c. 66, was hurried off to Spain as Quaestor, with Praetorian authority. This office, we learn from Sallust, (Cat. c. 19,) he did not long hold, having been 1 xlvi. 2 iv. 3 xxxi. 4 liii. 5 xxviii. 6 ix., xii., xxviiu LIFE OF CA TULLUS. 1 1 slain while making a progress within his province. Now it is abundantly evident, from the poems cited above, that Verannius and Fabullus were in Spain after the return of Catullus. It is therefore certain that it must have been some other Piso who was praetor in Spain at this time. 1 After the poet's return from Bithynia he met and deeply loved the beautiful and dissolute Lesbia. A statement of the evidence that has led us to the con- clusion that this was the period of his intimacy with that lady may not be inapposite. In the lines ad- dressed to Mamurra's mistress, (xliii.,) written evi- dently as much for the purpose of ridiculing Mamurra's extravagance as his sweetheart's ugliness, and which one cannot conceive as written prior to Caesar's occu- pancy of Gaul, (or what is the point in the words " decoctor" and " Provincia" X) she is said to be compared to his matchless Lesbia. But Caesar did not obtain the province of Gaul till B.C. 59, nor set out for it till B.C. 58. The third stanza of Carm. xi. points still more clearly to a period subsequent to 58 as the time of his intimacy with Lesbia. We are told by Appuleius 2 that her real name was Clodia. From this circumstance most of the editors 1 xlvii. and note thereto. 2 Appuleius in Apologia. Without at all questioning the vera- city of Appuleius, it is but fair to state that he lived 200 years after Catullus. 1 2 LIFE OF CA TULL US. of Catullus have rushed to the conclusion that she was the sister of the notorious Publius Clodius Pul- cher, and wife of Metellus Celer. This supposition, however, cannot consistently be entertained, as we learn from Catullus himself that her husband was living during their intimacy, 1 while we know that Metellus Celer died in b.c. 59, the year before Catullus set out for Bithynia. With many, too, it has been matter of astonishment that Cicero has been so highly eulogised by Catullus, 2 but this need not excite surprise, seeing that the poet's Lesbia could not have been the victim of his merciless attack. During the next few years Catullus resided occasion- ally at Verona, 3 Sirmio, 4 and his Tiburtine villa 5 — for in the neighbourhood of Tibur, like Horace, he had a charming little retreat — but principally in Rome. 6 Many of his occasional poems to his friends, the beautiful address to Sirmio, perhaps his celebrated " Hymenaeus " in honour of Junia and Manlius, and his wildly-grand poem of " Atys," were written about this time. With regard to "Atys," it may be vain even to hazard a conjecture— it is so un- like everything else — but surely it is natural to sup- pose that the charming nuptial song, redolent of flowers and innocence and bliss, was written in the heyday of his own love. 1 lxxxiii. 2 xlix. 3 xxxv. 4 xxxi. 5 xliv. 6 lxviii. a 34. LIFE OF CA TULL US. 1 3 Lesbia was now his all-absorbing attraction. He loves her to distraction. He leaves her, vowing that he will never again feel for her the thrill of passion, or the tender emotion of love. But it is only for a little while. Degraded though she be, he cannot leave her. She binds him fast with her silken fetters, and he becomes again her willing slave. Still she cannot be chaste \ and, sinking lower and lower, she disappears from our gaze, leaving the poet's heart bursting with sorrow, yet stirred with an unutterable emotion for the once loved object whom many a sad experience has now taught him to loathe. 1 Soon after an event occurred which cast a gloom over all his after life — the death of a brother in the Troad. 2 Actuated by the holiest feelings of natural piety he made a pilgrimage to Asia Minor to visit his grave, and pay in a foreign land the last sad offices in accordance with the usage of his ancestors. After bidding his silent ashes an eternal farewell he returned once more to Rome, 3 and then retired to Verona, 4 for a time relinquishing even the society of valued friends, and denying himself the solace of the muse. 5 A promise, however, which he had made to his friend Hortalus, 6 to translate for him the " Hair of Berenice " from Callimachus, 7 calls from him an effusion accompanied by the poem in ques- 1 lviii. 2 ci. 3 lxviii. a 34. 4 lxviii. a 27. 5 lxv. and lxviii. 6 lxv. 7 lxvi. 1 4 LIFE OF CATULLUS. tion ; but in this, and two subsequent pieces, 1 he strikes the lyre with a tenderer hand and a sadder heart. From the last of these, addressed to Allius, and numbered lxviii. 6 in our translation, we learn that the poet's possessions are still further enlarged, through that friend's liberality, by a gift of land, a house, and " an easier love " than Lesbia, " if not so fair." 2 Catullus, deeply wounded though he may have been by the faithlessness of his earlier love, has still a heart, if not as passionately fond, far more firmly balanced, and equally alive to the joys of reciprocated affection. He has now, in great measure, thrown jealousy to the winds, a lesson that to a mind like his must have been hard to learn, and in the case of his present mistress he solaces himself in this wise : — ' ' And though she may not live for me alone, Few are the falsehoods of my modest maid, Then let me bear them as to me unknown, Nor like a fool her broken faith parade." 3 About this time would seem to have been written most of his bitter lampoons, evincing deep personal hate as well as utter detestation of the inhuman vices in the individuals whom he branded. Some of these could well have been spared, and the loss of them 1 lxviii. a and lxviii. 6 2 lxviii. 6 27 and 28. » lxviii. 6 95-97, &c. LIFE OF CATULLUS. 1 5 would have been great gain to the reputation of Catullus, inasmuch as they have left an indelible stain on the memory of one of the most gifted and guile- less of men. But to this time, too, the brief autumn of an early age, we are assuredly indebted for his grand heroic legend of " Peleus and Thetis." 1 Thoroughly im- bued with the spirit of the Grecian mind, and enabled from two voyages across the ^Egean to portray with Homeric precision the places and scenes coming within the range of his subject, he was no less ad- mirably qualified, by his own bitter experience, in- tensity of feeling, and passionate, sensuous nature, to delineate the perfidy of Theseus, the passion of Ariadne, the sweet, heaven-hued bliss of Peleus and Thetis. In his later years he witnessed the dying struggles of Roman liberty ; he saw the most notorious hypo- crites and villains exalted to the highest offices of state ; he saw Roman honour become a jest, and, as if the fire in the temple of Vesta were extinguished, the virtue of a Roman matron become an empty name. With his brother's death fresh in his memory, with such a state of society around him, and probably in failing health, 2 we can almost see him penning the ominous lines against Nonius and Vatinius, 3 in which 1 lxiv. 2 Vide Carm. xxxviii. 3 liii. 1 6 LIFE OF CATULLUS. he seems longing to kiss the hand that sooner or later must put a period alike to the most poignant of human sorrows and the most rapturous of human joys. With regard to his personal appearance, we know nothing. With regard to his parents and his earlier years, from his own pen, we know as little. Mythic story has not, as in the case of more fortunate sons of song, portrayed to us " the young Catullus " with bees swarming on his lips or as cherished by doves on the lonely mountain height, but verily the Muses might have bathed his temples with the dews of Helicon, and the laughing Loves rocked him to rest in rosy bowers of bliss. For he was a joint nursling of Eros and Erato — an amorous as well as an amatory poet. Of no one could it be said with more propriety, that over his heart was outspread " the bloom of young desire and purple light of love." Those wondrous echoes — the poems addressed to Lesbia — that have no parallel in the literature of any language, emphatically stamp him the poet of passion. Yet there is not one offen- sive expression in their whole composition. We wish that the same could be said of all his productions. Unfortunately this may not be, and though we de- plore the turpitude of many of his lines, yea, many in which we cannot claim for him the accorded privilege of the satirist, we are bound to attribute these LIFE OF CA TULL US. 1 7 blemishes in great measure to a too frank and out- spoken disposition, and to the gross licence that was allowed alike to plebeian and patrician in his de- praved and dissolute age. It cannot, however, be said that these are the offspring of a low and grovel- ling nature, or that his moral character was worse than that of the greatest men of- his own time, or of the perioi immediately succeeding. Moreover, the same objections that are raised against him may be urged with equal force against almost every Roman poet. That the freedom of his verses was assailed even in his own day, and by those of perhaps looser morals than himself, is evident from the lines in defence of his amatory poems. 1 The claim which he there makes to purity of life, and which he elsewhere asserts with terrible earnestness, 2 would tejid to show that he had not in his life trespassed beyond at least his own ideas of de- corum and morality. He admits that his verses are highly spiced in order that they may have a charm for January as well as May, 3 but he indig- nantly repels the imputation that his life is tainted and impure. Nor ought we to forget, and this should give some weight to his statement, that in the brightest period of our own poetic literature habitual impurity of ex- pression was as common as in any period of heathen 1 xvi. 2 lxxvi. 3 xvi. 7, 10, 11. B LIFE OF CATULLUS. antiquity. The pages of our early dramatists are stained with expressions as objectionable, and the more unpardonable, in that they are the productions of a Christian age. Yet who would think of attach- ing to Shakspeare's life the impurity of some of his writings ] But by far the strongest argument in favour of Catullus seems to us to lie in his chivalrous, exalted, and high-toned appreciation of the female character. Lesbia is in his eyes the loveliest thing of earth — the glory of a summer sun — till she deservedly incurs his disfavour. Junia, the bride of his friend Manlius, is fair as the myrtle, 1 unrivalled as the, hyacinth, 2 tender as the ivy 3 and the vine, 4 and modest as the blushing rose. 5 So, too, is Ariadne. 6 And what a beauty, and depth, and tenderness in his picture of the lovely and hapless Laodamia ! 7 No poet has paid a higher tribute to virtuous affection, or sung in tenderer tones the joys of wedded love. Nor is there anywhere else to be found a more unsparing denun- ciation of gross licentiousness and impious crimin- ality. Even the all-dreaded name of the Imperial Dictator cannot shield him from the fury of his fierce and relentless pen. 8 He is as much a foe to auto- cracy, on the one hand, as he is to democracy on 1 lxi. 21 seqq. 2 lxi. 93. 3 lxi. 34, 35. 4 lxi. 106 seqq. 5 lxi. 194, 195. 6 lxiv. 86-90. 7 lxviii. 6 33 seqq. 8 xxix., liv., lvii. LIFE OF CATULLUS. 19 the other, nor has he more sympathy with Pompey than with Caesar. 1 They are both in his estimation unscrupulous charlatans, bent on the ruin of the Roman name. Though his poems betray almost no political leanings, we easily see that he is at heart a leal old republican. Anything derogatory to Roman liberty or ancient prestige is met with a burst of fierce indignation or bitter scorn. Nor had he one jot more of sympathy with the hordes of vulgar aspirants for poetic honours, — the wretched poetasters of the age:— 11 Saecli incommoda, pessimi poetae." 2 Yet, singularly free from mean jealousy or malevo- lence, he was ever ready to extend the hand of fellowship, and to award the meed of approbation to his worthy brethren of the lyre. 3 While he was fastidious in literary matters, he was equally so as to the bearing and demeanour of those into whose company he was casually thrown. In short he had a hearty horror of bores of every description. The pretty, chattering minx of Varus ; 4 the urbane, polished, and witty Suffenus, 5 but who, alas ! was never so happy as when writing verses and reciting and admiring his wretched drivel; 6 the black-bearded, white-toothed fop Egnatius, 7 with his everlasting grin; 1 xxix. 25. 2 xiv. 23. 3 xxxv., L, xcv 4 x. 5 xiv. 19 and xxii. 6 xxii. 16. * 7 xxxvii. 19 and xxxix. passim. 20 LIFE OF CATULLUS. the conceited lawyer Sextianus, 1 with his pestilential speech-book; the napkin-filching Murrucinus, 2 and the cockney Arrius, 3 alike come in for a share of his genial indignation. Catullus seems to have been fond of retirement ; and whether sojourning in the city or in one or other of his country residences, he kept quite aloof from the cares and bustle of public life, finding a purer enjoyment in the society of men of kindred tastes and studies. Of a generous and impulsive nature, sterling honour, an affectionate and con- fiding disposition, and a keen relish for innocent social enjoyment, he had many friends with whom he lived on terms of the greatest amity. 4 But he was painfully sensitive. The smallest slight ; an undue liberty taken with him or his ; nay, a single word in disparagement of himself or his friends, wounded him to the soul. And if his loves and friendships were strong and abiding, his hates were equally so. This his invectives against Caesar, Mamurra, Gellius, Vatinius, Vettius, and Cominius amply attest. He 1 xliv. io seqq. 2 xii. 3 lxxxiv. 4 Among his especial friends he reckoned Cornelius Nepos, the historian ; Licinius Calvus, orator and brother-poet ; Caeci- lius, the author of a< poem on Cybele ; Caius Helvidius Cinna, the author of " Smyrna/' and one of his companions in his Bithynian expedition; the versatile and accomplished genius Asinius Pollio, the poets Cornificins and Hortalus ; Cato, the litterateur ; Alphenus Varus, the lawyer; Manlius Torquatus, Verannius, Fabullus, and others. LIFE OF CA TULLUS. 2 1 would seem never to have forgiven an injury, except the first faithlessness of Lesbia. The most trivial neglect or apparent forgetfulness of him hurt his feelings, and drew from his bosom bitter sighs of anguish. But in this respect he was equally careful not to wound the feelings of others. Even the temporary interruption of friendly inter- course, and the delay to fulfil a promise, caused by the death of a dearly-loved brother, must be ex- plained to Hortalus, lest he should deem him regard- less of his friendship, or careless in the discharge of a sacred duty. 1 With a detailed notice ot his poems we do not mean here to occupy the reader. We would merely indicate the position which we conceive he holds among Roman poets, and the influence which he exercised over his immediate successors. Catullus was the first Roman lyric poet; at least the first who adapted successfully the ancient Greek measures to the Roman lyre. This fact dis- proves in some measure the unqualified claims of Horace : — " Dicar .... Princeps yEolium carmen ad Italos Deduxisse modos." 2 " Parios ego primus iambos Ostendi Latio." 3 1 lxv. 2 Hor. Od. iii. 30. 10-14. 3 Hor. Epist. i. xix. 23, 24. 2 2 LIFE OF CA TULL US. But perhaps Horace, in the first of these instances, is alluding to the " Alcaic," which he was the first to introduce, and which became in his hands the vehicle for his noblest thoughts. That Catullus enjoyed great popularity in his own day is abundantly evident, both from the many high eulogies passed upon him by writers of antiquity and from the bitter sneer of his lyric rival — " Simius iste Nil praeter Calvum et doctus cantare Catullum." x However, that he is entitled to the superlative eulogium of Niebuhr, " that he was the greatest of all the Roman poets, if we except, perhaps, a few of the earlier ones/' is a verdict against which many will protest. Horace alone disputes with him the palm of lyric poetry. Without instituting an invidious com- parison, we would merely note the chief character- istics of both j and neither, we think, will lose by being placed in juxtaposition. Catullus had, more than any other Roman poet, passionate intensity of lyrical conception. Horace possessed " fancy, wit, and humour, in matchless combination." There is greater naturalness and more spontaneity in the former; but there is in the latter more graceful expression and far more artistic skill. Catullus seems to have written every line under the 1 Hor. Sat. I. x. 18, 19. LIFE OF CATULLUS. 23 influence of some uncontrollable impulse \ Horace with great diligence and care. The former was con- tent to imitate the Greek model as he found it \ the latter careful to give his imitations a distinctive char- acter by confining himself rigidly to severer rules and more in keeping with a severer tongue. Yet both, though professed imitators of the Greeks, are thoroughly Roman in spirit. They are, however, in the treatment of their subjects, and even in their modes of thought, essentially distinct, and each is un- approachable in his sphere. They are magis pares quam similes — the dawn and the sunset — the first and the last of Roman lyric poets. But it is not on his lyrical effusions alone that the fame of Catullus rests. Indeed his greatest produc- tions are outside the pale of lyric poetry. "Atys" has no rival in any language. The " Peleus and Thetis/' again, has passages of far higher epic sub- limity than any other Roman poem. Virgil has not attained the grandeur of the " Ariadne," in the famous episode of " Dido," nor the tender pathos of the part- ing of ^Egeus and Theseus in the interview between ^Eneas and his sire on the downfall of Ilium. The description of the Bacchants 1 in the same poem, which has furnished Rubens with a subject for his great picture, has, perhaps, more life, freshness, and 1 lxiv. 254-264. LIFE OF CATULLUS. originality than any other passage in Roman epic poetry. Yet, all this notwithstanding, Catullus has not pro- duced an epic. True, he has given evidence of pos- sessing higher epic power than any Roman poet with whom we are acquainted — nothing more. But the world looks to deeds alone ; and while we recog- nise a loftier power in Catullus, we are constrained to accord to Virgil the well-merited praise of being Rome's great epic poet. The merits of Catullus, therefore, do not rest on his excellence in one species of poetry; he has es- sayed many, and he is great in them all. Perhaps the highest tribute to his vast and varied abilities is to be found in the fact that none of his successors in the brilliant Augustan period were above imitating his finest passages. While this statement is amply borne out by the references hereafter cited, it is worth mention- ing that Ovid, to whom, perhaps more than to any other Roman writer after Catullus, the Muse was prodigal of her gifts, has no less than four times tried his strength on "Ariadne," once, at least, with singular success. 1 To sum up briefly : Catullus had not the solemn , earnestness, the nobleness of purpose, the heroic grandeur of soul that characterised his great con- temporary Lucretius ; he had not the wit, humour, fancy, and finish of Horace; he had not the labo- 1 Vide Excurs. to Carm., lxiv. LIFE OF CATULLUS. 25 rious perseverance of Virgil ; nor was a mercurial nature like his, perhaps, capable of the sustained exertion and toilsome drudgery of a work like the "^Eneid;" but he has proved himself as great a master of the grand and stately hexameter, though his frequent spondaic endings may convey an im- pression of harshness to an ear habituated to the smoother cadence of Virgil. In his elegiac poems he does not uniformly exhibit the terseness and pa- thetic tenderness of Tibullus, the refined diction and sparkling ingenuity of Propertius, or the deservedly- admired bell-like recurrent chime of Ovid ; nor in his epigrams the piquant smartness and chiselled point of Martial, but in the real elements that constitute the poet he is without a rival. It is not the part of talent, however great, to pro- duce an " Atys" or an " Ariadne." It is the high pre- rogative of genius. The loss of his writings that have not reached us is, perhaps — we judge from their titles — of little im- portance; 1 and what he might have done had length 1 It is certain that several of the poems of Catullus have perished. Verses on love charms, (De Incantamentis,) like those of Theocritus and Virgil, are mentioned by Pliny, and Ithy= phallic songs, similar to the fragment numbered xviii., by Ter- entianus Maurus. Nonius, Servius, and others also refer to passages or expressions not found in the extant writings of Catullus. The "Ciris," commonly printed with the works of Virgil, and the lovely poem "De Vere" or "Pervigilium 26 LIFE OF CATULLUS. of days been vouchsafed to him, cannot affect his position now ; but what we do possess could ill have been spared from the literature of his country ; and the loss of his sprightly little volume {lepidum novum libelhim) 1 would not only have deprived us of some of the fairest flowers of ancient verse — the dukes Musarum foetus* which he loved to foster — but would have left us in almost total obscurity regard- ing one of the few great names that gave a new phase to Roman poetry, and shed a lustre over the decline of the Roman republic. Veneris," have been claimed for him by some critics. The former of these exhibits a strong resemblance both in expression and style to the " Peleus and Thetis," and is most probably the work of an imitator of Catullus and Lucretius. The "Vigil" bears unmistakable traces of a later hand. The " Phasma," a farce by the mimographer, Q. Lutatius Catullus or Catulus, and the ' ' Laureolus, " probably by Laberius or Naevius, have also been erroneously ascribed to him. 1 i. I. 2 lxv. 3. TO CORNELIUS NEPOS. To what dear friend, say, shall I dedicate My smart new book, just trimm'd with pumice dry? To thee, Cornelius — for, in years gone by, Thou wast accustom' d my light lays to rate As something more than trifles — ay, and then, When thou, the sole Italian, daredst engage To paint in three small volumes every age, With learned, Jove ! and with laborious pen. Wherefore accept my tiny leaves, I pray, Such as they are, — and, Patron Goddess, give This boon : that still perennial they may live After a century has roll'd away. 28 TO LESBIA'S SPARROW. II. TO LESBIA'S SPARROW. Sparrow ! my darling's joy ! With whom she 's wont to toy, With whom some warm breast-nestling-nook to fill ; And, to frolic combat firing Thee her finger-tip desiring, To provoke the pricking peckings of thy bill. What time my beauteous fair, My heart's own darling care, With some endearing sport would please her will, As a tiny consolation, Doting love's fond recreation, That her bosom's fretful smartings may be still. With thee, like her, to play, And drive sad cares away, Were dear to me, as to the nimble maid, Sung in storied legend olden, Was the mellow apple golden, That her long-engirdled bosom disarray'd. ON THE DEATH OF THE SPARROW. 29 III. ON THE DEATH OF THE SPARROW. Ye Graces ! mourn, oh mourn ! Mourn, Cupids Venus-born ! And loveliest sons of earth, where'er ye are ! Dead is now my darling's sparrow — Sparrow of my "winsome marrow,'' Than her very eyes, oh ! dearer to her far. For 'twas a honey'd pet, And knew her well as yet A mother by her daughter e'er was known : Never from her bosom stray' d he, Hopping hither, thither play'd he, Ever piped and chirp'd his song to her alone. Now to that dreary bourn Whence none can e'er return, Poor little sparrow wings his weary flight ; Plague on you ! ye grimly-lowering Shades of Orcus, still devouring, All on earth that 's fair and beautiful and bright. Ye Ve ravislrd from my sight Her sparrow, her delight ! Oh ruthless deed of bale ! woe, woe is me ! Now thy death, poor little sparrow, Doth her heart with anguish harrow, And her swollen eyes are red with tears for thee. 30 DEDICA TION OF HIS PINNA CE. IV. DEDICATION OF HIS PINNACE. That pinnace there, my friends, declares she was the fleetest vessel E'er cut the sea, and never fear'd with wind or wave to wrestle : Whatever the craft — by oar or sail impelled — she could outvie it ; And she avers the shore of threatening Adria can't deny it, Or yet the island Cyclades, or Rhodes renown'd in story, Or rugged Thrace, Propontis, or the Euxine wild and hoary, Where she — a pinnace now — was erst a leafy wood canorous, Whose vocal foliage often breathed sweet murmurings o'er Cytorus. Pontic Amastris ! and Cytorus with the boxtree green aye ! The pinnace says these things are known, and known to you have been aye ; For from her earliest days she stood your lofty brow adorning, First in your waters dipp'd her oars, and ocean's fury scorning, TO LESBIA. 3 1 O'er many a wild sea bore her lord^ and saw him safely harboured ; Whether the wind fill'd fair both sheets, or larboard piped, or starboard, Nor e'er to shore-gods vowM a vow, if calm or gale had caught her, From farthest ocean till she reach'd this still lake's limpid water. These days are gone ! now quietly stow'd — old age her first disaster — She dedicates herself to you, twin Pollux and twin Castor. TO LESBIA. The while we live, to love let's give Each hour, my winsome dearie ! Hence, churlish rage of icy age ! Of love we '11 ne'er grow weary. Bright Phoebus dies, again to rise \ Returns life's brief light never ; When once 'tis gone, we slumber on For ever and for ever 32 TO FLA VIUS. Then, charmer mine, with lip divine ! Give me a thousand kisses ; A hundred then, then hundreds ten, Then other hundred blisses. Lip thousands o'er, sip hundreds more With panting ardour breathing ; Fill to the brim love's cup, its rim With rosy blossoms wreathing. We '11 mix them then, lest to our ken Should come our store of blisses, Or envious wight should know, and blight So many honey' d kisses. VL TO FLAVIUS. Flavius ! unless your cherish'd flame Were graceless and ungainly, From me you could not keep her name, You ? d wish to tell me plainly • Some hackney d jade, I '11 take my oath upon it, Has crazed your head, and you're ashamed to own it. Your bed, ah ! vainly mute ! with flowers And Syrian unguents scented ; * TO LESBIA. 33 Your cushion in the midnight hours, All here and there indented ; Its crazy frame— the ambling and the creaking- Reveal a tale, the truth too plainly speaking. While these are there, you 're mute in vain ; And why so lean, unless it Be true you 're with such follies ta'en ? Come — good or bad — confess it. You and your love — I wish in song to blaze you, And to the stars in sprightly verse to raise you. VII. TO LESBIA. Love ! when we a-kissing go, Dost thou ask what sum suffices % Tell the countless sands that strew Warm Cyrene, land of spices, 'Tween Jove's shrine 'mid desert gloom, And old Battus' hallow'd tomb ; Count night's silent stars that spy Stolen joys of maid and lover ; Give me these, and then I '11 cry, Hold ! love's cup is flowing over : Curious eye a sum so vast Cannot count, nor ill tongue blast. 34 ON LESBIAS INCONSTANCY. VIII. TO HIMSELF, ON LESBIA'S INCONSTANCY. Wretched Catullus ! cease to sigh and whine, And what has perish'd think no longer thine ; Once thou didst summer in a glorious sun ! When thou in raptures of delight didst run Where'er thy dear, thy peerless charmer roved ; Loved then as girl by thee shall ne'er be loved. Then many were the gamesome frolics play'd, Fond was the youth, and not unfond the maid ; Thine was a charmed life ! thy suns how fair ! She flies thee now — thy lot then bravely bear ; Pursue her not ; thy misery cease to feel ; And with determined mind thy courage steel. Maiden, farewell ! Catullus feels no more ; Nor will he ask thy love, denied before y . But thou, when ask'd by none, shalt mourn thy fate. False one ! alas ! what sorrows thee await % Who will now fondly by thy side recline % Or in whose eyes shalt thou in beauty shine % Who in thy heart will wake love's eager flame % Of what fond lover shalt thou boast the name % Whom shall thy kisses fire with bland delight? Whose lips shalt thou with panting ardour bite % Care not, Catullus ! cease to think — to feel — Endure with heart hard as the temper'd steel. ON THE MISTRESS OF VARUS. 35 IX. TO VERANNIUS, ON HIS RETURN FROM SPAIN. Verannius ! of my friends before all others Though I could count three hundred thousand here/' Hast thou come home again, thy loving brothers And aged mother with thy smile to cheer % Thou hast. To me most blest of intimations, — I'll see thee safe, and hear thee telling o'er Strange tales of Spanish places, deeds, and nations, With all the accustom'd glee thou hadst of yore. I '11 clasp thy neck in tenderest embraces, I '11 fondly kiss thy pleasant mouth and eyne ; O ! all ye happiest of happy faces, Where is there joy or happiness like mine] X. ON THE MISTRESS OF VARUS. Friend Varus dragged me off his love to see, As I the Forum left quite free from duty \ A girl, as at a glance appear'd to me, Devoid of neither sprightliness nor beauty. * Or, if by millibus trecentis, 300,000 sesterces be meant — Verannius ! of my friends before all others ! Millions were nought compared with one so dear! 36 ON THE MISTRESS OF VARUS. When we arrived, on various themes we fell, Discussed, ? mong others which the occasion offer'd, Bithynia — how things went there — and, as well, What heaps of wealth I there had safely corTer'd. u Nor I, nor captains, nor their train," I said, And spoke the truth, nor ever tried to cheat her, " Could now display a better scented head, Especially with such a knavish praetor As ours, who prized his cohort not one hair." " But surely, sir," thus the sly wanton prated, " You'd have some slaves to bear your litter there? Tis said the custom there originated." I to the wench a lucky dog to seem, Replied, " Oh, no ! my fate was not so bitter, That, bad although I did the province deem, I had not eight straight men to bear my litter." But neither here nor there, if truth be said, Was I of ev'n a single slave the holder, The broken foot of my old truckle-bed To hoist aloft and place upon his shoulder. Then she, like all her bland seductive train : " A little, dear Catullus, let me borrow Those fellows; I'd so like just to be ta'en To great Serapis' temple, say, to-morrow." i TO FURIUS A ND A URELIUS. 3 7 " Pardon me, dearest girl; of what I said Was mine I 'd frankly been to you the donor ; But I was wrong • I fear you 've been misled — They 're Caius Cinna's — madam — he 's their owner. But, whether his or mine, what 's that to me i I use the fellows just as if I 'd bought 'em ; But you will so absurd and plaguy be, One cannot tell a hb but you have caught him." XI. TO FURIUS AND AURELIUS. THE FAREWELL MESSAGE TO LESBIA. O Furius and Aurelius ! comrades sweet ! Who to Ind's farthest shore with me would roam, Where the far-sounding Orient billows beat Their fury into foam ; Or to Hyrcania, balm-breath' d> Araby, The Sacian's or the quiver'd Parthian's land, Or where seven-mantled Nile's swolPn waters dye The sea with yellow sand ; Or cross the lofty Alpine fells, to view Great Caesar's trophied fields, the Gallic Rhine, The paint-smear' d Briton race, grim-visaged crew, Placed by earth's limit line : 38 TO ASIN1US. To all prepared with me to brave the way, To dare whate'er the eternal gods decree — These few unwelcome words to her convey Who once was all to me. Still let her revel with her godless train, Still clasp her hundred slaves to passion's thrall, Still truly love not one, but ever drain The life-blood of them all. Nor let her more my once-fond passion heed, For by her faithlessness 'tis blighted now, Like floweret on the verge of grassy mead Crush' d by the passing plough. XII. TO ASINIUS. Asinius ! o'er the wine and 'mid the jesting, You with your left hand play a shameful part, Your careless friends of handkerchiefs divesting, Think you, poor silly fool ! that this is smart % You do not know how mean 'tis and ungallant ! Believest not 1 Ask your brother Pollio, who, If you 'd desist, would gladly give a talent ; And he 's in pleasantries surpass'd by few. i . TO FABULLUS. 39 Wherefore expect no end of lashing satire, Or now at once my handkerchief resign : With me the intrinsic value's not the matter, But 'tis a keepsake from a friend of mine. Some time ago, Verannius and Fabullus Sent me some Saetab handkerchiefs from Spain ; Their gift it is but right their friend Catullus Should prize as dearly as the valued twain. XIII. TO FABULLUS, INVITATION TO DINNER. If the gods will, Fabullus mine, With me right heartily you ; 11 dine, Bring but good cheer — that chance is thine Some days hereafter ; Mind a fair girl, too, wit, and wine, And merry laughter. Bring these — you '11 feast on kingly fare — But bring them — for my purse — I swear The spiders have been weaving there ; But thee I J ll favour With a pure love, or, what 's more rare, More sweet of savour, 40 TO LICINIUS CALVUS. An unguent I '11 before you lay The Loves and Graces t' other day Gave to my girl — smell it- — you '11 pray The gods, Fabullus, To make you turn all nose straightway. Yours aye, Catullus. XIV. TO LICINIUS CALVUS. At more even than my eyes did I not rate thee, Calvus ! most pleasant of all friends of mine, With even Vatinian hatred I would hate thee, For that most execrable gift of thine. What have I done % what word unguarded spoken? That thou should st plague me with such cursed trash * Heaven send that client many an angry token, Who sent thee such a store of balderdash ! If, as I 'm thinking, your pedantic neighbour Sulla sends you this present fresh and choice, I am not sorry that your valued labour Is thus rewarded, nay, I do rejoice. i TO AURELIUS. 4 1 Great gods ! the volume I have now before me You 've sent your friend — Oh ! horrid, cursed lays ! That all day long the hated sight might bore me Upon the Saturnalia, best of days. No, my fine wag ! you '11 not get off so easy, For with the dawn I '11 to the bookstalls hie, Rifle each nook and shelf — the Aquinii, Caesi, SufTenus, all such poison dire I '11 buy, And with these tortures back again I '11 pay you. Hence, then, vile trash ! hence, fare-ye-well the while ! Begone ! your cursed steps retrace, I pray you, Scum of the age ! bards vilest of the vile ! XV. TO AURELIUS. My love I to thy care commend, I ask this modest favour ; If e'er thou hadst a darling friend, And yearn'dst from shame to save her, O ! tend this girl with tenderest care, I 'm easy altogether 'Bout those who throng the thoroughfare And hurry hither, thither \ 42 TO AURELIUS AND FURIUS. But 'tis thyself — thy wiles I fear, Each maiden's fame destroying ; So, to some other market steer, If needs thou must be toying ; ' For, if I find thy lustful heart Has led thee to misuse her, I swear thou ; lt from the torments smart Reserved for the seducer. XVI. TO AURELIUS AND FURIUS. Base Furius and Aurelius ! hence, away ! Who think that I 'm unchaste because my verses Breathe tales of tender love and harmless play; Chaste should the modest bard himself be aye. Not so the amorous themes his muse rehearses. 'Tis when his lines with tender fervour flow, And thrill the soul like an inspiring potion, That they possess the genuine spice and glow, Firing not youth alone, but age, whose slow And frozen limbs are well-nigh reft of motion. Because ye Ve read some lay of mine of late, Wherein I sang of many thousand kisses, TO A CERTAIN TOWN. 43 Ye think me wanton and effeminate. Avaunt ! or yours will be a dreadful fate, The poet's lash is one that seldom misses. XVII. TO A CERTAIN TOWN. (Rendered into English after the original verse.) Town ! O Town, that desirest on thy long bridge to exhibit Sports, and yearnest to trip in the dance, but fear'st the weak timber Props of thy little rickety bridge, lest, falling supinely Past remead, it should lie overwhelmed in quagmire abysmal, So to thee be a capital bridge — the dream of thy fancy- One on which may be ventured the rites of Salian dancers. Then, O Town ! to me grant this rare boon of mer- riest laughter : List, a townsman of mine, I wash from thy bridge I could headlong Hurl, and duck in the marsh below, heels o'er head in its waters, Ay ! and there, where, of all the abyss and dark slimy cesspool, 44 TO A CERTAIN TOWN. Yawns the sink of corruption by far the blackest and deepest. Oh ! but he is an ass, nor as wise as two-year-old infant, Hush'd and rock'd to repose on the trembling arm of his father, Mated, too, with a beauteous girl— sweet flower in her springtide, Tenderer far than the tenderest youngling kid of the meadows, Needing warier 'tendance than lush-black grapes on the vine-branch : Yet he leaves her to romp as she will, not one straw he careth, Ne'er bestirs he himself in the least, but lies like an alder, FelFd by tree-lopper's axe in a ditch, of woody Ligu- ria, Wholly blind and obtuse as if she were nothing or nowhere. Such a dolt is this townsman of mine, he sees not, he hears not. Sooth ! he knoweth not whether he is or really is not. Now I wish from the top of thy bridge to pitch him head-foremost, Just to find out if suddenly one might rouse the dull num scull, And leave fast in the glutinous mire his spirit insen- sate, Even as leaveth the hinny its iron shoe in the gutter. THE GARDEN GOD. 45 XVIII. TO THE GARDEN GOD. To thee this grove I dedicate and consecrate, Priapus. Who hast thy shrine and shady wood at Lampsacus, Priapus, For chiefly in its towns the Hellespont thy glory soundeth, Than which no other shelly shore in oysters more aboundeth. XIX. THE GARDEN GOD. My lads ! this farm, this cottage by the mead, Thatched with the willow-wand and rushy reed, I, a dry oak, by rude axe shapen, cheer With blessings richer each returning year. The poor cot's owner and his little boy Revere and hail me as their god with joy, The sire with constant diligence proceeds To clear my fane of rough and prickly weeds, The son with anxious care large gifts bestows — From his small hand the offering ever flows. Spring's firstlings on my fane are duly laid, The flower-streak'd wreath, soft ear, and tender blade ; Posies of yellow violets are mine ; 46 THE GARDEN QOD. The saffron poppy decorates my shrine ; The fragrant apple and the pale-green gourd ; And lush-red grapes 'neath shady leaves matured. Oft — breathe it not — upon my fane has bled The bearded goat, or horn-hoof d spouse instead ; For all these gifts is not Priapus bound To watch his master's vines and garden groundi Then hence, my lads ! keep off your thievish hands, Our nearest neighbour there is rich in lands ; And his Priapus has a careless air, Go, take from him. This path will lead you there. XX. THE GARDEN GOD. I, traveller, a dry poplar rudely wrought, Guard on the left this little plot of land, Its humble owner's garden and his cot, And keep away the thief's rapacious hand. Spring round my brow a flowery garland twines ; Summer the ear embrown'd by Phoebus' power; Autumn the verdant lush-grape-cluster'd vine; The olive pale is icy winter's dower. The tender goat within my pastures fed, Her well-fill'd udder bears to yonder town; The fatted lambkin from my sheepfolds led, With heavy gold the cotter's care doth crown. TO A URELIUS. 47 The gentle calf, while lows its mother here, Stains with its blood the fane of deity : Then, traveller, this god thou shalt revere, And keep thy hands aloof; 'twere well for thee ; For I 've a weapon here might do thee harm. Come on, you say, I'd like to see you try; Lo ! here the cotter comes, whose sturdy arm Can wield the club I '11 readily supply. XXL TO AURELIUS. Aurelius ! bleak starvation's sire, In present, past, or future day, And thou, inflamed by foul desire, Wouldst wean my love away ! Nor secretly : for soon as e'er Thou ; rt with her, thou beginn'st to smile, To jest, caress her, and ensnare Her heart with every wile. In vain : I '11 to the world proclaim Thy faithless and insidious ways, If thou shouldst dare her spotless fame To sully and debase. 48 TO VARUS. If thou in pamper'd ease and state Didst this, I then might silent be ; But, oh ! I mourn my darling's fate, To starve and thirst with thee. Then cease, whilst still thou canst command A modest and unsullied name, Or thou shalt wear the ignoble brand Of perfidy and shame. XXII. TO VARUS. Varus ! that youth Suffenus whom you know Is quite a clever and accomplish'd beau — Can pleasantly on any theme converse, Is witty, too, and writes no end of verse. I verily believe he 's written o'er A round ten thousand lines perhaps, or more ; Not done, as usual, on palimpsest, No, but on royal paper, and the best, New boards, new bosses, bands of richest red, The sheets with pumice smooth'd and ruled with lead. When these you read, the beau, the wit is dead ; A goatherd or a ditcher 's left instead; Such is the difference — so vast the change ! How then explain a thing so very strange % The man whom now the prince of wits we see, Or glibber still, if aught more glib there be, TO FURIUS. 49 Becomes more boorish than a boorish clown Whene'er to poesy he settles down ; What 's more, he never half so happy seems As when he 's writing his poetic themes ; His joy unbounded tongue could ne'er express, He so admires his wondrous cleverness. Doubtless we 're all mistaken so — 'tis true, Each is in something a SufTenus too : Our neighbour's failing on his back is shown, But we don't see the wallet on our own. XXIII. TO FURIUS. Furius ! of neither slave nor chest, Nor spider, bug, or fire possest, A sire and step-dame thine alone, Whose teeth can masticate the stone. Fair is thy lot in such a house, With him and with his wooden spouse ! No w r onder : health your days doth cheer, Ye Ve good digestion, nought to fear, No fire, nor baleful ruins there, No impious deeds, nor poison's snare, Mishaps and dangers both ye scorn, Ye 've bodies drier far than horn, Or aught, if aught more dry there be, From heat, or cold, or poverty, Why not live well and happily ? 50 TO THALLUS. From thee no sweat or spittle flows, Mucus or moisture from your nose ; In fine, a match for thee, I ween, In cleanliness was never seen. A life with boons so precious fraught, Oh ! ne'er- despise nor rate at naught ; For money never breathe a prayer, For you of blessings have your share. XXIV. TO A BEAUTY. loveliest flow'ret ! Beauty's peerless queen In this our age, or that the past hath seen, Or that shall blossom in an after day ! 1 'd rather thou hadst thrown my all away On that low wretch, who has nor slave nor chest, Than let thyself be thus by him caress'd. " How % is he not a beau ?" you '11 say. — He 's so;. But neither slave nor purse has this fine beau. My counsel, if you will, reject, disdain : He has nor slave nor chest I still maintain. XXV. TO THALLUS. Base Thallus ! softer far than rabbit's hair, Than goose's marrow, or than tip of ear, Than flabby feeble age, or spider's airy snare. TO FURIUS. 5 I Yet thou, the self-same Thallus, art even more Rapacious than the driving storm, whose roar Scares wild on fluttering wing the gape-mouth'd birds ashore. Send back my cloak and Saetab kerchief, pray,- And Thynian tablets thou hast filclVd away, Which thou, like heirlooms, fool ! dost openly display. Unglue them from thy nails and give them back, Lest the dread lash should scar with smarting crack Thy back and tender flanks with many an ugly track, And thou shouldst toss and boil excessively, Like tiny craft caught in the mighty sea When round the wild winds rave with mad tempes- tuous glee. XXVI. TO FURIUS. Furius ! my villa is not set, I find, Against the north, south, west, or eastern wind ; But O ! a wind more dread, more baleful still, A fifteen tho usand, ten score sesterce bill ! 52 TO HIS CUPBEARER. XXVII. TO HIS CUPBEARER. Young server of the old Falernian wine ! Pour drier liquor in this cup of mine ; Postumia rules our festive board to-night — 7 Tis her command — be it observed aright ; And, sooth, she likes the purple juice more strong Than ever drunken grape-seed lay among. Then, cooling waters ! hence where'er ye please, Hence ! bane of wine, to spoil my beaker cease, Go, seek a while the sober and severe : The pure Thyonian only sparkles here. XXVII. TO HIS CUPBEARER. (another version.) Young server of old Falern ! ho ! Pour drier cups for me, Our queen Postumia wills it so, Be sacred her decree. For as the tipsy grape-stone sips The juice that round it rolls, So revel gay Postumia's lips In nectar-brimming bowls. TO VERA NX I US AND FABULLUS. 53 Then, water, hence where'er ye will, Thou bane of rosy wine ! Go, seek the sober : here we swill Thyonian juice divine. XXVIII. TO VERANNIUS AND FABULLUS. Piso's suite ! come, tell Catullus, You with knapsacks neat and light, Dear Verannius and Fabullus, Has your business gone all right ? Have you with that famine-monger Borne enough of cold and hunger ? What in shape of gains expended Show your ledgers in the gross % While my praetor I attended, I — I tell you — gain'd a loss. Memmius ! ah ! you rogued me finely, Screwed me — held me down supinely. But, as far as I can judge on This point, you were much the same ; No whit better your curmudgeon ; Cringe to friends of noble name ! Heaven send ills without cessation On such miscreants of the nation ! 54 ON MAMURRA, TO CAESAR. XXIX. ON MAMURRA, ADDRESSED TO CAESAR. Who can see it ? who can bear it ? But a rake and gamester vile, That Mamurra should inherit Gaul and distant Britain's isle 1 Wilt thou see and bear the while ? Caesar ! rake ! leech ! gamester vile ! Shall that proud and pamper' d minion To the beds of all repair, Like the dove of snowy pinion, Or Adonis young and fair 1 Wilt thou see and bear the while ? Caesar ! rake ! leech ! gamester vile ! Didst thou seek, unique commander ! That far island of the west, But to glut that batter'd pander ? "What is all he spends at best?" Cries your ill-placed bounty, " Hey ! 'Tis a trifle" — is't then, pray? First his father's hoards devouring, Then the plunder Pontus gave, Then the wealth that Spain sent showering From the Tagus' golden wave. Now his dreaded name appals Both the Britons and the Gauls. TO A LP HEN US. 55 Why then nurse this odious creature ? What to you can he avail But to sponge you and to eat your Fat possessions tooth and nail ] Drain'd ye all to glut his maw, Sire-in-law and son-in-law ! XXX. TO ALPHENUS. Alphenus ! faithless to thy trust ! false to thy com- rades leal ! Dost thou for thy fond friend, hard-hearted one ! no - sorrow feel % To wrong and to betray me, wretch ! each chance thou 'rt ^quick to seize, Yet false men's impious deeds will ne'er the blest im- mortals please. But this thou sett'st at nought and leav'st me wretched, whelm'd in woes \ Alas! what. now can mortals do? in what man faith repose % Surely thou badest me yield my soul, perfidious one ! to thee, Leading me into love, as if all things were safe to me ; 56 TO THE PENINSULA OF SIRMIO. Now thou forsak'st me, and thy words and actions all are given An empty offering to the winds and airy blasts of heaven ; If thou forgett'st, not so the gods, — yea, Faith remem- bers too, Who ; 11 make thee in an after day thy shameful con- duct rue. XXXI. TO THE PENINSULA OF SIRMIO, ON HIS RETURN TO HIS VILLA THERE. Of all peninsulas and isles, Set in clear lake or sea, By twin-realm'd Neptune girt with smiles, The eye must Sirmio be ! As, joyful, on thy shore I stand, I scarce can think I 'm free From Thynia and Bithynia's land, And gazing safe on thee. Oh ! what more blessed than to find Release from all our cares ! When layeth down the weary mind The burden that it bears : TO IP SI THILL A. 57 When, all our toil of travel o'er, Our hearth again we tread, And lay us down in peace once more On the long-wish'd-for bed. Prize for a world of labours meet, Worth all the weary while ! Be glad, sweet Sirmio ! and greet Thy master with a smile. Laugh, all ye Lydian waves, I come ! Your joy my herald be ! And send the rippling welcome home, That all may laugh with me. XXXII. TO IPSITHILLA. My heart's delight, my darling sprite, Sweet Ipsithilla ! prithee, Command that I to thee may hie, To pass the noontide with thee. And if by thee I ; m bid, then see Thy door unbarred be, love ! Nor wish to roam away from home, But stay and gladden me, love ! ON THE VIBENNIL Caresses rare for me prepare, Be three times three the number ; For here alone, I yearn, mine own, To clasp thee ere I slumber. Now luncheon 's o'er, delay no more, Say come, and I shall fill a Deep goblet rare to thee, my fair, My charming Ipsithilla. XXXIII. ON THE VIBENNIL Of all the smart thieves at the baths, there 's not one, Vibennius, like thee — none so base as thy son ! The father far-famed for his thievish right hand ! The son the most infamous scamp in the land ! Then why not at once to the mischief be gone? Your thefts to the people are very well known ; And your son is so thoroughly steep'd in disgrace, No man will employ him who looks at his face. HYMN TO DIANA. 59 XXXIV. HYMN TO DIANA. We share Diana's guardian care. Maidens and youths, a spotless throng ! We, spotless youths and maidens fair, Her praises raise in song. O mighty child of mightiest Jove ! Thee, great Diana ! we adore, Whom, near the Delian olive-grove, The fair Latona bore, That thou shouldst be the Virgin Queen Of mountain and of verdant wood, Of the sequestered valley green, And river's roaring flood. In woman's hour of travail, thou Art hail'd Lucina in her prayers ; Trivia ; and Luna when thy brow A borrow'd splendour wears. In monthly periods, Goddess ! still The rolling year thou dost allot, And with a bounteous hand dost fill The peasant's humble cot. 60 TO CAECILIUS. Whatever name by thee is held Most sacred, be it ever thine ! And guard, as in the years of eld, Rome and her ancient line. XXXV. TO CAECILIUS. Paper ! to my friend Caecilius, Tender bard, this message take, Bid him for a while New Como And the Larian shore forsake. Bid him hasten to Verona, Say I 've sdmething in his line, That he '11 hear some cogitations Of a friend of his and mine. Wherefore, if he 's wise, he '11 hurry Over hill and thorough glen, Though his charmer fair a thousand Times should call him back again, And, around his neck entwining Both her arms, implore delay, For 'tis said she for him yearneth With a desperate love alway. Since he read to her his legend Of the Dindymenian dame, ON THE ANNALS OF VOLUSIUS. 6 1 Through the poor child's inmost marrow Burnetii love's consuming flame. I forgive thee, maid more learned Than the Sapphic muse of old, For in lovely strains Caecilius Hath the mighty Dame extolled. XXXVI. ON THE ANNALS OF VOLUSIUS. Lays Volusian ! lays most stupid ! For my charmer pay a vow — For to Venus blest and Cupid She has vow'd if I should now Just — renewing love's fond plightings — Cease my harsh iambic line, She 'd the vilest bard's choice writings To the limping god consign, To be burnt with logs unlucky ; And my pretty charmer sees That her vow, so smart and plucky, Can be paid with none but these. Sea-sprung Queen who oft hast eyed us, Haunting blest Idalia's grounds, Syria's plains, Ancona, Cnidus, Where the waving reed abounds, 62 TO FREQUENTERS OF A TA VERN. Amathus and Golgos ; — Lady Of Dyrrachium, Adria's mart ! Oh, accept the vow she 's made ye, If it 's pretty, if it 's smart. Hence among the embers ! shrivel, Smoke and smoulder there the while, Heap of boorishness and drivel, Lays Volusian ! paper vile ! XXXVII. TO THE FREQUENTERS OF A CERTAIN TAVERN. Ye loose frequenters of that drinking den, Ninth sign-post from the egg-capp'd brothers' shrine, And do ye think that ye alone are men, And have, to kiss the girls* a right divine ? Or think ye, fools, because ye loiter there, A hundred, or belike two hundred strong, That I, though single-handed, will not dare To thrash the whole two hundred ? then ye ; re wrong ; Think well on't ; for each sot to shame I '11 damn Upon the sign-board in an epigram. For my own darling who my bosom fled — Loved as no girl shall e'er be loved by me, For whom in many a battle fierce I 've bled — Is housed in that low den of infamy. TO C0RNIF1CIUS. 63 Ye all caress her, happy souls and blest ! Oh ! 'tis too bad — sneaks, scoundrels every one ; — And thou the chief, Egnatius, flowing-tress'd, The rabbit-warren'd Celtiberia's son, Whose only merit 's that dark beard of thine, And teeth well-scrubbed with filthy Spanish brine. XXXVIII. TO CORNIFICIUS. Cornificius ! ills and woes Upon thy friend Catullus press ; And daily, hourly, deeper grows The gloom of his distress. What word of comfort hast thou brought % — A task how easy and how light ! — 1 feel indignant at the thought That thou thy friend wouldst slight. Oh ! dost thou thus my love repay ? One strain my aching heart might ease, Though sadder than the tearful lay Of sad Simonides. 64 ON EGNA TIUS. XXXIX. ON EGNATIUS. Because Egnatius' teeth are white and clear, He grins always : if pleader draw the tear When at the bar a criminal's arraign'd, He grins : if at the pile, with grief unfeign'd, Reft mother wails her darling only son, He grins : whate'er the time or place, all one, He grins : 'tis a disease with him I feel, Inelegant, I think, and ungenteel. Then I must warn thee, good Egnatius mine, Wert thou a Roman, Sabine, Tiburtine, A frugal Umbrian, fat Etrurian, Swart, huge-tooth'd Lanuvine, or Transpadan — Like me — or from a land where people dwell Who wash their teeth with water from the well, I 'd say renounce thy ceaseless idiot grin, , A silly laugh is folly, if not sin. Thou 'rt Celtiberian : in thy land they say Each one with a queer lotion, every day, As regularly as the morning comes, Is wont to scrub his teeth and russet gums ; Therefore, the more your teeth like ivory shine, The clearer 'tis you 've swill'd the odious brine. i ON THE MISTRESS OF FORMIANUS. 65 XL. TO RAVIDUS. Ravidus ! wretch ! what dark infatuation Makes thee fall foul of my iambic lay ? What god at thy unholy invocation Prepares to kindle up the frantic fray? Wouldst be a theme of gossip for the rabble 1 Wouldst thou be famed on any terms ? Thou 'It be : Since with my love of love thou ? st dared to gabble, Even at the risk of lasting infamy. XLI. ON THE MISTRESS OF FORMIANUS. Ah me ! and did I hear aright ? Whole sixty pounds did she propose ? That damsel with the hideous nose, Spendthrift Mamurra's heart's delight. Neighbours who for her welfare care Her friends and doctors hither call ; The wench is mad, nor thinks at all, Or thinks her brazen face is fair.* Or, according to the text of Schwabe — The wench is mad : don't ask at all What like she is : she 's mad, I '11 swear. E 66 ON A CERTAIN FEMALE. XLII. ON A CERTAIN FEMALE. Hendecasyllabics ! haste Hither all ; an ugly hack Thinks to make of me a jest — Will not give your tablets back ; If ye can, wield satire's blade, Come ! pursue and dun the jade. Ask ye who she is 1 'tis she Strutting there with sluttish jog, Sillily, disgustingly, Grinning like a Gallic dog. Fence her round, wield satire's blade : " Give them back, you ugly jade." Car st thou nought, O dirt ! O slough ! Baser if aught baser be, This ye must not think enough : If ye Ve nothing more — let 's see — Surely we a blush can raise On the gipsy's brazen face. Shout with louder voice again, " Give them back, most vile of queans." Nought she 's moved — 'tis all in vain : You must change the mode and means ; Try, if more can yet be said, "Give them back, chaste, modest maid." TO HIS FARM. 67 XLIIL ON THE MISTRESS OF FORMIANU& Hail, maiden ! with nor little nose, Nor pretty foot, nor jet-black eye, Nor fingers long, nor mouth e'er dry, Nor tongue whence pleasing prattle flows. You spendthrift Formian's heart engage ; And doth the province call you fair, And Lesbia's charms with yours compare? O witless and O boorish as:e ! XLIV. TO HIS FARM. My villa ! whether call'd by Sabine or Tiburtine name, For those who hold Catullus dear right sturdily de- claim That thou art on Tiburtine ground, but those who 'd wound his heart Contend, on any terms, that thou a Sabine villa art ; But really whether Tiburtine or Sabine, matters not, Right gladly did I find myself in thy suburban cot, And from my chest spat out a grievous cough — not undeserved — My stomach gave me waiting for a sumptuous dinner served. 68 ON ACME AND SEPTIMIUS. For while I was at Sestius' house, at dinner by desire, He read me an oration full of plague and poison dire, That he had made against some claimant — Antius was his name — Then a cold fit and frequent cough shook all my shivering frame, Until I to thy bosom fled immediate, nothing loth, And wholly cured myself again with rest and nettle- broth. Wherefore, to health restored, I give sincerest thanks to thee, Because in mercy thou hast not avenged my sins on me; Nor would I greatly grieve, if I should hear his trash again, To see him in a shivering fit, and coughing might and main. But not on me — on Sestius let them fall for his mis- deed, Who ne'er invites me but when he has some vile trash to read. XLV. ON ACME AND SEPTIMIUS. Septimius clasp'd unto his breast His Acme — his delight — " My Acme," he the maid address'd, And thus his faith did plight : ON ACME AND SEP TIM I US, 69 " If mine be not a desperate love, That through all after years will prove Unchanged, unchuTd while life remains, May I alone on Lybia's plains, Or scorching India's arid land, Before the green-eyed lion stand.'' To hear him, Love, as ever, pleased, From left to right approval sneezed. His Acme then, in loving guise, Back gently bent her head, Kiss'd her sweet boy's love-drunken eyes With rosy lip, and said : " So, Septimillus ! life ! mine own ! Be ever thou my lord alone, And mine the more, as still more dire In my soft marrow burns love's fire." To hear her, Love, as ever, pleased, From left to right approval sneezed. With mutual love beloved, the pair Start on life's path with omens fair, The love-sick youth prefers her smile To Syria's realms and Britain's isle ; In him alone his Acme true Finds joys and pleasures ever new. Who e'er hath seen, the world around, A love with happier auspice crown'd ? 70 TO PORCIUS AND SOCRA TION. XLVI. TO HIMSELF, ON THE RETURN OF SPRING. Now Spring, returning, comes with genial gales, The equinoctial fury of the sky- Before the balmy breath of zephyr quails. Catullus ! bid the Phrygian fields good-bye, And, leaving warm Nicaea's fertile land, Speed to where Asia's famous cities stand. Even now my fluttering heart begins to feel Fond fancy's soft anticipating swell ; My joyful feet are quick with new-born zeal ; Ye sweet companions of my youth, farewell ! We, who together left our distant home, Homeward by various ways diversely roam. XLVII. TO PORCIUS AND SOCRATION. O Porcius and Socration ! each the minion Of Piso — scum and starvelings of the land ! Do ye in that low profligate's opinion Before Verannius and Fabullus stand % Do ye feast daily upon dainty meats, While they must hunt for biddings in the streets ? TO CICERO. 71 XLVIII. ON A BEAUTY. The honey'd eyes of one so fair Could I but press for ever, Three hundred thousand kisses there I'd print, and tire, oh! never, Though more than autumn's dry ears were The kisses I should give her. XLIX. TO CICERO. Tully, most eloquent of all the line Of Romulus, past, present, or to be, Catullus sends sincerest thanks to thee, Poorest of bards — as far the poorest he As thou art first in eloquence divine. 72 TO LICINIUS. TO LICINIUS. Dear Licinius, at our leisure Much we sported yesterday ; Wrote, as suited men of pleasure, On my tablets many a lay. Each, o'er every measure ranging, Penn'd in play the polish'd line, Mutual sallies interchanging, 'Mid the joke and o'er the wine. And I left you so excited With your wit and jollity, I no more in food delighted, Nor in sleep could close an eye ; Wayward frenzy kept me waking, In my bed I tumbled o'er, Yearning for the day-dawn breaking, To be with my friend once more. But, when lay my limbs toil-weary, In a half-lethargic state, I this ditty spun, my cheery Friend, to tell you of my fate ; Be not proud, nor spurn, I pray you, Apple of mine eye ! my prayer, Lest stern Nemesis repay you. She is fierce : beware ! beware ! TO LESBIA. 73 LL a TO LESBIA. Godlike to me that youth appears, Yea, more than god, if more may be, Who, seated face to face with thee, Thy dulcet laughter sees and hears ; Ah, wretched me ! of sense bereft, For, when I cast on thee a glance, To me the power of utterance, O Lesbia, is no longer left. Freezes my tongue ; through nerve and limb The subtle flame electric veers ; Unbidden tingle both mine ears ; Mine eyes in seas of darkness swim ; [Soul-chilling sweats adown me pour * Cold shiverings through my vitals pass ; And I am greener than the grass, And breathless seem to live no more.] 74 ON SOMEBOD V AND CAL VUS. LI. b Ease, O Catullus, ruin brings, Ease is thy joy and chief delight, Ease hath erewhile in rayless night Entomb'd proud states and mighty kings. LII. TO HIMSELF, ON STRUMA AND VATINIUS. Catullus, why life's burden longer bear] Now Struma Nonius fills the curule chair, And, by the consulship, the blackest lie Vatinius swears : why live, Catullus, why] LIIL ON SOMEBODY AND CALVUS. I laugh'd at a man in the crowd t' other day, Who, as Calvus was lustily trouncing Vatinius, and wondrously well, sooth to say, Was the crimes of the scoundrel denouncing ; Cried, uplifting his hands, and with wonder nigh dumb : " Mighty gods ! what an eloquent hop-o'-my-thumb." TO CAMEEIUS. 75 LIV. TO CAESAR. Coarse Caesar ! would that Otho's puny pate, And half-wash'd Vettius, and lewd Libo's prate, If nothing else, might thy displeasure gain, And that of old Fuffetius, young again : Once more from my iambics thou shalt wince ; They 're honest, ne'ertheless, most noble prince. LV. TO CAMERIUS. (from the text of doering.) If I should not be irksome thought, Pray tell me where you hide % The Campus, Circus I have sought, And every bookstall tried, Traversed immortal Jove's right sacred fane, And Pompey's portico, but all in vain. My friend, I every girl address'd Who wore a smile serene, "Where is Camerius?" — hard I press' d — " Come, tell, you wicked quean f - And one her bosom all unveiling said : 11 He lurks between these nipples rosy-red/' 76 TO CAMERIUS. 'Twere toil Herculean thee to tear From such a favour'd seat, No wonder you 're from home you swear, Come tell me your retreat ; Out with it boldly in the face of day, Or do the milk-white maidens hold you, pray % If in close mouth you keep your tongue, You spoil love's every fruit, For Venus joys to dwell among Love-tattle, then, why mute 1 Still, if you will, be silent evermore, But let me share your friendship as before. Were I the guardian lord of Crete, If Pegasus me bore, If Ladus I, or Perseus fleet, Who winged sandals wore, Did I the white swift team of Rhesus rein, Or match the feather-footed flying twain, Or were the rapid fury mine Of winds that scour the air ; — In seeking for that haunt of thine My marrow I 'd outwear ; — Devour'd by many languors I would be, Friend of my heart ! in searching after thee. TO MAMURRA AND CAESAR. 77 LVL TO CATO. Here 's a joke well worth hearing, my Cato, A thing full of humour and fun, If you love me I pray you give way to A good hearty laugh when I Ve done. I 've just caught a young rascal decoying My sweetheart with speeches so fine, While she sat beside him enjoying His glances as if they 'd been mine. Venus ! goddess to lovers still dearest, My passion I could not contain, So I just took the weapon was nearest, And pommell'd him well with my cane. LVIL TO MAMURRA AND CAESAR. Disgraceful Mamurra and Caesar I bright stars ! In vice ye are charmingly suited, No wonder : ye both on your face wear the scars, One of Roman and t' other of Formian wars, Indelibly stamp'd and deep-rooted. 78 ON RUFA AND RUFULUS. Diseased both alike, alike twin-brothers rare, Bedfellows, both learned reputed, Alike ye shine forth an adulterous pair, Twin rivals alike for the smiles of the fair, In vice, oh, how charmingly suited ! LVIII. TO COELIUS, CONCERNING LESBIA. Coelius, my Lesbia, Lesbia who of yore Shone first in every charm and winning grace, She whom alone Catullus prized before His very self, yea, even all his race, Now in the open street and narrow lane Barters with Rome's proud sons her charms for gain. LIX. ON RUFA AND RUFULUS. Does Rufulus, then, the prim coxcomb, carouse With Bononian Rufa, Menenius' spouse? That wretch youVe oft seen in the graveyards ere- while A-stealing a meal from the funeral pile, NUPTIAL SONG. 79 And who, filching the bread that rolPd down from the flame, Was beat by the half-shaved corse-burner] The same. LX. , FRAGMENT. Of lioness on Lybia's mountains roaming, Or barking Scylla with mad fury foaming, Art thou the dark-soul'd son 1 That thou couldst hear a suppliant's voice, despising His cries for help and shrieks heart-agonising, Too cruel hearted one ! LXI. NUPTIAL SONG IN HONOUR OF JUNIA AND MANLIUS. Habitant of Helicon ! Offspring of Urania fair ! Thou who bear'st the tender bride To the loving bridegroom's side, O Hymen ! hear our prayer ! 8o NUPTIAL SONG IN HONOUR OF With sweet-odour' d marjoram flowers Wreathe thy beauty-radiant brow ; Seize the veil of flame-bright hue ; Joyous come with saffron shoe Upon thy foot of snow. Rouse thee on the gladsome day ! Chanting nuptial strains divine, Let thy silvery voice resound ; Foot it nimbly : brandish round The torch of blazing pine. Junia comes to Manlius, As Idalian Venus came To the judge on Ida's height — Comes, a maid with auspice bright, And pure unsullied name, Like an Asian myrtle fair — All its branchlets gemm'd with flowers ! Which the Hamadryad girls Nurse with morning's dewy pearls — A plaything in their bowers. Come, then ! here thy footsteps bear, Haste to leave the Aonian caves Of the rocky Thespian hill, Which cool Aganippe's rill With crystal waters laves. JUNTA AXD MAXLIUS. 8 1 Summon home the happy bride, Yearning with her lord to be, Bind her soul with love's strong strings, As the clasping ivy clings, Here, there, all round the tree. Spotless maidens ! swell the train : Equal bliss ye soon shall know, On a like auspicious day : Carol loud the measured lay, O Hymen ! Hymen, O ! That, when hearing he is call'd To his office, he may prove Favouring, nor turn aside, Leading here a virtuous bride, And blending hearts in love. Whom should lovers more invoke — More invoke in weal or woe ? Whom in heaven shall men with more Heartfelt reverence adore ? O Hymen ! Hymen, O ! For his daughters oft the sire Calls on thee with loving fear : Maidens loose for thee the zone : And the bridegroom hears alone Thy name with eager ear. 82 NUPTIAL SONG IN HONOUR OF On the passion-burning youth Blooming girl thou dost bestow, From the doting mother's breast, Hymenaeus! god thrice blest ! O Hymen I Hymen, O ! Venus but for thee achieves Nought deserving honour fair : Lend but thou a willing ear, She with every gift can cheer : Who dares with thee compare ] Homes are childless but for thee ; For the father smiles no son Who with heirs his line may swell : Will it thou, and all is well : O Hymen, peerless one ! Where thy rites are unobserved, Never guardian souls are given O'er the godless land to dwell : Will it thou, and all is well : Thou peerless child of heaven ! Hark ! the virgin comes along, Throw the barr'd gates open wide : See the flambeaux' lustrous trains ! But thou tarriest ; daylight wanes : Come forth ! come forth, young bride ! J UN I A AND MANLIUS. 83 Maiden shame her step retards, Though she 's eager, x flows the tide Of tears, that she must go away ; But thou tarriest ; pales the day : Come forth ! come forth, young bride ! O Aurunculeia, Weep not : there 's no fear for thee, That a fairer maiden may- View the glorious orb of day Uprising from the sea. So, in rich lord's garden ground, Deck'd with flowers on every side, The hyacinth unrivall'd reigns ; But thou tarriest ; daylight wanes : Come forth ! come forth, young bride ! If it seemeth fit to thee, Youthful bride ! no longer bide ; Come and hear our nuptial strains : See the flambeaux' golden manes ! Come forth ! come forth, young bride ! Never, faithless, shall thy lord Be by wanton base caress'd, Nor, allured to other arms, Wish, for venal beaut/s charms, To leave thy tender breast. 84 NUPTIAL SONG IN HONOUR OF He, as clasps the slender vine Trees that flourish by its side, Shall be clasp' d in thy embrace ; But the daylight pales apace : Come forth ! come forth, young bride ! O! Too radiant-footed bed ! What rich joys thy lord await, What rich joys in still night-tide, What rich joys at noon of day ; But the daylight dies away : Come forth ! come forth, young bride ! Youths ! the flambeaux brandish high, See the saffron veil's bright glow, Sing in measure, swell the lay : Hymen ! Hymen ! come, we pray, O Hymen ! Hyrnen, O ! All around let now resound Songs of mirth and wanton glee ; Sharer of his former joys, Shower among the happy boys The nuts they crave from thee. JUNIA AND MANLIUS. 85 Shower the nuts among the boys ; Long enough 'twas thine to live Sportive, and with nuts to play : Manlius claims his bride to-day, The nuts then freely give. Thou didst scorn the rustic throng But to-day and yesterday : Loveliest leaves are soonest sere ; Youth is fleeting, age is near: Come, throw the nuts away. Perfumed bridegroom ! though thou griev'st, Bid thy cherish' d darling go, Though thy heart be still as fain, From the sports of youth abstain : O Hymen ! Hymen, O ! Thou hast only join'd in those, By our laws allow' d, we know ; But what fits the youthful heart Is not aye the husband's part : O Hymen ! Hymen, O ! Never, youthful bride ! deny What thou to thy lord dost owe, Lest some freer girl decoy Him with dreams of lawless joy : O Hymen ! Hymen, O ! 86 NUPTIAL SONG IN HONOUR OF Lo ! a rich and happy home Doth thy lord on thee bestow, To be aye by thee possess'd, (Hymenaeus ! god thrice blest ! O Hymen ! Hymen, O !) Even till feeble palsied age, Crown'd with locks of driven snow, Listless lists to every call, Witless nodding all to all : O Hymen ! Hymen, O ! O'er the step with omen fair Lift her feet of golden glow : Enter now the polish' d door : Hymen, Hymen, evermore ! O Hymen ! Hymen, O! See ! thy husband lieth now On his Tyrian couch, and, lo ! Yearneth heart and soul for thee ; Come, O Hymen, fond and free ! O Hymen ! Hymen, O ! In his heart not less than thine Dbth the flame of passion glow, But a fiercer inward fire Fills his soul with deep desire : O Hymen ! Hymen, O ! JUNIA AND MANLIUS. 87 Purple-mantled youth ! now leave — Leave the maiden's arm of snow. Let her to his couch repair, Hymen, ever fond and fair ! O Hymen ! Hymen, O ! Matrons ! who have faithful been To your faithful husbands, go, Place the tender maid aright, Place the maid with omen bright : O Hymen ! Hymen, O ! Bridegroom ! come ! Thy radiant bride, With a rosy blush imbued, In her chamber waits for thee, Like a white parthenice, Or poppy saffron-hued. Husband ! by the gods above ! But thou none the less art fair, Nor doth Venus thee despise ; But the daylight pales : arise, Nor linger longer there. Neither hast thou linger'd long. Now thou 'rt come : may Venus prove Favouring, since before our face Thou thy darling dost embrace, And hid'st not virtuous love. 88 NUPTIAL SONG. Of thy many thousand joys Who to tell the sum aspires, May he sooner count the sands On the Erythrean strands, Or midnight's twinkling fires. Sport at pleasure, and may soon Sons on sons up round you spring : Let not such an ancient name Wither in a childless fame, But aye be blossoming. May a young Torquatus soon From his mother's bosom slip Forth his tender hands, and smile Sweetly on his sire the while, With half-oped tiny lip. May each one a Manlius In his infant features see, And may every stranger trace, Clearly graven on his face, His mother's chastity. May such praise, O blooming bride ! Crown thy happy progeny, As Telemachus retains, Fruit of that best mother's veins, The chaste Penelope. NUPTIAL SONG. 89 Virgins ! now the portals close : Cease your revels : now 'tis time, Happy pair ! to seal love's pledge ; Exercise your privilege In youth's fond lusty prime. LXIL NUPTIAL SONG. YOUTHS. Hesperus comes ! ho, youths, arise ! above Olympus' height The star of eve at length displays his long-expected light : 'Tis time to rise — to leave the festal banquet, come away! Soon will the virgin come, and soon be sung the bridal lay. Hymen, O Hymenaee ! Hymen ades, O Hymenaee ! MAIDENS. Ho, maidens ! do ye see the youths ? meet them with right goodwill, Surely the Herald of the Night beams clear o'er Oeta's hill ; 90 NUPTIAL SONG. 'Tis so : and see ye not how nimbly trip the youths along 1 Nor leap'd they forth for nought : 'twere fame to con- quer them in song. Hymen, O Hymenaee ! Hymen ades, O Hymenaee ! YOUTHS. Not easily, O youths ! shall we the wreath of victory gain, Mark how our fair-cheek' d rivals muse apart, nor muse in vain ; Right memorable is the lay the maidens have de- sign'd ; Nor strange : since thus they ply their task with un- divided mind. With busy ears for bootless talk we 've fritter'd time away, A just defeat will then be ours : for labour gains the day; Wherefore, let now at least the theme your careful study claim ; Hark ! 'tis your rivals, now prepare responses meet to frame. Hymen, O Hymenaee! Hymen ades, O Hymenaee! MAIDENS. Hesper ! what heaven-revolving orb beams with more cruel ray, Who from the mother's arms the clinging child canst tear away, NUPTIAL SONG. 9 1 And on the passion-burning youth the guileless girl bestow, What deed more ruthless stains the town that 's taken by the foe ] Hymen, O Hymenaee ! Hymen ades, O Hymenaee ! YOUTHS. Hesper ! what star with gladder radiance beams in yonder sky 1 Who with thy flame the plighted nuptial vow dost ratify ; The sire's and suitor's pledge to seal thy beams alone have power : What by the gods to mortals given can match this blissful hour ? Hymen, O Hymenaee ! Hymen ades, O Hymenaee ! MAIDENS. Companions ! Hesper from our midst has borne a white-robed mate : Thou star of ill ! whene'er thou com'st the watchers guard the gate, The prowler lurks by night, and oft, in morning's shadows gray, Thou, changed to Phosphor, lightest up the unhal- loVd spoiler's way. Hymen, O Hymenaee ! Hymen ades, O Hymenaee ! 92 NUPTIAL SONG. YOUTHS. To chide thee with feign'd railleries the maidens never tire, What if they chide, while they with inmost soul thy beams desire? Hymen, O Hymenaee! Hymen ades, O Hymenaee! MAIDENS. As springs the sweet secluded flower in garden's fenced space, Unknown to browsing flock, untouch'd by plough- share's grazing trace, By breezes soothed, by sunshine fired, and foster'd by the rain, Which many a youth and many a maiden fondly seek - in vain ; When once nail-nipp'd, the faded flower, no youths, no maidens prize : So, while the maid's a maid, she glads her friends' and playmates' eyes ; But when her sullied form has lost the virgin charms she wore, To lover she 's no longer dear, nor dear to maiden more. Hymen, O Hymenaee ! Hymen ades, O Hymenaee ! YOUTHS. As grows the unwedded vine within the bare and barren field, Nor ever rears its head erect, nor mellow grape doth yield, NUPTIAL SONG. 93 But, bending 'neath its weary weight, its sprays and roots entwined, Withers and dies unheeded all by peasant or by hind : When once elm-wedded, then by hind's and peasant's toil 'tis rear'd : So, while the maid 's a maid, she spends a lonely age uncheer'd, But meetly wedded, in the golden springtide of desire, She glads a loving husband's heart, nor grieves a doting sire. Hymen, O Hymenaee ! Hymen ades, O Hymenaee ! YOUTHS AND MAIDENS. Since such a husband shall be thine, O maiden ! come away ! He is thy sire's and mother's choice, whom thou must needs obey : Thy sole disposal is not thine — a part thy parents claim — Thy sire and mother each a third, to thee belongs the same : 'Twere unbeseeming to resist thy parents' double power, Who to the bridegroom yield their rights, together with thy dower. Hymen, O Hymenaee! Hymen ades, O Hymenaee ! 94 A TVS. LXIIL ATYS. In eager haste in rapid bark young Atys cross'd the billowy main, Swift leap'd ashore, rush'd to the Phrygian grove, Cybebe's dark domain ; And, goaded on by raging madness, frenzied inspira- tion's prey, There, with a sharp-edged flinty stone, all trace of manhood swept away. And when the sexless being saw the mutilated form he wore, And gazed upon the ground bespatter'd with the warm and reeking gore, Up in his snowy hand he caught the timbrel light, with furious glee, The timbrel of thy dread initiate rites, great Mother Cybele! And, rattling with his tender ringers on the bullock's hollow hide, In accents wild and tremulous he thus to his com- panions cried : A TVS. 95 " Away, ye Galli ! hence ! away to Cybele's high forests fly, Away, ye roving crew ! your mistress Dindymene's service ply, Ye ! who like exiles from your homes have sought strange lands, led on by me, Who 've dared the rapid briny deep, the raging fury of the sea, And, loathing woman's charms, unmanned your lusty forms with maiming rite, On in your rapid wanderings speed, your souls with frenzy's fire incite ! " Drive from your minds all coward fears ; haste, hither haste, and follow me ! On to your mistress' Phrygian shrine — the Phrygian groves of Cybele — Where echoing cymbals clash, where timbrels roll around their swelling tone, Where the Phrygian flutist's curvSd reed drones out its dreary moan, Where raving Maenads madly toss their ivy-circled heads about, And urge their hallow'd mysteries with shrieking yell and piercing shout. Where to and fro the wandering crew of votaries de- light to stray, — 'Tis there, with wild careering, we must speed : away ! away ! away ! " 96 A TVS. When Atys, man no more, had thus unto his sexless comrades sung, Suddenly the chorus raised the yell with frenzy-quiver- ing tongue, Booms the light timbrel once again — again the hollow cymbals clash ; On to green Ida with impetuous steps the frantic votaries dash. Infuriate, panting, wild, bewildered, Atys, leading on the throng, Smote the round timbrel's airy form, through murky forests rush'd along, Like wild, unbroken heifer, bursting from the galling yoke, he fled, The rapid Galli close behind their rapid-footed leader sped. And when they, weak and wearied, reach their mis- tress Dindymene's home, Fasting, they sink to sleep, their bodies with unmeas- ured toil o'ercome : Dull languors o'er them steal, with heavy drowsiness their eyelids close : And the raving madness of their souls is lull'd a while in calm repose. But when the golden-visaged Orb of Day with eyes all radiant smiled Upon the pale-hued sky of dawn, the solid earth, and ocean wild, A TVS. 97 And with his thunder-footed steeds urged on the shades of night apace, Then Sleep from Atys fled, and, trembling, sought - ♦ Pasithea's embrace. When now with sweet refreshing rest his furious frenzy was allay* d, And Atys with untroubled soul his deeds in sober reason weigh'd, And with unclouded mind beheld the sexless wretch he was, and where, Back to the sea he rush'd, soul-toss'd upon the bil- lows of despair, And, gazing with tear-welling eyes upon the ocean's vast expanse, Pour'd forth unto his native land this plaint, his woe's wild utterance : " My country ! land that gave me birth ! from which, wretch that I am ! I fled, Like hireling from his master's roof, and to the groves of Ida sped', There amid snows and frozen dens of savage brutes my lot to bear, And rove, a frantic wretch, and rouse the forest prowler from his lair : G 98 A TVS. " Where shall I deem thee, parent clime ] Oh ! in what region dost thou lie ? While reason's fitful gleam remains, thee-ward I long to turn mine eye. Must I now tread these dreary deserts, far, far distant from my home ? Far from my fatherland, possessions, friends, and parents, must I roam ? Banish' d the Forum, Race-course, Ring, debarr'd the loved Gymnasium's pale ] My wretched, wretched soul, for ever and for ever v pour thy wail. " What form is there I have not worn 1 — boy, youth, man, votaress ] — on the soil Of the Gymnasium I was first, — the pride and glory of the oil ; My gates were throng'd, my threshold warm, my home with flowery chaplets hung, When morning woke me, and the sun his golden radiance o'er me flung. " And must I serve the gods i alas ! a howling slave of Cybele ! A Maenad S part of what I was, — a sterile, sexless devotee 1 A TVS. 99 And must I ever on the snow-clad regions of green Ida pine, And linger on 'neath Phrygia's frowning peaks while weary life is mine, Where roams the woodland-nurtured stag, where prowls the forest-ranging boar 1 Oh, now I rue the deed I've done, and mourn my rashness o'er and o'er." When fell these accents from his rosy lips upon the wandering air, The ears of the immortals caught the tidings of his wild despair ; Then Cybele unyoked her car, and freed the lions from her hold, And, fiercely goading, thus harangued the left hand smiter of the fold : " On, Savage ! blast him with despair ! on, on ! in terror and dismay Scare into yonder shaggy shades the caitiff wretch who 'd flee my sway, Go ! sweep thy tail and lash thy flanks, roar till the forest roars again, And wildly, fiercely toss upon thy brawny neck thy tawny mane." IOO A TVS. Thus spake the awful Cybele, and freed her lion from the yoke. Rousing his soul of fire, he rush ; d, roar'd, through the crashing branches broke, And when he neard the lonely beach, white with the foam of ocean's tide, And by the glassy mirror of the sea the tender Atys spied, On with a bound he sprung. Back to his wilds the frantic being fled, And there, 'mid dreary wastes, a life of servile bondage ever led. / I • I I I ,1 J O great and potent deity! O goddess dread and marvellous ! t j O Cybele' diyine ! queen of the forest realms of Din- dymus, From me and from my home thy inspirations wild be far away : To thy dark rites and frenzied dreams be other votaries a prey ! NUPTIALS OF PELEUS AND THETIS. 101 LXIV. THE NUPTIALS OF PELEUS AND THETIS. 'Tis said that pines that grew of yore on Pelion's woody height, SaiFd far across the liquid realm that owns old Nep- tune's might, Even to the waves of Phasis' stream and the Aeetaean strand: When chosen youths — the beauty and the strength of Graecia's land — With eager hearts to wrest from Colchian's hand the fleece of gold, Sped through the briny deep, in rapid ship, their journey bold, And dared with pliant oars of fir the plains of azure scour : For these the goddess, who keeps ward in high em- battled tower, A wheelless chariot form'd, to flit before the gentle breeze, By fitting to a curved keel the closely-knitted trees. That gallant bark first skimm'd along the erst unfur- row'd seas. 102 THE NUPTIALS OF Soon as with forward prow the windy sea she cut in twain, And the oar-tortured wave grew white with spray amid the main, From out the seething gulf emerged, their faces wan with fright, Sea Nereids, wrapt in wonder at the strange, un- wonted sight. On that, and ne'er on other morn did mortal eyes behold The ocean Nymphs unveil their forms of fair, immortal mould ; Up from their hoary home they rose, breast-low the wave above, Then Peleus' soul, with Thetis fired, was kindled into love ; Then Thetis on a mortal's love look'd down with no disdain ; Then, too, her sire his sanction gave to the union of the twain. Hail ! race of heroes ! Hail ! whom birth an age far happier gave, Hail ! offspring of immortals ! hail ! blest mother of the brave ! And while I sing this lay of mine, I '11 oft invoke your name ; Thine, too, whom such high nuptials crown with never- dying fame, PELEUS AND THETIS. 103 O Peleus ! prop of Thessaly ! to whom eternal Jove, The almighty father of the gods, resigned his cherish'd love. Did Thetis, NereuV fairest child, accept thy prorTer'd hand % Thy claim to wed their grandchild did old Tethys not withstand, And Ocean who with welling waves encircles every land? Soon as the rolling wheels of time brought round the long'd-for day, To Peleus' home Thessalia's nobles flock without delay, And crowds all joyous, wishing joy, thick throng the regal hall, And many a present bring : joy beams upon the face of all. Now Scyros' isle is left behind, and Phthian Tempe's homes, And Crannon's dwellings, and Larissa's walls and stately domes, All to Pharsalia hie ; Pharsalia's halls in crowds they seek. No peasant tills the fields, the bullock's neck grows soft and sleek, The lowly vine no more is clear'd of weeds by crooked rakes, No more the bull with ploughshare prone the crumb- ling glebe upbreaks, 104 THE NUPTIALS OF The primer's hook no longer lops the trees' um- brageous boughs, The squalid and corroding rust o'erspreads the un- heeded ploughs. But in the royal mansion, look around where'er you will, The silver bright and shining gold your eyes with wonder fill ; On seats the polish'd ivory shines, on boards the goblets gleam, And all the gorgeous palace-halls with regal splen- dours teem. A couch in central chamber stood, whereon the bride might lie, Inlaid with polish'd Indian tooth, and veil'd from vulgar eye By coverlet of purple hue — the sea-shell's rosy dye ; And on this coverlet were wrought the forms of men of old, Of heroes gone, whose high renown with wondrous art was told. There Ariadne stood, on Dia's wave-resounding shore, And wild o'ermastering agonies her gentle bosom tore ; Her gaze is fix'd on Theseus, as in rapid bark he flies, Nor can she yet believe she sees the scene before her eyes — PELEUS AND THETIS. 105 That, on uprising from her bed, deceitful slumber gone, She finds her wretched self upon the lonely sands alone. But he, ungrateful youth ! speeds fast his course with smiting oar, His promise to the winds he throws, remembering it no more ; On him, far from the weedy strand, she strains her sorrowing eyes, A Bacchant's marble image, yelling forth her madden- ing cries : Within her soul, like billows, roll the heaving waves of care, Upon her brow no fillet now confines her golden hair, No more with its light vesture is her snowy bosom wound, No more the fine-wrought girdle binds her struggling breast around. From all her body gliding down on every side they fall, The salt sea-waves before her feet are sporting with them all. She cares not for her floating veil, she cares not for her crown ; What wonder if her lover's loss all other losses drown 1 106 THE NUPTIALS OF Her heart, her soul, her mind by love's wild passions are consumed. Ah ! wretched Ariadne ! to distracting sorrows doom'd ! For Venus many a thorny care implanted in thy mind, What time heroic Theseus, leaving Athens' shores behind, Did from Piraeus' winding coast his gallant vessel bring, And enter the Gortynian halls of Crete's unrighteous king. To wash away a direful plague — so ancient legends tell- That for Androgeos' murder foul on Cecrops' city fell, Her chosen youths and spotless maids were wont to sail afar To Creta's isle — a banquet for the savage Minotaur : And since the infant city groan'd beneath such grievous woes, To give his life for his dear land brave Theseus rather chose Than that Cecropia's youths should find, across the Cretan wave, A funeral 'reft of funeral rites, within a living grave. So, speeding in his rapid bark, borne on by gentle gales, He reaches haughty Minos' realms, his regal palace hails. PELEUS AND THETIS. 107 Soon as the royal virgin's eager eye beholds his face — The maid, who knows no other's, save a mothers fond embrace, Round whose chaste bed sweet perfumes all their balmiest odours fling, Fair as along Eurotas' banks the budding myrtles spring, Or as the lovely flowers that streak spring's rainbow- colour' d wing — She burns, nor ever turns away her passion-drunken eyes, Till all amain through every vein love's flame en- kindled flies, And in her inmost marrow all its maddening frenzies rise. O cruel maddener of the mind ! divine, relentless boy! Who ever minglest bitter grief with mortals' sweetest joy; And thou, O queen of Golgos and Idalia's leafy glade, On what a billowy sea ye toss'd that soul-enkindled maid! What heavings for her fair-hair'd guest within her bosom roll'd ! What fears within her fainting heart made youth's warm blood run cold ! How oft more wan her cheek became than sheen of yellow gold ! 108 THE NUPTIALS OF And when he yearn' d to brave the savage monster in his lair, And perish in his jaws, or earn the hero's guerdon there, She vow'd heaven-pleasing offerings, to her how fruit- less now ! Nor linger'd on her silent lip in vain the unspoken vow. For as the furious whirlwind, in its wild and eddying flight, Uptears the oak that waves its boughs on Taurus' lofty height, Or oozy cone-producing pine, with trunk of giant might : Far from its roots upborne it headlong falls with furious bound, Scattering, amid its crushing crash, destruction all around : So, Theseus with victorious arm the savage monster slew, That to the empty air his horns in vain up tossing threw. , Back, then, from forth the drear abyss with well- earn d fame he sped, Guiding his wandering footsteps with a skein of slen- der thread, PELEUS AND THETIS. 109 That he might keep his memory clear amid its wind- ing ways, And find a place of egress from the labyrinthine maze. But why in this my song should more digressions find a place, Why tell how Ariadne, having fled her father's face — Fled a dear sister's loving arms, a mother's tender care, A mother who bewail'd her child in accents of despair, Her Theseus' honey'd love preferr'd all other things before, Or how the ship was wafted on to Dia's foaming shore, How then her husband, hard of heart, to every feeling steel'd, Departing, left her, soon as fatal sleep her eyelids seal'd ; And oft, 'tis said, her passion-kindled soul with fury flush'd, The piercing shrieks of rage from out her inmost bosom gush'd ; And now, that full of woe, she clomb the mountain's rugged steep, Whence she could see outspread below the wide and swelling deep, Anon the soft dress lifting that around her beauty hung, She, rushing forward, laved her limbs the rippling waves among, HO THE NUPTIALS OF And there, with streaming eyes and uttering sobbings cold and faint, The anguish' d maiden in her woe pour'd forth this wild complaint : " And is it thus, false Theseus ! far, far from her native land, Thou leavest Ariadne on a lone and barren strand'? And dost thou, thus departing, heaven's high behests despise ? Ingrate, and carry home with thee thy cursed per- juries ! " Could nothing change the purposes of thy unpitying mind? Could no warm stream of mercy to thy soul a channel find? Could thy relentless heart no pang of pity feel for me? Ah ! these are not the promises once fondly vow'd by thee • And these are not the joys my wretched hope was taught to prove, But happy union and the long'd-for sweets of wedded love : All scatter'd now, and strewn to every wind that sweeps the air. PELEUS AND THETIS. 1 1 1 " Henceforth let never woman trust an oath that man shall swear, Nor count the tender speeches true his lying lips de- clare ; For when with lusting soul he yearns some object to enjoy, No oath, no promise then he deems too sacred to employ ; But when his soul is sated, and his burning passion dies, He fears to break no plighted vows, cares nought for perjuries. " 'Twas I who snatch'd thee from the gulf wide- yawning to devour, And rather chose to doom to death my brother Minotaur, Than fail thee, thou deceitful one ! in danger's awful hour ; For this to savage beasts and birds a prey shall I be thrown, And no kind hand shall heap the dust on me when life is gone. " What lioness gave birth to thee in lone rock- shelter'd cave % What sea conceived and spued thee forth from its wild foaming wave ] 112 THE NUPTIALS OF Syrtis, or ravenous Scylla, or Chary bdis vast and stern % v Who for sweet life by me preserved dost render such return. And if to wed me now thy heart, all-changed, had no desire, Because thou loath'dst the stringent laws of my relent- less sire, At least thou mightst have carried me to thy own native land, That I with pleasant labour might have served at thy command, With the water's limpid stream I would have laved thy snow-white feet, Or gladly spread upon thy bed its purple coverlet. " But wherefore, madden'd with my woes, should I thus, all in vain, To the unconscious senseless air with wailings wild complain % It cannot hear my utter' d words, nor answer make again : For surely now, his sails the ocean's midmost billows reach, And not a human form is seen on this lone, weedy beach ; Thus in my latest hour, stern fate, insulting and severe, From my unheeded, hopeless cry, averts her envious ear. PELEUS AND THETIS. 1 13 " Oh how I wish, Almighty Jove ! that ne'er in days of yore A ship from the Cecropian land had reach'd the Gnossian shore, Nor, to the indomitable bull bearing his tribute dire, The faithless mariner had sought the kingdom of my sire; Nor, in sweet guise concealing the fell purpose of his breast, That villain in my Cretan home had rested as a guest. Ruin'd, alas ! what hope is left % or whither shall I flee? The mountains of Idomene ? — the cruel, severing sea, With its broad trackless gulf, divides that friendly land from me. Can I expect a father's aid whose countenance I fled, Following the stern-soul'd youth whose arm my brother's blood had shed % Or from a husband's faithful love what solace can I reap? Deserted he has left me, and his oars now ply the deep. On this lone shore, this desert isle, no dwelling can be found, No egress hence — the ocean rolls a barrier all around ; There are no means of flight ; no hope ; mute desola- tion reigns ; Death staring me on every side, my certain doom remains. H 1 14 THE NUPTIALS OF " Yet shall my languid eyes not cease to gaze upon the day, Nor from my wearied body shall the senses ebb away, Till on his head I beg the gods meet punishment to pour, And, thus betray'd, in my last hour heaven's holy faith implore. " Ye powers ! who to the crimes of men dire chastise- ment assign ; Eumenides ! around whose heads the snaky ringlets twine ; Whose brows portray the hellish wrath that rankles in your breast \ Oh ! hither, hither haste, and list to this the sad re- quest Which from my inmost soul, alas! to "misery con- signed, I 'm forced to pour — a helpless wretch, with burning madness blind ; And since even from my bosom's depths these bursts of anguish stream, Oh, doom them not to vanish like an airy, idle dream, But let him in that soul, in which he has abandon'd me, Bring on himself and all his race death and black infamy/' PELEUS AND THETIS. US When, with sad heart, she poured this plaint, and, wild with woe, besought Fierce retribution for the deeds of wrong that he had wrought, Her prayer the King Celestial heard, and awful bow ; d assent ; Earth and wild ocean trembled at his nod omnipo- tent, And all the glittering worlds were rock'd in the vast firmament. Then was the mind of Theseus with a darkening gloom opprest, And every mandate that before his constant soul pos- sest Was swept away, to rise no more in his forgetful breast : Nor did he to his sorrowing sire the gladdening signs display In token of his safe return to the Athenian bay. For ere the fleet left Pallas' seat to plough the briny wave, Ere Aegeus trusted yet his son the stormy winds to brave, 'Tis said he clasp'd him to his breast, and these in- junctions gave : ll6 THE NUPTIALS OF " My peerless boy ! oh, dearer far to me than length of days, Whom I am now compell'd to send in danger's dubious ways ! My son ! but just restored to me in latest life's last stage, Since my own evil fortune and thy valour's burning rage Tear thee from my unwilling heart, ere yet my feeble eyes Rest on thy loved form till time their craving satis- fies : I will not send thee from my face with gladden' d heart elate, Nor suffer thee to bear away signs of propitious fate ; But first full many a bitter wail shall from my bosom flow, And with the earth and sprinkled dust I'll soil my locks of snow, Then, on thy flitting mast, dyed sails I '11 hang aloft in air, That with its dark Iberian hue thy canvas may de- clare What burning anguish wrings my soul, what pangs my bosom tear. And should the goddess, who in blest Itone has her shrine, (The guardian of "our native land, protectress of our line,) Grant that the monster's blood be shed by strong right arm of thine, PELEUS AND THETIS. 11/ Then see that in thy memory stored these precepts still have weight, Nor lapse of time e'er from thy mind my words ob- literate, And when thy native hills again shall rise before thine eye, Let everywhere thy sail-yards drop their robes of dis- mal dye, And let the twisted ropes the snow-white canvas hoist on high, That when I see it my glad heart glad tidings there may trace, When that auspicious day restores thee to thy father^ face." These mandates, that before he kept close treasured in his mind, Fled from his darken'd memory, nor left a trace be- hind, Like cloud from snow-capt mountains crest swept by a gale of wind. His sire, as from a turret's top he scann'd the oceans rim, His anxious eyes with ever-flowing tears fast waxing dim, Il8 THE NUPTIALS OF When the dark canvas of the inflated sail first hove in sight, Believing Theseus lost by cruel death's relentless might, Dash'd forward with a headlong bound from the dim craggy height. Thus Theseus, when he reached his home, which death's dark woes opprest, Was in his heart by such soul-agonising griefs dis- trest, As his ingratitude had fix'd in Ariadne's breast, When, anguish-wrung, she traced the ship receding from her view, And in her breast roll'd countless woes in aspect ever new. Elsewhere " Iacchus, ever young," flies hurrying from above, Round whom the Satyrs and the Nysa-rear'd Sileni rove, O Ariadne, seeking thee, and, fired with frantic love : See how with frenzied souls they rave, with fleet foot speeding by, And " Evoe, Evoe," wildly shout, and toss their heads awry; Some brandish in their hands aloft the ivy-circled spear, Some hurl about the mangled limbs of a dismember'd steer, PELEUS AND THETIS. 119 Some all around their naked forms the wriggling ser- pents plait, Some with their wicker-basket stores dark orgies cele- brate, Orgies for ever seal'd except to ears initiate : There, with extended palms, some smite the timbrel's airy round, Or from the polish'd brazen plates wake the shrill tinkling sound ; By many, too, the trumpet's hoarsely-sounding blare is blown, And the barbaric pipe creaks forth its wild, ear- piercing tone. With forms like these the coverlet, all gorgeously be- spread, Enfolded with its drapery 7 and veil'd the bridal bed. Fill'd with the scenes that with delight their eager spirits fired, Ere yet the holy gods approached Thessalia's youths retired. As Zephyr crisps, with early breath, the still and sleeping sea, What time around the wandering Sun Dawn bids the shadows flee, • And wakes the sloping waves to life and morning liberty ; While, by a gentle breeze first fann'd, they undu- lating flow, And with a rippling murmur utter laughter soft and low; 120 THE NUPTIALS OF Then, when the freshening gale blows strong, wild and more wildly war, And, flowing from the purple dawn, refulgent gleam afar : So from the royal vestibule slow pour'd the crowds away, Then homeward sped with quickening tread each as his journey lay. The crowd now gone, from Pelion's height old Chiron first appear'd, Bearing for nuptial offerings what stores the country rear'd, For flowers of every hue that o'er Thessalia's meadows grow, That stud her giant mountain-slopes or by her rivers blow, Drawn from the pregnant earth by warm Favonius' fostering glow, A rustic gift he brought, in plaited garlands, random- wreathed, And all the palace wore a smile, and fragrant odours breathed. Forthwith Peneus came, from Tempe's vale with ver- dure crown'd, Tempe, which dark o'erhanging forest pine-trees mantle round, PELEUS AND THETIS. 121 Now left for Dorian dances of the beauteous Naiad throng \ Nor came he empty-handed — root and stem he bore along The lofty beeches and the stately laurel's tapering trees, The airy cypress, and the plane that flaunteth in the breeze, And thunder-blasted Phaethon's tall sister; all of these He placed around the mansion, laced the boughs the trunks between, That all the vestibule might wear a robe of leafy Behind him next Prometheus came, deep-versed in cunning lore, Still wearing feeble traces of the punishment he bore When from the barren jagged flinty crags that o'er him frown 'd, Erewhile he hung, his limbs with adamantine shackles bound. Then Jove himself, his holy spouse, and all his pro- geny, Came from the heavenly mansion, leaving, Phoebus, only thee, And thy twin-sister, who delights on Idrus' hill to be : 122 THE NUPTIALS OF For, like thee, thy fair sister nursed 'gainst Peleus bitter spite, Nor with her presence deign'd to honour Thetis' nup- tial rite. When on the seats the immortals bent their snowy limbs around A board with viands manifold and choicest dainties crown'd, Then, while all through their feeble frames the palsied tremors ran, The Ancient Fates their truth-predicting canticle be- gan. Their trembling forms on every side a mantling vest- ment veil'd Of stainless white, around their heels its purple border trail' d ; On their ambrosial heads sat wreaths that with the snow had vied, While their untiring hands their endless labour cease- less plied. Their left hand held the distaff, shrouded in the wool's soft bed, The right, with upturn'd fingers, gently drew and form'd the thread, y Then twisting it upon the thumb that pointed to the ground, Kept the well-balanced spindle ever smoothly whirling round : PELE US A ND THE TIS. I 2 3 With nipping tooth they smoothed the work where'er a tuft appear' d, And ever to their parched lips the woolly scraps ad- hered, Which from the fine-spun thread with constant care they clear'd away. Before their feet the shining wool in soft white fleeces lay In baskets wrought with willow-wands, all scrupulously stored ; And as they drew the fleeces forth the prescient sisters pour'd, With voices shrill, in strains diyine, this song of destiny, A song whose truth no after age will question or deny : " Peleus ! thou brilliant ornament ! thou valour- crowned one ! Great bulwark of Emathia's land ! most glorious in thy son, Hear, in this joyous hour, thy true, thy changeless future read ; Then, spindles, twine the threads by which dark des- tiny is sped, Run, spindles ! onward ! spindles, run, and twine the fatal thread. " Soon, soon shall Hesper come to crown thy fond marital dreams, And lead to thee thy beauteous bride with happy- omen'd beams, 124 THE NUPTIALS OF Thy bride, who in soul-trancing bliss thy panting soul shall steep, And love-o'erwearied sink with thee in balmy languid sleep, While all around thy manly neck her ivory arm she '11 spread. Run, spindles ! ever ceaseless run, and twine the fatal thread. " No house hath ever witness been to love so blest as this, ■ No love hath ever lovers join'd in such dear bond of bliss As now awaits this happy pair, this happy nuptial bed. Run, spindles ! ever ceaseless run, and twine the fatal thread. "To you Achilles shall be born, a hero void of fear, His back to foe he'll never show, but breast un- daunted rear, And when oft in the devious course the victor's path he '11 tread, The fleet stag's lightning footsteps shall by him be far outsped. Run, spindles ! ever ceaseless run, and twine the fatal thread. PELEUS AND THETIS. 1 25 " Though valiant heroes seek the field no equal shall he know, When with the noblest blood of Troy the Phrygian plains will flow, And the third heir of perjured Pelops devastation dread In that long weary siege shall round the Trojan bul- warks spread. Run, spindles ! ever ceaseless run, and twine the fatal thread. " To all his gifts heroic, to all his deeds of fame, Mothers shall bear their witness beside the funeral flame, When in the dust their hoary hairs they '11 loosen from their head, And feebly smite their aged breasts in anguish for the dead. Run, spindles ! ever ceaseless run, and twine the fatal thread. " For as the reaper moweth down the unnumber'd ears of grain When crops 'neath autumn's burning sun wave yellow o'er the plain, So in the field he '11 reap the Trojan foe with hostile . blade. Run, spindles ! ever ceaseless run, and twine the fatal thread. 126 THE NUPTIALS OF " A witness to his valiant deeds Scamander's flood shall be, Which, sparsely streaming to the rapid Hellespontic sea, Shall roll his dark corse-cumber'd waves pent in a narrower bed, A warm ensanguined river, rolling billows crimson-red. Run, spindles ! ever ceaseless run, and twine the fatal thread. " A witness, too, shall be the death-deliver' d captive maid, When on the lofty earth-raised mound her snow-white limbs are laid Prostrate beneath the axe's stroke — an offering to the dead. Run, spindles ! ever ceaseless run, and twine the fatal thread. " For when to the war-wearied Greeks the Fates shall grant at length To crush the walls by Neptune reared, the Dardan city's strength, Polyxena, like victim stooping to the two-edged steel On bended knee, a mangled, headless corse shall for- ward reel, And on the hero's lofty tomb the appeasing stream shall shed. Run, spindles ! ever ceaseless run, and twine the fatal thread. PELEUS AND THETIS. 1 27 " Come, then, in wedlock's blissful bonds your loving hearts unite, Now let the bridegroom take his goddess-bride with omen bright, Now let the vestal to her husband's eager arms be led. Run, spindles ! ever ceaseless run, and twine the fatal thread. " Her nurse, when morning streaks the sky with blushes rosy-red, Shall find the necklace all too strait she wore when she was wed. Run, spindles ! ever ceaseless run, and twine the fatal thread. " Nor shall her anxious mother mourn a separated bed, But children's children shall arise before her hopes are fled. Run, spindles ! ever ceaseless run, and twine the fatal thread." Such were the fates of Peleus, such the oracles be- nign, The prescient sisters hymn'd in days of yore, with voice divine ; 128 THE NUPTIALS OF For erst the heavenly gods appear'd in hero's chaste abode, And 'mid assembled throngs of men their holy pre- sence show'd ; While Piety, still undespised, maintain'd her saintly reign. Oft then the Father of the gods re-sought his fulgent fane, What time his annual sacred rites on festal days came round, And saw a hundred slaughter'd bulls fall welt'ring to the ground. Of from Parnassus' lofty brow the roving Bacchus flew, And drove along his hair-dishevelPd, yelling Thyad crew, While from the city's every nook the Delphians rush'd abroad, And at their smoking altars hail'd with joy the rosy god. Oft to the deadly strife of war great Mars in armour sped, Or rapid Triton's goddess-queen, or Rhamnus' maiden dread, And, rousing mortals to the charge, the armed legions led. PELEUS AND THETIS. 1 29 But when in awful wickedness the earth deep-stained lay, And mortals from their lustful souls fair Justice chased away, When brother in a brother's blood his murderous hands imbrued, When son without a pang of grief his lifeless parent^ view'd ; When father fondly yearn'd that death might snatch his first-born boy, That an unwedded step-dame's charms he freely might enjoy; When mother, daring with her all-unconscious son to lie, Fear'd not to stain her household gods in her im- piety ; When right and wrong, in guilty madness mingled, met the view, Their justice-loving minds from man the holy gods withdrew • Wherefore for such assemblies now they never leave the sky, Nor in unclouded day endure the gaze of mortal eye. 130 TO HORTALUS. LXV. TO HORTALUS. Though ceaseless griefs and cares my heart devour, And call me from the learned Virgins' fane, And though my woe-toss'd mind hath lost the power To breathe sweet poesy's melodious strain ; For o'er my brother's foot, clay-hued and chill, Flows Lethe's dark, inevitable wave ; And, ravish'd from my sight, his ashes fill, By far Rhoeteum's shore, a Trojan grave ; Though, Brother ! I no more thy voice shall hear, Ne'er see thy life-dear face in after day, Yet surely ever will I hold thee dear, And aye with griefs wan hues I '11 tinge my lay ; Yea, even as the Daulian bird her song Outpours in accents sweetly dolorous, When o'er the branch-gloom'd river all night long She wails the fate of perish'd Itylus : Yet, Hortalus, in Latin garb I 've drest For thee this poem of Battiades, Lest thou shouldst think thy wish had fled my breast, A bootless offering to the roving breeze. BERONICE "S HA IR. 1 3 1 As glides the apple — furtive token fraught With tenderest love — from modest maiden's breast, Who, with heart-deep emotions all distraught, Forgets the treasure 'neath her silken vest, Which, when she springs her mother's kiss to claim, In all the innocence of girlish glee, Slips out and rolls along, while conscious shame Crimsons her rueful face \ — 'twas so with me. LXVI. BERONICE'S HAIR. (Translated by Catullus from the Greek of Callimachus.) Conon, who knew the great world's every light, The rise and setting of the orbs of night, How rapid Sol's bright beams eclipsed can die, How stars at stated periods leave the sky, How dulcet love to Latinos' rocks a while From her aerial course did Trivia wile : He saw me in the heavens new glory shed, Me, the fair lock from Beronice's head, Which she to many a god in dread alarms Had vow'd to give with outstretch' d ivory arms, 1 3 2 BERONICE 'S HAIR. What time, in nuptial flush, her royal lord Against Assyria sped with ruthless sword, Wearing sweet scars from that nocturnal fray In which he bore her virgin spoils away. Do brides hate wedlock? or their parents' joy With floods of lying tears would they destroy, When o'er the nuptial chamber threshold led % False,. by the gods, are all the tears they shed ! Thou taught'st me this with many a sad lament, When to grim wars, O Queen, thy husband went ; Yet a lorn couch alone thou didst not mourn, No : but a brother from a sister torn. What anguish then thy inmost marrow tore ! What cares thy bosom harrow'd to the core, Reaving thy soul of sense ! yet sure had I Known thee from earliest years of courage high. Hadst thou forgot the deed that crown'd thee queen, Than which fame's roll no braver boasts, I ween? Yet when he left thee, O ye gods ! what sighs ! How oft thy wan hands wiped thy streaming eyes ! What god thee changed ? or will not lovers dwell Far from the ones they inly love so well ? 'Twas then thcfti vowedst to all the gods to give Me, with the blood of bulls, should he but live, And, soon to thee returning, add in chains The Asian land to Egypt's wide domains : For these dear boons, in heaven's host number'd now, With virgin beams I pay thy pristine vow. O Queen ! I left thy head unwillingly — Unwillingly : yes, by thy head and thee ! BERONICE'S HAIR. Who slights this oath meet vengeance let him feel ; But who can dare oppose the might of steel ? By steel that mountain e'en was prostrate laid, The greatest Thia's radiant son survey'd, When Medan hosts a new sea form'd, and through ' Mid Athos swept the fierce barbarian crew ; How shall poor tresses, then, fell steel dare face ? Great Jove ! in ire blast all the Chalyb race, And him who first the embowell'd treasures tore From forth the earth, and steel'd the veined ore. The sister locks I left still mourn'd my fate, When Aethiop Memnon's brother, through heaven's gate Rushing, with quivering wings the ether clove, And to Arsinoe's shrine impetuous drove. He took me up : up through heaven's gloom he prest, And laid me down on Venus' spotless breast ; For Grecian Venus' self gave this command, Hight Zephyritis on Canopus' strand, That not alone, high in the star-gemm'd sky, On Ariadne's brow should man descry A golden crown, but that I too should shine, Even I, the golden curl that graced her shrine. She placed me here, still moist with many tears, A new-made star among the primal spheres ; Close by the Virgin and the Lion wild, To fierce Callisto near, Lycaon's child ; Westward I veer and slow Bootes guide, That hardly sinks at last in ocean's tide ; 1 34 BERONICE 'S HA IR. Though down at 'night by feet immortal prest Dawn calls me back to fair-hair d Tethys' breast ; Yet — let me speak it, dread Rhamnusian maid, For I will speak the truth all undismay'd, And though with kindling ire the stars should seethe, The dictates of a truthful breast I '11 breathe — My lot so glads me not that I would be Thus rack'd and ever barr'd, dear Queen, from thee, With whom, a maid, I quafFd no scents divine ; — In wedlock ! gods ! what perfumes rare were mine. Ye whom the long'd-for bridal-torch doth bind To lords of loyal heart and kindred mind, Yield not to them, nor all your charms display, Till me sweet fee your onyx-boxes pay, Ye who desire a husband's chaste caress ; But let the gifts of foul adulteress, Ah ! loathsome offerings ! slake the shifting sand, No boon I crave from her unhallow'd hand. So more and more, ye brides, may concord reign, And love eternal in your homes remain. And, Queen ! when to the stars thine eyes thou ; lt turn, And, wooing Venus, festal torches burn, Oh, be not me, thine own, from unguents free, But dower me largely. Stars ! why hold ye me % Let me but grace once more that brow divine, Orion then may next Aquarius shine.* * Another rendering of the concluding lines of this poem, with special reference to the text of Ellis, will be found in the Notes. DIALOGUE, ETC. 135 LXVII. DIALOGUE BETWEEN CATULLUS AND A DOOR. (From the text of Rossbach.) Catullus. Hail, door ! to husband and to parent dear, And thee may Jove with every blessing cheer ; 'Tis said thou servedst Balbus well erewhile, When that old man possess'd this domicile; And that thou basely serv'dst his son again, When with his bride the aged wight had lain j Say, wherefore art thou deem'd so sadly changed, And from thine ancient faith so far estranged 1 Door. No, (may it please Caecilius ! whose I 'm now,) Though mine 'tis call'd, the fault 's not mine, I trow, Nor e'er could mortal tax me with a sin, Though, sooth, the rabble make a hideous din, And when a fault 's committed, all combine, And shout at me : " Fie, door, the fault is thine." Catullus. Thy word alone is not enough for me ; Come, let me clearly understand and see. Door. How can I % no one asks or cares to know. Catullus. I do ; speak on ; away your scruples throw. 136 DIALOGUE, ETC. Door. First, then, 'tis said, she here a virgin came ; Tis false : not that her lord had been to blame, For he, poor fellow, could not fail to prove A harmless warrior in the lists of love ; But his old sire caress'd the blooming spouse, And stain'd with infamy the ill-starr'd house ; Whether he burn'd with passion's lawless fire, Or thought his sterile son must needs require The help of one with stronger nerve and bone To loose the new-made spouse's maiden zone. Catullus. You tell a noble parent's pious deed, Good soul ! to help his son in time of need. Door. But not of this alone does Brixia speak ; Brixia, that lies 'neath dark-blue * mountain peak, Cleft by the yellow Mella's gentle wave, Brixia, that birth to my Verona gave, Tells of Posthumius' and Cornelius' fires With whom she gratified her dark desires. Catullus. "Come, door, how know'st all this?" some one may say, " Thou from thine owner's threshold may'st not stray, Nor hear the people talk, but night and day, Fix'd to this post, must back or forward sway V ' Door. Oft have I heard her tell, in furtive tone, Her crimes, when with her maidens all alone, * In the editions I have consulted, all the readings of this very obscure passage appear to me alike unsatisfactory. The second word of the line (32) is variously given, Ckinea, Chinaeae, Cenomanae, Echinaeae, Cygnea, Cycnea, Cycneae, &c. I have conjectured Cyaneae. EPISTLE TO MANLIUS. 137 Naming the aforesaid ones, as if I here Kept swinging, gifted with nor tongue nor ear. She mentioned one besides who '11 nameless be, Lest he with bristling eyebrows scowl on me — A lean, lank fellow, once in law involved About a case of birth, he wanted solved. LXVIIL* EPISTLE TO MANLIUS. Oppress'd with woe and misery's crushing gloom, You send to me a letter writ in tears, Imploring help and rescue from the tomb, Like the wreck'd seaman who the wild waves fears ; To whom, on your lone, widow'd bed reclined, Nor holy Venus grants sweet rest by night, Nor doth the Muse your rest-robb'd anguish'd mind With the sweet strains of ancient bards delight. Your lines are dear, since there you call me friend, And ask the gifts of Friendship and the Muse ; But, lest you know not 'neath what woes I bend, Or think I could such sacred claims refuse ; 138 EPISTLE TO MANLIUS. Manlius ! learn the ills that round me press, Plunged in the waves of sorrow's surging sea, Nor longer think the boons of happiness Can be obtam'd from hapless wretch like me. What time the vestment pure was round me thrown, In youth's glad spring all redolent of flowers, 1 sported freely ; not to Her unknown Who blends sweet bitterness with cares of ours. Such thoughts thy woe-worn friend no more employ, Reft of a brother dear in manhood's bloom ; Brother ! thy death has marr'd my every joy, With thee our house's glory finds a tomb. With thee has perish'd every dear delight, Which o'er my life thy love's> sweet influence shed ; Thy death has merged my soul in rayless night, Each taste, each pleasure that I loved has fled. Why write me thenl " Catullus, 'tis a shame Your life should thus be in Verona led, While any gallant here of noble name May warm his chill limbs in your vacant bed." Manlius, 'tis not a shame : 'tis piteous, say ; And pardon me, if thee I do not send The gifts which grief from me has torn away ; They are not mine, nor on my will depend. TO ALL1US. 139 Of writings here I have but scanty store — A few choice books to soothe my hours of care ; For Rome is still my home as heretofore, My dwelling-place — my thoughts — my all is there. Then think not I have thy requests denied From disingenuous soul or spiteful spleen ; Amply I w r ould have both thy wants supplied, Unask'd by thee, if mine the power had been. LXVIIL b TO ALLIUS. Ye Muses ! I cannot the meed withhold From Allius, for his help and loving zeal ; May fleeting years, to dark oblivion roll'd, Ne'er in night's dreary gloom his worth conceal. To you I sing. Do ye in after days To thousands yet unborn his name extol, And let this writing herald forth his praise, When it is reckon'd as an ancient scroll. And when he 's number'd with the silent dead, More and more glorious be his growing fame, Nor let the pendent spider ever spread Her airy web o'er his neglected name. I4-0 TO ALL/ US. Ye know how wily Venus plagued my life, And with resistless passion thrilPd my frame, When in my vitals warr'd the fiery strife, Fierce as Sicilian Aetna's scorching flame, Or as the boiling Malian springs that rise Within Thermopylae, by Oeta's hill, Griefs bitter tears ne'er ceased to blur mine eyes, Nor sorrow's stream ad own my cheek to trill. As crystal rill from mountain's airy crest Leaps from the mossy stone and valeward bounds. Then cuts the busy road — refreshment blest To way-worn wight when cracks the sun-baked grounds : And as to storm-toss'd sailor comes the fair And gentle breeze that calms the angry sea, From Pollux now, now Castor sought in prayer, So great a boon has Allius been to me. He gave me wider fields, a home, its queen — Our love — my radiant goddess thither bore Her sandall'd fairy foot with graceful mien, And made sweet music on my household floor. Thus warm Laodamia sought of old Protesilaus' home, ah ! sought in vain, For never there the sacred blood had roll'd, Of victim to the blest immortals slain. TO ALLIUS. 141 May'ne'er be mine, Rhamnusian maiden stern, While heaven denies, desires inordinate ; How thirstily for blood the altars yearn Laodamia learn'd, alas ! too late. Forced from her young lord's loving arms to part, Ere in their laggard nights two winters view'd Love's brimming chalice sate her eager heart, That she might live in weary widowhood. Well knew the fates that doom not distant far, If he in arms to Ilium's walls should go, For Helen's rape had roused the trump of war, And call'd the Argive chiefs to face the foe. Fell Ilium ! Europe's, Asia's common tomb, Troy ! cruel grave of all that 's brave and true, 'Twas there my brother fell by ruthless doom, Whose loss I 'm left in bitterness to rue. Brother, thou 'rt gone ; alas ! life's gladsome light ! With thee the glory of our house is dead ; With thee has perish'd every dear delight Which o'er my life thy love's sweet influence shed. 'Mong nameless graves thou liest, far away, Near kindred dust placed by no kindly hand ; But Troy, foul, baleful Troy, detains thy clay, Thy grave a foreign clime's remotest strand ! 142 TO ALLIUS. Thither then hastening, all the youth of Greece, From hearth and home, in crowds innumerous sped, That Paris with his stolen quean in peace Might not enjoy a quiet bridal bed. Thus wast thou reft, incomparable bride, Of what than life and soul was sweeter bliss, Love's all-absorbing, wildly-eddying tide Had suck'd thee down a fathomless abyss, Vast as by Cyllene Pheneus was the one That drain' d the fertile soil — a marsh before — And which Amphitryon's falsely-father'd son Dug in the bowels of the hill of yore, When he by meaner lord's behest had driven 'Gainst the Stymphalian pests the shafts of doom, That one god more might tread the courts of heaven, Nor Hebe linger long in maiden bloom. Far deeper than that gulf thine own deep love, That taught thee, all untaught, the yoke to bear, Nor e'er did aged grandsire's deeper prove When first he hail'd his long-expected heir/' * Or, according to other texts : — But thy deep love exceeded far the abyss That taught a servile god the yoke to bear, Nor e'er had aged grandsire equal bliss When first he hail'd his long-expected heir, TO ALU US. 143 And blest his only daughter's late-born boy, Who, in his will recorded in their stead, Blasting his baffled kinsmen's impious joy, Scares off the vultures from his hoary head. Nor ever joy'd so in her snowy mate The dove, with billing blisses ne'er content, Whose eager love, 'tis said, no joys can sate, Though for inconstancy pre-eminent. Great are the loves of these, but nought beside Thy matchless love, Laodamia fair, When thou in wedlock's bonds becam'st the bride Of thy dear husband of the golden hair. In nought or little less in charms the maid, My love ! my life ! came bounding to my breast, Round whom oft Cupid, hovering glory -ray'd, Effulgent shone, in saffron tunic drest. And though she may not live for me alone, Few are the falsehoods of my modest maid ; Then let me bear them as to me unknown, Nor like a fool her broken faith parade. Oft Juno, mightiest of the powers above, Burn'd for her lord, though daily slights she bare, For well she knew the amours of roving Jove ; But gods with men 'tis impious to compare. 144 TO ALLIUS. Still let me ne'er her anxious parent dread, Nor to my ears his peevish grumblings come, For not by father's right hand was she led Into my Syrian-odour-scented home : But on that wondrous night the charms her lord Of right deserved, on me she lavish'd free ; Enough : if she with whiter stone record The hours she consecrates to love and me. Allius ! for many kindnesses I give The best return I can, this friendly lay, That with foul rust unstain'd thy name may live Upon my page for ever and for aye. What gifts of old to Virtue Themis paid, With these a gracious heaven thy days will cheer, Then blest be thou, and blest thy life-dear maid, Our home of pleasure and its mistress dear. And blest be he who added to my life The gift of friendship, when he added thee ; But yet more blest and dear my more than wife, Light of my eyes, whose love is life to me. INCONSTANCY OF WOMAN'S LOVE. 145 LXIX. TO RUFUS. Wonder not, Rufus, why no maiden fair Will have your love or let your arms come near her, Not though you tempt her with a vestment rare, Or lovely gem than sparkling water clearer. A certain ugly story damns your suit ; A buck-goat lurks, 'tis said, your arm-pits under ; The girls all fear {he horrid, grewsome brute — For so he is — and, really, 'tis no wonder. No longer deem it strange they 're cold and coy, For till he 's gone not one will venture nigh you • At once this shocking nasal pest destroy, Or cease to wonder why the maidens fly you. LXX. ON THE INCONSTANCY OF WOMAN'S LOVE. Lesbia declares she 'd marry none but me, Not even Jove, should he her wooer be ; She says so : but on wind and rapid wave A woman's troth to her fond swain engrave. K 146 TO LESBIA. LXXL TO VIRRO. If e'er to worthy's lot befell The grievance of a goatish smell ; If e'er poor mortal limp'd about A martyr to the racking gout ; Your lucky rival, on my oath, Has got a glorious share of both. So, oft as with your love he 's lain, You 've had your vengeance on the twain His odour well-nigh chokes the fair, His gout is more than man can bear. LXXIL TO LESBIA. O Lesbia ! once thou didst declare Catullus only had thy love ; That thou his lot would st rather share Than win the heart of Jove. How pure that love of mine the while ! It was not like the vulgar fires That kindle at the wanton's wile, But holy as a sire's. ON AN INGRA TE. 1 47 I know thee now : and though I glow With passion wilder than before, To me thou 'rt vile and fallen low, My soul's delight no more. How can it be i thy faithless ways, So grievous in a lover's sight, Make passion's torch more fiercely blaze, But dim love's holy light. LXXIIL ON AN INGRATE. Oh ! cease to wish from any one a kindly thought to merit, Or yet to think you can inspire a meek and grateful spirit ; All are ungrateful 3 all, alas ! kind deeds avail us nothing ; Nay, more, they rather weary, cloy, and lead to utter loathing ; For he in fierce and bitter hate to no sworn foe is second, Who lately had in me the one, the only friend he reckon'd. 1/p ' TO LESBIA. LXXIV. ON GELLIUS. "Gellius had heard his uncle used to scold, If he of wanton word or deed was told ; To save himself, he kiss'd his uncle's wife, And render'd him Harpocrates for life. He gain'd his point : for, do whate'er he may, His uncle now has not a word to say. LXXV. TO LESBIA. Lesbia ! no woman e'er was loved As thou hast been by me ; No plighted troth has ever proved So true as mine to thee. But now the cruel faithlessness That in thy breast I find, Has shaken the devotedness I cherish' d in my mind : So that I cannot love thee well, Though spotless thou shouldst shine ; Nor fond love's doting thoughts dispel, Though every fault were thine. TO HIMSELF, ETC. 149 LXXVI. TO HIMSELF.— THE LOVER'S PETITION. If past good deeds, — if an unsullied fame, Unbroken faith, and fair integrity, That ne'er to wrong mankind abused heaven's name, Wake in the breast of man sweet memory ; Then for long years to thee rich joys are due, Catullus, from this love, ah ! ilkrepaid ; For all that man could either say or do, With kindliest heart, by thee was done and said ; Yet all was lost upon the thankless fair ; — Why more with tortures, then, be rack'd and riven r ( Come, steel thy heart, withdraw thee from the snare, And cease to be a wretch in spite of heaven. 'Tis hard to quench at once a long-nursed love ; 'Tis hard — but do it howsoe'er you may • It is your only chance — your courage prove — Easy or difficult — you must obey. Ye gods ! if pity in your bosoms dwell, Or if to man ye e'er deliverance bear When death's dark whelming billows round him swell, / Oh ! look on me, and hear a wretch's prayer ; 150 TO RUFUS. And, if a stainless life the boon may claim, Oh ! pluck from me this canker-worm and pest, Which, like a torpor creeping through my frame, Has banish'd every pleasure from my breast. I ask not that she should return my love, Or e'en be chaste — for that can never be : Grant me but health, this fell disease remove, Ye gods ! with this repay my piety. LXXVII. TO RUFUS. Rufus ! how fruitless and how vain My trust in thee : Fruitless 1 nay, fraught with heavy gain Of woe to me. Like reptile vile into my breast Didst thou thus stray, And, wearing out my vitals, wrest My all away ! Alas ! my every joy thou 'st ta'en, Life's upas-tree ! Alas, alas ! my friendship's bane ! Woe ! woe is me ! ON GALLUS. 151 Oh, now I grieve the spotless lip Of one so true Was ever lured by thee to sip Thy mouth's foul dew. Thou 'It rue thy deed : all time in scorn Shall hold thy name, And hoary fame to years unborn Shall speak thy shame. LXXVIII. ON GALLUS. Gallus has two brothers : one Has a charming wife, And the other has a son Full of mirth and life. Gallus is a wag : and why ? He, to crown their joy, Gets the charming wife to lie With the charming boy. Gallus is a fool : and, vext, He will scratch his head, Should he find his nephew next With his wife a-bed. IS 2 TO GELLIUS. LXXIX. ON LESBIUS. Lesbius is fair : why not ? in Lesbia's love, Catullus ! thee and all thy race above : Yet me and all my kindred let him sell If he but find three men to wish him well. LXXX. TO GELLIUS. Gellius ! why are thy lips, once rosy red, Hueless and paler than the winter snows, Whether from home at early morn thou 'st sped, Or left thy couch from noontide's sweet repose 1 I know not. Or is rumour's whisper true, That wanton joys your whole time occupy] These pale the lips, how fresh soe'er their hue, And dim the lustre of the brightest eye. [But now I grieve my pure girl's pure lips e'er Imbibed the slaver of a wretch like thee. Thou ? lt rue it : ages on thy name shall bear, And hoary fame declare thine infamy.] TO A BEAUTY. 1 53 LXXXI. TO A BEAUTY. Fair maid ! among So vast a throng Couldst thou descry No other swain, Whom thou couldst deign With love to eye, Than that low scamp, From out the damp Pisauran vale % The gilded sheen Of bust, I ween, Was ne'er so pale. He now enchains Thy heart, and reigns Preferr'd to me. Thy error, oh ! Thou dost not know, Alas for thee ! 154 ON THE HUSBAND OF LESB1A. LXXXIL TO QUINTIUS. Quintius ! if thou wouldst have me owe to thee Mine eyes, or aught, if aught 's more dear to me, Snatch not from me my soul's far dearer prize, If aught there be still dearer than mine eyes. LXXXIIL ON THE HUSBAND OF LESBIA. Lesbia says many ill things of me when her husband is present ; This to the poor silly fool is a thing most uncommonly pleasant ; Mule ! you don't see it all : if silent she were and for- getful, Free from love she might be ; but now that she storms and is fretful, She not remembers me only, but, what is a thing far severer, Angry she is, so she burns, and still speaks of me : What can be clearer? ON HIS LOVE. 155 LXXXIV. ON ARRIUS. Arrius commodious aye chommodious call'd, And for insidious out hinsidious bawl'd, And then he thought his accent wondrous good When he had mouth'd them rough as e'er he could. His mother, and his uncle Liber, too, And their good parents thus, methinks, would do. He went to Syria, — all our ears had then A sweet repose, — smooth flow'd the words again, Vanish'd the fears that put us nigh distraught, When, suddenly, the direful news was brought, That Arrius, when in Syria, said that he Just came from crossing the Hionian Sea. LXXXV. ON HIS LOVE. I hate and love. " Why do I so V Perhaps you ask. I can't explain : The bitter fact I only know, And torture racks my brain. 156 QUINTIA AND LESBIA COMPARED. LXXXV. (another version.) I hate and love. Why so % I cannot tell : I feel it ; and endure the pains of hell. LXXXVI. QUINTIA AND LESBIA COMPARED. Quintia I know the many rate A gem of loveliness ; To me she 's fair, and tall, and straight, These singly I confess \ But I that wondrous whole deny, Its line I fail to trace ; For where in that great figure lie The piquancy and grace % ' Lesbia is lovely ; she so rare — So beautiful withal, Robb'd ail her sex of all things fair, To wear the coronal. ON GELLIUS. 157 LXXXVIL TRANSLATED IN LXXV. LXXXVIII. ON GELLIUS. Gellius ! know'st thou the awful wickedness Of him who yields to incest's mad caress % 'Tis such that all the waters of the main Can ne'er obliterate the monstrous stain. No guilt, how dark soe'er it be, can stretch Beyond the baseness of the abandon'd wretch. LXXXIX. ON GELLIUS. Gellius is thin : and what wonder % when he Has so blithe and so buxom a mother, And a sister as lovely as maiden can be, Sooth ! 'twould beat you to find such another. And then he 's an uncle so good and so green, And of she-cousins such a bright bevy, 'Twould rather be strange if he were not so lean, Their demands on him must be so heavy. 158 ON GELLIUS. For although he should never a woman embrace Save the very same ones he should never, You '11 find good enough reason, I trow, why his face Should be lean and still leaner than ever. XC. ON GELLIUS. Let Gellius' and his mother's lust be crown' d With one who shall the Persians' creed expound, For Magian must from son and mother rise, If truth in Persia's vile religion lies ; To venerate with accents meet heaven's name, And melt the fat omentum in the flame. XCI. ON GELLIUS. No, Gellius ! never did I hope thou 'dst prove Faithful in this my wretched, frenzied love, Because I knew thee well, nor thought thy mind Could be restrain'd from vice of any kind, But that my ardent love — 'twas this alone — Was nursed for no relation of thine own ; ON CAESAR. 1 59 And though I knew thee well, I never dream* d That thou wouldst this a fit pretext have deem'd. Thou thought'st so : such with thee is vice's gust, That nothing 'scapes thy foul, insatiate lust. XCIL ON LESBIA. Lesbia rails against me ever, And of me is silent never, May I die if Lesbia loves me not sincerely. Why ? Don't I do the same. And aye malign her name % But may I die if I don't love her dearly. XCIIL ON CAESAR. To please you, Caesar, I don't care one plack, Nor care I whether you are white or black. l6o ON "SMYRNA" A POEM BY CINNA. XCIV. ON MAMURRA. Mamurra sins : Mamurra is a sot : The proverb 's true : Herbs grow to fill the pot. xcv. ON " SMYRNA/' A POEM BY CINNA. Nine harvests since was Cinna's work begun, Nine winters see at last his "Smyrna" done; Whereas Hortensius, in a single year, Throws off five hundred thousand verses clear. " Smyrna" will charm where Satrachus doth roll, And times unborn will read the laboured scroll ; Volusius' Annals shall in Padua die, Or in its shops for mackerel wrappers lie : My friend's small labours to my heart are dear, Turgid Antimachus the mob may cheer. ON A EMI LI US. 161 XCVI. TO CALVUS, ON THE DEATH OF QUINTILIA. Calvus ! if from our grief aught can accrue The silent dead to solace or to cheer, When fond regret broods o'er old loves anew, And o'er lost friendships sheds the bitter tear Oh ! then her grief at death's untimely blow To thy Quintilia far, far less must prove Than the pure joy her soul must feel, to know Thy true, unchanging, ever-during love. XCVII. ON AEMILIUS. By heaven ! without a word of jesting, I really could not help protesting, Were I desired to kiss that flunkey : Egad ! I 'd rather kiss a monkey ! His mouth, you see, is not the cleanest, His tout-ensemble is the meanest ; L 1 62 TO VETTIUS. But, if I needs must kiss the noddy, I 'd choose some portion of his body- Where grinders did not stare before me, Like lethal weapons meant to gore me. Teeth ! why their length is full six inches ; Gums ! like a pair of rotten benches ; Besides, when he is grinning, marry ! The orificie is like a quarry. Yet he to this or that cit's daughter Pays court, and proudly boasts he's caught her, Whereas the dolt, exiled from lasses, Should drive the mill with kindred asses ; The girl who for her mate would choose him Might take a hangman to her bosom. XCVIII. TO VETTIUS. All that is said to fools and prattlers dire, O foul-mouth' d Vettius ! may be said to you, For with that tongue of yours, should need require, You 'd lick the cow-boy's filth-bedabbled shoe. If ruin fell on all you wish to send, Just wag your tongue : you 're sure to gain your end 1 THE KISS.— TO A BEAUTY. 1 63 XCIX. THE KISS.— TO A BEAUTY. Fair honey'd maid ! the while you play'd I stole a little kiss, And sweet ambrosia could not match The sweetness of my bliss. For that fond raid I dearly paid, For hourly more and more, What pains the cross-naiPd wretch endures, Such agonies I bore. I pleaded love — in vain I strove ; No grief, no tears of mine Could drive away one jot of that Hard-heartedness of thine. Whene'er 'twas done, too cruel one ! Thy little lips were rinsed, And by each finger of thy hand With every effort cleansed, Till not a trace on thy sweet face From lip of mine remain'd, As if some vicious profligate Its purity had stain'd. 164 ON COELIUS AND QUINTIUS. Nay more : thy spite 'tis thy delight In every way to vent, And never hast thou ceased my heart To torture and torment. That this wee kiss might smack of bliss Ambrosian never more, But be more bitter to my soul Than bitter hellebore. Since such the pains thy heart ordains To my sad love, I swear, I '11 never steal a kiss again, Nor tamper with the fair. ON COELIUS AND QUINTIUS. Young Coelius and Quintius, the beauty And flower of the Veronese youth, To two sisters are paying love's duty — A bond right fraternal, in sooth. Whose suit shall my best wish attend ? Thine, Coelius ! for thou wast well tried At the time I most needed a friend : Then, Coelius, be blest in thy bride. A T HIS BROTHER 'S GRA VE. 1 65 CI. THE POET AT HIS BROTHER'S GRAVE. Brother ! o'er many lands and oceans borne, I reach thy grave, death's last sad rite to pay ; To call thy silent dust in vain, and mourn, Since ruthless fate has hurried thee away : Woe 's me ! yet now upon thy tomb I lay, All soak'd with tears for thee, thee loved so well, What gifts our fathers gave the honour' d clay Of valued friends ; take them, my grief they tell : And now, for ever hail ! for ever fare-thee-well ! CI. (From the text of Schwabe.) Borne over many a land and many a sea, Brother ! I reach thy gloom-wrapt grave to pay The last sad office thou may'st claim from me, And all in vain address thy silent clay : For thou art gone — fell fate that from me tore Thee, thee, my brother ! ah, too cruel thought ! I '11 call thee, but I '11 never hear thee more Recount the deeds thy valiant arm hath wrought. 1 66 TO CORNELIUS. And I shall never see thy face again, Dearer than life ; yet in my heart alway Assuredly shall fond affection reign, And aye with grief's wan hues I '11 tinge my lay : Yea, even as the Daulian bird her song Outpours in accents sweetly-dolorous, When o'er the branch-gloom'd river, all night long, She wails the fate of perish'd Itylus. Yet now what gifts our sires in ancient years Paid those with whom in life they loved to dwell, Accept : — all streaming with thy brother's tears ; And, brother ! hail for aye ! for aye farewell ! GIL TO CORNELIUS. If e'er true friend a secret dared disclose To silent friend of known fidelity, Thou 'It find me of the brotherhood of those ; Harpocrates could not more silent be. ON MAMURRA. 167 cm. TO SILO. Silo ! return my hundred pounds, I pray, Then be as fierce and savage as you may : Or cease, if money 's all in all to you, To be a pimp, and fierce and savage too. CIV. ON LESBIA. What ! / my love, my very life malign, Who 's dearer far to me than both mine eyes ? No : that could never be with love like mine, But you with Tappo frame a world of lies. CV. ON MAMURRA. Mamurra fain would soar to Pimpla's crown, The Muses with their pitchforks chuck him down. 1 68 TO LESBIA. CVI. ON AN AUCTIONEER AND A PRETTY GIRL. Whoever sees a salesman with a belle Must surely think he 's brought her out to sell. CVIL TO LESBIA.— THE RECONCILIATION. If e'er that wish which mortal holds most dear Hath by his eager, longing heart been gain'd, When not a gleam of hope remain'd to cheer ; The boon how sweet ! the pleasure how unfeign'd ! Such is the sweet, unfeign'd delight I feel — Which wealth of glittering gold could ne'er impart — To know my Lesbia, reconciled and leal, Will now be pressed to my enraptured heart. To my fond arms, and of thine own accord, Thou comest after hope's last ray had fled ; A whiter mark shall the pure bliss record, This happy day upon my life hath shed. TO LESBIA. 169 Who is there boasts a happier fate than mine % Or rather, where is he would not declare The lot that binds my destiny with thine, Compared with that of others, passing fair ? CVIIL ON COMINIUS. If thy impure gray hairs to death should be, Cominius, doom'd by popular decree. I trow that first thy tongue, that loathes the good, Cut out, should glut the vulture's ravenous brood ; Thine eyes should gorge the raven's sable maw ; Dogs should thy bowels, wolves the remnants gnaw. CIX. TO LESBIA. My life ! thou swear'st no trials e'er shall change Our honey'd love, nor years our hearts estrange. Truth to her vows, Almighty Heaven ! impart ; Oh, be her words sincere, and from the heart ; That all our lives our souls may faithful prove In this eternal bond of holy love. 170 TO AUFILENA. CX. TO AUFILENA. O Aufil^ne, we Ve ever seen True, honest sweethearts praised, Our gifts they take, nor lightly break The darling hopes they've raised. Oh, 'twas unfair in thee to swear Thou 'dst give a kiss to me ; My gift to take, and then to break Thy word : 'twas base in thee. An honest maid had not delay'd The payment sweet to bring \ A modest queen might not have been So quick in promising. To prowl for prey, and skulk away, Smacks of the wanton's art, Who 's ever fain, for paltry gain, To play the meanest part. TO CINNA. 171 CXI. TO AUFILENA. O Aufilena ! 'tis a wife's best praise, Pleased with one lord to live and love no other ; But if you needs must stray from virtue's ways, Oh, never, never be your cousins' mother. CXIL TO NASO. Naso, thou 'rt great, as greatness goes with thee : Naso, thou 'rt great in lust and infamy. CXIII. TO CINNA. Cinna, when Pompey first was consul, none Save two as Mucia's paramours were known ; In Pompey's second consulship each one Could count his pupils to a thousand grown ; This crop full well repays the sower's toil : The seed will spring and thrive in any soil. I7 2 ON MAMURRA. CXIV. ON MAMURRA. Mamurra ! justly, from your lands, You 're deem'd a wealthy lord ; For all that lordly wealth commands Your Formian fields afford. Fishes, beasts, birds of every breed, Plough'd fields and meadow grounds ; Tis all in vain : your debts exceed Your fortune's utmost bounds. I grant your income may be great : Want holds you aye in thrall ; The owner of a fine estate ! A beggar with it all ! cxv. ON MAMURRA. Formian of thirty acres is possest In meadow-land ; ploughed, forty ; seas the rest : Why is he not in wealth o'er Croesus crown'd ? Such countless stores he reckons at a bound : TO GELLIUS. 173 Meads, fields, vast woods, lawns, marshy grounds be- side, Far as the frozen North, as Ocean wide. All these are great : yet yield to him they must ; A man ! oh, no : a universe of lust ! CXVI. TO GELLIUS. Oft have I wished the lays of Battus' son To send for thee with studious mind to con, That I might calm thy bitter spleen, and stay The darts thou hurlest at my head alway. O Gellius ! now I see my toil was vain, And that my prayers had fail'd thine ear to gain 'Neath my strong mail I '11 shun thy every dart, But mine shall pierce and lacerate thy heart. EXCURSUS AND ILLUSTRATIVE NOTES. EXCURSUS ILLUSTRATIVE NOTES. Poem I. Catullus modestly dedicates his little work (lepidum novum libellum) to his friend and fellow-countryman Cornelius Nepos, author of u Lives of Illustrious Com- manders," and a " Universal History/' in three books. The latter work, which was probably given to the world about B.C. 50, has perished. Carm. I. v. 9.* O patrona Virgo, Virgo= Minerva. Cf. Hor. Epist. ad Pisones, 385. Tu nihil invita dices faciesVe Minerva. * Iri giving the parallel notes reference is made throughout to the lines of the original. M 178 EXCURSUS AND Poems II. and III. These two exquisite little poems have been the admira- tion of scholars and men of taste both in ancient and modern times. The playful tenderness, delicacy, and inimitable grace which they evince throughout impart to them a special charm. The following short poem by Martial, (Epigr. i. no,) though by no means equal to either of the famous songs of Catullus, is nevertheless one of the prettiest of the many " Nugae canorae" in imitation of the " Sparrow :" — Issa than Catullus' sparrow Far more frolic is, Issa 's purer, purer far, oh ! Than the dove's pure kiss ; Blander far than maiden fair, Than the gems of Ind more rare, Issa ! Issa ! darling bright, Issa, Publius' delight. If you heard pet Issa whimper You would think she spake, Grief and joy her whine and simper Tell beyond mistake. On his neck her nap she takes, Not a breath the silence breaks, All so still and cosily Does his charming Issa lie. With entreating paw she taps you, And the darling pup Prays, " put me to bed," " perhaps you Now will raise me up." Innocence's paragon ! Love her heart hath never known, Nor have we discover'd yet Lover worthy of our pet. ILL US TEA TIVE NO TES. 1 79 Publius, lest death should strike her, Had her painted ; lo ! You'll see Issa limn'd so like her That you could not know. Place her by the picture there, I aver you will declare You 've two living Issas seen, Or that both have painted been. Carm. II. v. 13. Quod zonam soluit diu ligatum. Thus imitated in the " Priapeia," (Anthologia Latina, Carm. 1704. Edit. Meyer) : — Te vocant prece virgines pudicae, Zonulam ut soliias diu ligatam. Carm. III. v. 5. Quern plus ilia oculis suis amabat. Cf. Theoc. Idyll, xi. 53:— Kcu tqv ev* 6(pda\fA6i>, rcD {mol yXvKepurepov ovdev. V. 13-15. At abstulistis. Cf. Ov. Amor. ii. 6, 37-40. Occidit ille loquax, humanae vocis imago Psittacus, extremo munus ab orbe datum. Optima prima fere manibus rapiuntur avaris, Implentur numeris deteriora suis. Dead ! my pretty chatterer, That mimick'd human sounds, Parrot ! sent to me ye were From earth's remotest bounds ; Ever first our fairest joy By ruthless hand is ta'en ; Countless things of base alloy Are fated to remain. 180 EXCURSUS AND And Bion, Idyll, i. 55. rode irav kclKov es Tvya Nu/cros diradoi. Then fare-thee-well, dread Lady ! turn thy coursers to the sea, Be sure my task I will achieve, however hard it be ; Yes, fare-thee-well, thou Lady Moon ! with face of shining light, Farewell, ye other stars that grace the car of silent Night ! ' And Tibull. ii. 1, 87-90— Ludite : jam Nox jungit equos, currumque sequuntur Matris lascivo sidera fulva choro, Postque venit tacitus furvis circumdatus alis Somnus et incerto S omnia nigra pede. Sport on : Night yokes her steeds : with wanton tread The golden stars behind her chariot wheel ; Then silent Sleep, with tawny wings outspread, And gloom-wrapt Dreams behind them tottering steal. ILLUSTRATIVE NOTES. * 237 V. 172. Vir tuus Tyrio in toro. Cf. Tibull. i. 2, 73-76— Et te dum liceat teneris retinere lacertis, Mollis et inculta sit mihi somnus humo. Quid Tyrio recubare toro sine amore secundo, Prodest, cum fletu nox vigilanda venit ? So while thy form my fond, fond arms retain, Be on the uncultured ground my slumbers light ; Why press the Tyrian couch, if love disdain, And spend in tears the livelong weary night ? V. 211-225. Cf. Stat. Silv. i. 2, 271-273 — quumque tuos tacito Natura recessu Formarit vultus, multum de patre decoris, 1 Plus de matre feras. When Nature, with mysterious hand, shall mould The tiny features cf thine infant face, May we thy father's beauty there behold, And more than all thy mother's matchless grace. Tibull. i. 7, 55, 56— At tibi succrescat proles, quae facta parentis Augeat et circa stet veneranda senem. And may a race be thine, to swell thy deeds, And stand in honour round their aged sire. Mart. Epigr. vi. 27, 3, 4— Est tibi, quae patria signatur imagine vultus, Testis maternae nata pudicitiae. To thee A child is born, the image of her sire, Sure witness of her mother'sxhastity. 238 EXCURSUS AND And Theoc. Idyll, xvii. 43, 44 — 'Ajrdpyov 5e yvvcuKos eir aWoTpty v6os alei, "PqidLOL 5e yovai, reKva 5' ov iroreoLKora irarpi. But an unloving woman's thoughts aye round the stranger gather, Her parturitions too are light — her sons unlike their father. Poem LXII. This nuptial song is probably an imitation of one of the lost hymenaeals of Sappho. The youths (sponsi aequales) are still reclining at the festal board of the bridegroom, when the rising of Vesper reminds them that the jubilant ceremonial is at hand. The bride meanwhile is being escorted home by a band of maidens (virginis aequales), who are now rapidly approaching the gates. After a few words from their respective leaders, calculated to excite feelings of emulation, the maidens fiercely denounce Vesper, while the youths as lustily proclaim his praises. The exceeding beauty and fitness of the relative parts of the poem are so apparent that remark on them by the translator would be superfluous. Carm. LXII. v. 5. Hymen, O Hymenaee ! Hymen ades O Hymenaee ! Cf. Theoc. Idyll, xviii. 59 — V. 7. Nimirum Oetaeos ostendit noctifer ignes. Cf. Virg. Eclog. viii. 30 — tibi deserit Hesperus Oetam. For thee the star of eve leaves Oeta's hill. ILL US TEA TIVE NO TES. 239 V. 26. Hespere, qui coelo lucet jucundior ignis. Cf. Horn. II. xxii. 318— "Bcrirepos, 6s koWkttos kv ovpav(£ lo-tcltcu >r)p. Bion. xvi. 1 — "Hairepe, rds iparas xP^ a€0P ereant >" dicebat adhuc, onus inguinis aufert Nullaque sunt subito signa relicta viri. Venit in exemplum furor hie, mollesque ministri Caedunt jactatis vilia membra comis. Then madness fastens on the youth — he thinks the roof will crash, and tremulous Springs forth, and in his flight ascends the highest peaks of Dindymus. ILL USTRA TIVE NO TES. 247 And now "Remove the brands," he cries, and now "hence with the lash, begone ! " Often he swears the Furies at his heels are madly pressing on. Then picks he up a pointed flint and maims his form with gashes vile, And in the foul and miry dust his flowing tresses trail the while. Aloud he cries, " With this my blood meet penalty I pay; 'tis right, Perish the parts that wrought my sin, — perish they from my loathing sight." " Ah ! perish they !" again he cried, and then his sex away he shore, And not a single trace remain'd to tell what Atys was before. Hence, in all after-time, the mad effeminate crew, in wild despair, Hack with the flints their members vile, and toss aloft their streaming hair. V. 62, 63. I have here followed the text of Schwabius — Quod enim genus figuraest ego non quod obierim ? Ego mulier, ego adolescens, ego ephebus, ego puer. V. 65, 66. . Mihi januae frequentes, mihi limina tepida, Mihi floridis corollis redimita domus erat. Cf. Lucret. iv. II 73-1 175 — At lacrimans exclusus amator limina saepe Floribus et sertis operit, postesque superbos, Ungit amaracino, et foribus miser oscula figit. Propert. i. 16, 21, 22 — Nullane finis erit nostro concessa dolori, Tristis et in tepido limine somnus erit ? Tibull. i. 2, 13, 14 — Te meminisse decet, quae plurima voce peregi Supplice, cum posti florida serta darem. 248 EXCURSUS AND think of all the vows that o'er and o'er 1 breathed with suppliant voice when all thy door I hung with flowery garlands. And Theoc. Idyll, ii. 152 — Kcu cpdro 61 areepdvoLcri rd dio/nara tt\v' aKoifitfTtp peti/mart iraldes Uarpbs 'tiKeavov. V. 31, seqq. Cf. Statii Theb. ii. 213-216— . Diffuderat Argos Expectata dies : laeto regalia coetu Atria complentur, species est cernere avorum Cominus, et vivis certantia vultibus aera. O'er Argos rose the day expected long, And joyous crowds the regal palace throng, Whose spacious halls ancestral figures grace, The brazen vying with the living face. V. 38, seqq. Cf. Tibull. ii. 1, 5-8— Luce sacra requiescat humus, requiescat arator, Et grave suspenso vomere cesset opus. Solvite vincla jugis : nunc ad praesepia debent Plena coronato stare boves capite. ILLUSTRATIVE NOTES. 263 Let soil and tiller keep this feast alway, Suspend the share ; be no hard labour here ; Unchain the yokes ; at well-fill' d stalls to-day 'Tis meet with garlands ye should crown the steer. V. 48, 49. Cf. Hor. Sat. ii. 6, 102 — In locuplete domo vestigia ; rubro ubi cocco Tincta super lectos canderet vestis eburnos. V. 52. Namque fluentisono prospectans littore Diae. Dia, one of the Cyclades, afterwards called Naxos. Theocritus thus alludes to the desertion of Ariadne by The- seus. Idyll, ii. 43-46 — 'Es rpls airoGTrevho) /cat rpls rdde irbrvia cpuvQ' Eire 7iwa ttjv(x3 7ra/?a/ce/cAtrat etre /cat avrjp, Tbaaov e-x ot X&das, oaaov ttoko. Orjaea cpavri 'Ez> Ata XacrdijfjLev evirXoKdjULU 'AptdSras. Dread queen, I thrice libation pay and thrice these words de- clare, Or man or woman hath his heart entrapp'd in silken snare, The oblivion seize him which they say from Theseus' breast ere- while Swept fair -hair' d Ariadne left on Dia's lonely isle. V. 90. Aurave distinctos educit verna colores. Cf. Burns — Her looks were like a flower in May, Her smile was like a summer morn. V. 96. Quaeque regis Golgos, quaeque Idalium frondosum. Cf. Theoc. Idyll, xv. 100— Aeairoiv', & ToXyus re /cat 'IddXiov icplXrjaas. 264 EXCURSUS AND V. 98. in flavo saepe hospite suspirantem ! Cf. Ovid. Fast. i. 417— Hanc cupit, hanc optat, sola suspirat in ilia. V. 105-109. N am frangens. Cf. Virg. Aeneid. ii. 626-631 — Ac veluti summis antiquam in montibus ornum Quum ferro accisam crebrisque bipennibus instant Eruere agricolae certatim ; ilia usque minatur, Et tremefacta comam concusso vertice nutat, Vulneribus donee paulatim evicta supremum Congemuit, traxitque jugis avulsa ruinam. As when on mountain top the aged ash, Lopp'd by the steel and axe's frequent stroke, Begins to totter 'neath repeated blows, Then nods with threatening mien its palsied head And shakes its quivering locks, till by degrees With many wounds o'ercome it groans its last, And, wrench' d away, drags ruin o'er the ridge. Cf. also Hor. Od. iv. 6, 9-1 1 — mordaci velut icta ferro Pinus, aut impulsa cupressus Euro Procidit late. V. in. Nequidquam vanis jactantem cornua ventis. Evidently taken from a Greek poet quoted by Cicero. Epist. ad Atticum, viii. 5 — pixj/ai IloXXd fJLarrjv Kepdeacriv £s rjepa ^vfxrjvavTa. V. 132, seqq. Tibullus alludes to the complaint of Ariadne, iii. 6, 39-42 — Gnosia, Theseae quondam perjuria linguae Flevisti ignoto sola relicta mari : ILL USTRA TIVE NO TES. 265 Sic cecinit pre? te doctus, Minoi, Catullus Ingrati referens impia facta viri. Fair Gnosian, erst the lies of Theseus' tongue Thou mourn'dst, left lone beside an unknown sea, In thy behalf thus skill'd Catullus sung, And told the ingrate's fell impiety. V. 140, 141. mihi non hoc miserae sperare jubebas : Sed connubia laeta, sed optatos hymenaeos : Cf. Claudian Rapt. Proserp. lib. iii. — Non tales gestare tibi, Proserpina, taedas Sperabam ; sed vota mihi communia matrum, Et thalami festaeque faces, coeloque canendus Ante oculos Hymenaeus erat : sic numina fatis Volvimur, et nullo Lachesis discrimine saevit ? My daughter, torch like this for thee I never hoped to bear, And yet my wish was but the wish of mothers everywhere, A happy bridal for my child, glad flambeaux flaming high, A joyous hymenaeal sung beneath the open sky, Thus 'mong the gods shall Lachesis without distinction rave, And the dread name of deity be impotent to save ? V. 141. 1 Virgil has imitated' this line, Aeneid. iv. 3 1 6 — Per connubia nostra, per inceptos hymenaeos. V. 142. Quae cuncta aerii discerpunt irrita venti. Cf. Virg. Aeneid. ix. 312^313 — sed aurae Omnia discerpunt et nubibus irrita donant V. 154, seqq. Quaenam te genuit, &c. Cf. Tibull. iii. 4, 83-96— Nee tibi crediderim votis contraria vota Nee tantum crimen pectore inesse tuo : 266 EXCURSUS AND Nam te nee vasti genuerunt aequora ponti, Nee flammam volvens ore Chimaera fero, Nee canis anguinea redimitus terga caterva, Cui tres sunt linguae, tergeminumque caput, Scyllaque virgineam canibus succincta figuram, Nee te conceptam saeva leaena tulit, Barbara nee Scythiae tellus horrendave Syrtis, Sed culta et duris non habitanda domus. Et longe ante alias omnes mitissima mater Isque pater quo non alter amabilior. Haec deus in melius crudelia somnia vertat Et jubeat tepidos irrita ferre Notos. Oh, I could ne'er believe thy vows were contrary to mine, Or that so fell a thought could dwell within that heart of thine, For roaring sea ne'er gender'd thee, nor from her jaws of fire Did dread Chimaera belch thee forth — the offspring of her ire, Nor wild hell-hound enwreath'd around with wriggling snakes thee bred, Grim monster of the triple tongue and triple-formed head, Nor yet did maiden Scylla's dog-encinctured form thee bear, Nor savage lioness conceive and whelp thee in her lair, Nor was the barbarous Scythian land thy home or Syrtis fell, But a benignant hearth where cruel beings could not dwell ; A mild fond mother, too, was thine, yea mild beyond compare, No kindlier father ever nursed his child with kindlier care. Then, gracious Heaven, conduct my cruel dreams to issues bright, And bid warm Notus sweep these dark forebodings from my sight. V. 171, 172. Jupiter omnipotens, utinam ne tempore primo Gnosia Cecropiae tetigissent littora puppes. Cf. Virg. Aeneid. iv. 657, 658— Felix, lieu nimium felix, si littora tantum Nunquam Dardaniae tetigissent nostra carinae ! ILL US TRA TIVE NO TES. 2 67 Happy, alas ! too happy had we been If never Trojan keel had touch'd our strand ! V. 177. Nam quo me referam ? Cf. Eurip. Med. 502, 503, &c— NOv irol TpaTcofjicu ; irorepa irpos irarpos do/iovs, Ods vol irpodovaa kcll irdrpav acpLKo/jLTjv ; k.t. A. Where shall I turn me ? To my father's halls ? I, who betray'd my home and fatherland And came with thee ? &c. V. 192-194. Ouare iras. Cf. Senec. Med. act i. v. 13, 14 — Adeste, adeste ! Sceleris ultrices deae, Crinem solutis squalidae serpentibus. V. 205, 206. Quo tunc et tellus atque horrida contremuerunt Aequora, concussitque micantia sidera mundus. Cf. Hor. Od. i. 34, 9-12 — Quo bruta tellus, et vaga flumina, Quo Styx et invisi horrida Taenari Sedes, Atlanteusque finis Concutitur. Whereat the inert earth with terror quakes, Tremble the streams and rolling Stygian river, The rocky cliff of hated Taenarus shakes, And all the peaks of mighty Atlas quiver. V. 247-249. Sic recepit. Cf. Stat. Silv. iii. 3, 179, 180— Haud aliter gemuit perjuria Theseus, • Littore quo falsis deceperat Aegea velis. 268 EXCURSUS AND V. 260. Pars obscura cavis celebrabant orgia cistis. Cf. Theocr. Idyll, xxvi. 7-9 — 'Ie/xz 5'e/c /aVras ireirovaiitva x e P f Qs edidaax, &s avrbs idvfxdpei Alovvcos. V. 270, seqq. Cf. Shelley, Queen Mab, viii. 23, 24 — Like the vagne sighings of the wind at even That wakes the wavelets of the slumbering sea. V. 274. leni resonant plangore cachinni. • Cf. Aesch. Prom. Vinct. 89, 90 — irovTiuv re Kv/xarojp 'ApTjpLdfiov ytXacr/jLa. Milton — Cheer' d with the grateful smell, old ocean smiles. And Byron, " Giaour'' — There mildly dimpling, ocean's cheek Reflects the tints of many a peak, Caught by the laughing tides that lave Those Edens of the eastern wave. See also the beautiful lines of Martial, descriptive of the sea in a state of active repose. Epigr. x. 11-15 — Hie summa leni stringitur Thetis vento ; Nee languet aequor ; viva sed quies Ponti Pictam phaselon adjuvante fert aura ; Sicut puellae non amantis aestatem Mota salubre purpura venit frigus. Soft as from waving fan of lady fair Comes the cool breath that soothes the sultry air, So here the light wind plays on Thetis' breast, Who lies all still, yet not by languors prest ; ILL USTRA TIVE NO TES. 269 Her living rest, and the light favouring breeze The painted pinnace carry o'er the seas. V. 278. Ad se quisque vago passim pede discedebant. Cf. Horn. II. i. 606— Oi fJL€I> KaKK€LOVT€S £$(XV oXkQV§€ eKCLCTTOS. V. 297, 298. Quam quondam silici restrictus membra catena Persolvit, pendens e verticibus praeruptis. Ci Aesch. Prom. Vinct. 4-6 — Tovhe TTpbs Terpens 'T\//r]\oKp7)fivoLS tov Xecopybv oxp-dcrai 'AdajuLavTiviov deajJLQv tv dpprjKTOLS iredcus. V. 306, 307. The Parcae, who dwelt in the clefts of Parnassus (Horn. Hymn in Mercur. 555), and in the vicinity of Thessaly, are most fitly chosen by Catullus to sing the nuptial song. They sang the hymenaeus in honour of the nuptials of Jupiter and Juno, as we learn from the "Birds" of Aristophanes, v. 1731, seqq. — Back, divide, retire aside, Away, 'tis now your duty Round the happy man to veer, Happy fortune's happiest peer, Oh what loveliness is here, And oh, what matchless beauty. Hail, blest bridegroom, who hast brought Great joy to this our city, Great good luck by thee, I ween, Shower' d upon the birds has been ; Up, receive him and his queen With bridal song and ditty. 2JO EXCURSUS AND Once upon a time the Fates With all the gods together Did the lofty-throned king To Olympian Juno bring, And this hymenaeal sing, "Haste, Hymen, Hymen, hither." Eros of the golden wing, And bloom no blast can wither, Seized the back-stretch'd reins and drove, Groomsman at the feast of love, When blest Juno pair'd with Jove,„ " Haste, Hymen, tlymen, hither." V. 33*,332. Quae tibi flexanimo mentem perfundat amore, Languidulosque paret tecum conjungere somnos. Cf. Theoc. Idyll, xviii. 55, 56 — Ei/5er' is aWdXwv crepvov (piXorara wveomes Kcu irbdov. Now sleep, and breathe into each other's breasts the fire Of warm marital love and ever-fond desire. V. 350-3^2. Saepe palmis. Cf. Senec. Here. Oet. 1668-1673— Ingemuit omnis turba, nee lacrimas dolor Cuiquam remisit. Mater in luctum furens Diduxit avidum pectus, atque utero tenus Exerta vastos ubera in planctus ferit ; Superosque et ipsum vocibus pulsans Jovem Implevit omnem voce feminea locum. Wail'd all the crowd ; no tearless eye was there ; Then, wild with woe and frantic with despair, His sorrowing mother bared her eager breast, And smote with mighty blows her heaving chest, While, blaming Jove and all the powers on high, With wailings wild she filPd the earth and sky. ILLUSTRATIVE NOTES. 27 1 V. 398 to the end. Sed claro. Cf. Ovid. Metamm. i. 144-150 — non hospes ab hospite tutus, Non socer a genero ; fratrum quoque gratia rara est. Imminet exitio vir conjugis, ilia mariti : Lurida terribiles miscent aconita novercae : Filius ante diem patrios inquirit in annos. Victa jacet pietas, et virgo caede madentes, Ultima Caelestum, terras Astraea reliquit. No guest of hospitable roof is sure ; No more is sire from son-in-law secure ; Even brothers' love has all or well-nigh fled ; The wife and husband wish each other dead ; Dire step-dames mix the lurid aconite ; The son abhors his very father's sight, And pries into his years with anxious care ; Affection prostrate lies. Then Justice fair, The last lone lingerer of heavenly birth, Aghast with horror, fled the blood-soak'd earth. POEM LXV. Catullus had promised to translate for his friend Hor- talus (Quintus Hortensius) the " Hair of Beronice," from Callimachus, a task which the death of his brother pre- vented him for a time from accomplishing. Afraid lest Hortalus should assign a false reason for the delay, or deem him guilty of forgetfulness, he lays bare his heart to his friend, and tells him his affliction with an open- ness of which only generous natures are capable. 272 EXCURSUS AND In regard to the simile with which the poem con- cludes, the translator, while acknowledging its beauty, is compelled to side with those who fail to see its apposite- ness. He is inclined to think with Rossbach that it is either a fragment of a translation from Callimachus, or, at all events, a fragment of another poem. As the lines, how- ever, are printed in almost every edition as the conclusion of the piece, he has given them the only rendering of which, considered as belonging to the poem, they seemed susceptible. Carm. LXV. v. i. Etsi me assiduo confectum cura dolore. Cf. the opening lines of the Ciris — Etsi me vario jactatum laudis amore Irritaque expertum fallacis praemia volgi. V. 13, 14. Qualia sub densis ramorum concinit umbris Daulias, absumti fata gemens Ityli. Cf. Ovid. Heroid. xv. 153-156— Sola virum non ulta pie maestissima mater Concinit Tsmarium Daulias ales Ityn. Ales Ityn, Sappho desertos cantat amores Hactenus, ut media caetera nocte silent. Dire vengeance his lone mother brings Upon her lord in mortal hate, And now, a Daulian bird, she sings And mourns Ismarian Itys' fate. A bird o'er Itys lost complains, And love-lorn Sappho sadly pours O'er slighted loves her rueful strains, When all is still at midnight hours. ILL USTRA TIVE NO TES. 273 V. 19, 20. Ut missum sponsi furtivo munere malum Procurrit casto virglnis e gremio. Cf. Propert. i. 3, 21-33— Et modo solveba.m nostra de fronte corollas Ponebamque tuis, Cynthia, temporibus, Et modo gaudebam lapsos formare capillos, Nunc furtiva cavis poma dabam manibus, Omniaque ingrato largibar munera somno, Munera de prono saepe voluta sinu ; Et quotiens raro duxti suspiria motu, Obstupui vano credulus auspicio, Ne qua tibi insolitos portarent visa timores, Neve quis invitam cogeret esse suam : Donee diversas percurrens luna fenestras, Luna moraturis sedula luminibus, Compositos levibus radiis patefecit ocellos. And now I loosed the garland from my brow, And round thy temples did a chaplet twine, Anon thy truant locks confined, and now My hand the furtive apple slipp'd in thine. Ungrateful sleep with all my gifts I dower'd, Gifts that too oft have roll'd from forth thy breast, And when thou stirr'dst or heav'dst a sigh, o'erpower'd I silent stood by bodings vain opprest, Lest grim unwonted fears disturb'd thy dreams, Or eager swain, with thee unwilling, coped, Then mild-ray' d Luna with officious beams Stream'd through the lattice, and thine eyelids oped. 274 EXCURSUS AND Poem LXVI. Beronice's Hair. This poem is translated from the Greek of Callimachus — the poet whom, after Sappho, Catullus most delighted to reproduce. The following are the circumstances which induced the Greek poet to write this complimen- tary elegiac poem. Ptolemy Philadelphus, son of Ptolemy Soter {the Pre- server), had caused a temple to be erected to his wife, Arsinoe, to whom he wished that divine honours should be paid. His son, Ptolemy Euergetes {the Be)ief actor), married his cousin-german, Beronice, daughter of Magas, king of Cyrene. In virtue of this relationship by blood, Beronice, in the poem, is styled, according to ancient usage, the sister of Ptolemy, (v. 17.) Very shortly after their union, the youthful husband was summoned from her side to fight the Assyrian. Beronice, in an agony of despair at the double loss of husband and brother, vows to devote a lock of her hair to the Gods if her husband should prove victorious and soon return to her arms in triumph. He returns, and the ruthless steel dissevers the lock from the head of the youthful queen. It is laid on the shrine of Arsinoe, and shortly after disappears. Light-winged Zephyr, brother of Memnon (Unigena. v. 53) and son of Aurora (Hes. Theog. v. 378), is commis- sioned by Venus to hasten to the temple and bear to heaven this tribute of conjugal devotion. He takes it up, and deposits it on the bosom of the Queen of Love, by whose command it is placed in the sky — " A new-made star amid the primal spheres." But the lock cannot forget the radiant brow of Beronice, ILL USTRA Tl VE NO TES. or the golden curls among which it used to play. It im- plores young brides to propitiate heaven in its behalf with offerings of perfumes, and declares that it would rather again adorn the brow of Beronice, than remain among the splendid throng, though chaos should ensue and all the stars be hurled from their places. Such is a brief outline of the poem. The explanation of the mysterious disappearance of the lock, and its sub- sequent apotheosis, were invented by the shrewd and in- genious court-astronomer, Conon, to console the afflicted Beronice. Callimachus saw the value of the philoso- pher's pretended discovery, and embalmed it in the beauti- fully extravagant lines of which only an echo remains to us in the translation by Catullus. The heroism, tenderness, and devotion of Beronice are so well portrayed by the sorrowing lock that the poet, even without anything else to recommend him, must, by this work, have secured the favour and gratitude of the Egyptian queen. Although we have every reason to believe that the translation was admirably executed by Catullus, the loss of the original is much to be regretted. No work of Catullus has suffered more from the inaccuracies and carelessness of transcribers, and the unhappy conjectural emendations of commentators, than this one ; and the original would not only have afforded the means of re- storing it to a certain extent, but would have exhibited to us, in a clearer light than we can ever possess, the extraordinary ability of Catullus in rendering the pro- ductions of the Greek poets. That he possessed this power in no ordinary degree will be at once apparent to any one who will take the trouble of comparing the structure of the elegiac poems of Catullus with that of the Greek elegies. The simplicity (dcpeXeta^ or Greek abandon, so to speak, of the Catullian distich is most marked when it is viewed side bv side with the more 276 EXCURSUS A ND exact and laboured productions of Ovid, Tibullus, and Propertius, — a characteristic not confined to his longer poems, but pervading all his epigrams. Carm. LXVI. v. 1-6. Omnia aerio. Cf. Aesch. Prom. Vinct. 457, 458— ■ es re §77 Zdet^a rds re dvaKpirovs dvaeis. And Shelley, Prom. Unbound, Act ii., Scene 4 — He taught the implicated orbits woven Of the wide-wandering stars ; and how the sun Changes his lair, and by what secret spell The pale moon is transform'd, when her broad eye Gazes not on the inter-lunar sea. V. 13. Dulcia nocturnae porjans vestigia rixae. Cf. Claudian. in Fescenn. Epith. Hon. et Mar — Nocturni referens vulnera proelii. V. 48-50. Jupiter duritiem ! Cf. Aesch. Prom. Vinct. 500-503 — evepOe de x^opos KeKpvfjL/uiev av0piroi <5'6 fieu opKid 87-94) — Haec quoque lascivi cantarunt scripta Catulli, Lesbia quis ipsa notior est Helena. Haec etiam docti confessa est pagina Calvi, Cum caneret miserae funera Quintiliae. Et modo formosa quam multa Lycoride Gallus Mortuus inferna vulnera lavit aqua ! Cynthia quin etiam versu laudata Properti, Hos inter si me ponere Fama volet. This was the theme of warm Catullus' lays, That made his Lesbia's more than Helen's fame, Thus learned Calvus told Quintilia's praise, Bewailed her death, and sung her honour'd name. 288 EXCURSUS AND How many wounds from fair Lycoris' scorn Poor Gallus now has wash'd in Lethe's stream ! But Cynthia, too, will live to times unborn, If fame will but indulge her poet's dream. POEM CI. V. 10. Atque in perpetuum, frater, ave atque vale. Cf. Virg. Aen. xi. 97, 98 — Salve aeternum mihi, maxime Palla, Aeternumque vale ! . v Hail ! noblest Pallas, hail for evermore ! For evermore farewell ! And Stat. Silv. iii. 3, 208, 209— Salve supremum, senior mitissime patrum Supremumque vale. POEM CVII. V.3. Quare hoc est gratum, nobis quoque carius auro» Cf. Tibull. i. 8, 31-34— Carior est auro juvenis, cui levia fulgent Ora nee amplexus aspera barba terit. Huic tu candentes humero suppone lacertos, Et regum magnae despiciantur opes. Dearer than gold the youth with smooth blithe face, And no rough beard love's fond embrace to mar; Thine ivory arm beneath his shoulder place, And scorn the wealth of kings — thou 'rt richer far. ILL USTRA TIVE NO TES. 2 89 With this poem, passim, compare Tibull. iii. 3, 23-38 — Sit mihi paupertas tecum jucunda, Neaera : At sine te regum munera nulla volo. O niveam, quae te poterit mihi reddere, lucem ! O mihi felicem terque quaterque diem ! At si, pro dulci reditu quaecunque voventur, Audiat aversa non meus aure deus, Nee me regna juvant nee Lydius aurifer amnis Nee quas terrarum sustinet orbis opes. Haec alii cupiant, liceat mihi paupere cultu Securo cara conjuge posse frui. Adsis et timidis faveas, Saturnia, votis, Et faveas concha, Cypria, vecta tua. Aut, si fata negant reditum tristesque sorores, Stamina quae ducunt quaeque futura neunt, Me vocet in vastos amnes nigramque paludem Dives in ignava luridus Orcus aqua. With thee, Neaera, want has wealth of charms ; The gifts of kings I scorn, deprived of thee ; Bright light that will restore thee to my arms ! Oh thrice and four times happy day to me ! Should Love, with favouring smile, my care behold, And hear my vows breathed for thy sweet return, Then Lydia's river, rolling sands of gold, Realms, and the w T ealth of worlds, I '11 proudly spurn. Let others covet these : on humble fare Let me with thee, mine own, serenely dwell ; Come, Juno, smile on this my timid prayer, Smile, Cyprian goddess, w r afted on thy shell. But if the Fates deny the boon I crave, Grim Three who draw and spin the threads of doom. Hell ! call me to thy lurid, sluggish wave, Thy gulfy streams, and marsh of ebon gloom. And Hor. Od. iii. 9 — Horace. While I was all in all to thee, Nor any swain preferred to me, 290 EXCURSUS AND Round your fair neck his arms dared fling, I scorn'd even Persia's king. Lydia. While for no other fair you burn'd, Nor Chloe look'd on Lydia spurn' d, An honour'd head I then could rear, For Ilia more than peer. Horace. Now Chloe thrills me with desire, A lady skill'd on lute or lyre, For whom the darts of death I '11 prove, If heaven will spare my love. Lydia. I and my Thurian Calais Together live in mutual bliss, For whom I '11 die and die again, If heaven will spare my swain. Horace. Should Venus once again provoke Us both to try love's brazen yoke, And fair-hair'd Chloe leave my home, » Oh, say, would Lydia come ? Lydia. Though fairer than the sun he shone, Thou light as down by breezes blown, And fretful as the raging sea, I 'd live, I 'd die with thee. Poem CX. Cf. Priap. ii. (Ovidii) " Priapus." Obscure poteram tibi dicere, da mihi, quod tu Des licet assidue, nil tamen inde perit. Da mihi, quod cupies frustra dare forsitan olim, Dum tenet obsessas invida barba genas ; Quodque Jovi dederat, qui, raptus ab alite sacra, Miscet amatori pocula grata suo ; ILLUSTRATIVE NOTES. 29 1 Quod virgo prima cupido dat nocte marito, Dum timet alterius vulnus inepta loci. Simplicius multo est, da paedicare, Latine Dicere ; quid faciam ? Crassa Minerva mea est, Love, a kiss I did covertly ask ; And, believe me, such tokens I prize ; Though you ply evermore the sweet task, Oh remember the charm never dies. Come, then, grant me the favour I seek, Or your coyness you yet may regret, When the wrinkle has furrow'd your cheek, And the sun of your beauty is set. When the all-sacred eagle pick'd up And presented young Gan to King Jove, First the little chap mix'd him a cup, And then shower'd on him kisses of love. On the night when a maiden is wed, And her fond lover calls her his own, Although many a thought fills her head, Wont she give him a kiss when alone ? Come, then, come to my arms, darling true ! In plain language, come, kiss me at once : Oh consent, love, or what shall I do ? He who misses a chance is a dunce. Poem CXI II. V. v 2. Mucillam (Mucilla ?). Ballantyne & Company -, Printers ', Edinburgh. J