Carmina

Furius and Aurelius, comrades of Catullus, whether he forces his way to furthest India where the shore is lashed by the far-echoing waves of the Dawn, or whether to the land of the Hyrcanians or soft Arabs, or whether to the land of the Sacians or quiver-bearing Parthians, or where the seven-mouthed Nile colors the sea, or whether he traverses the lofty Alps, gazing at the monuments of mighty Caesar, the Gallic Rhine, the shuddering water and remotest Britons, prepared to attempt all these things at once, whatever the will of the heavenly gods may bear,—repeat to my girl a few words, though they are not at all good. May she live and flourish with her fornicators, and may she hold three hundred at once in her embrace, loving not one in truth, but bursting again and again the guts of all: nor may she look back upon my love as before, which by her lapse has fallen, just as a flower on the meadow's edge, after the touch of the passing plough.

Marrucinius Asinius, you do not use your left hand nicely amid the jests and wine: you make off with the napkins of the careless. Do you think this is witty? It escapes you, fool, how coarse a thing and unbecoming it is! Don't you believe me? Believe your brother Pollio who would willingly give a talent to divert you from your thefts: for he is a lad skilled in pleasantries and clever talk. Therefore, either expect three hundred hendecasyllables, or return me my napkin which I esteem, not for its value but as a pledge of remembrance from my comrade. For Fabullus and Veranius sent me napkins as a gift from Iberian Saetabis; these I must love even as I do Veraniolus and Fabullus.

You will feast well with me, my Fabullus, in a few days, if the gods favour you, provided you bring here with you a good and great feast, not forgetting a radiant girl and wine and wit and all kinds of laughter. Provided, I say, you bring them here, our charming friend, you will feast well: for your Catullus' purse is full with cobwebs. But in return you will receive a pure love, or what is sweeter or more elegant: for I will give you an unguent which the Venuses and Cupids gave to my girl, which, when you smell it, you will entreat the gods to make you, Fabullus, all Nose!

If I did not love you more than my eyes, most delightful Calvus, for your gift I should hate you with Vatinian hatred. For what have I done or what have I said that you should torment me so vilely with these poets? May the gods give that client of yours ills enough, who sent you so many scoundrels! Yet if, as I suspect, Sulla, the litterateur, gives you this new and care-picked gift, it is not ill to me, but well and beatific, that your labors [in his cause] are not made light of. Great gods, what a horrible and accursed book which—if you please!—you have sent to your Catullus, that he might die of boredom the livelong day in the Saturnalia, choicest of days! No, no, my joker, you will not get off so easily: for at dawn I will haste to the booksellers' cases; the Caesii, the Aquini, Suffenus, every poisonous rubbish will I collect that I may repay you with these tortures. Meantime farewell! be gone from here, where an ill foot brought you, pests of the period, most wretched of poets.