Carmina

You ask, how many kisses of yours, Lesbia, may be enough and to spare for me. As the countless Libyan sands which strew asafoetida-bearing Cyrene between the oracle of sweltering Jove and the sacred tomb of ancient Battus, or as the many stars, when night is silent, look upon the furtive loves of mortals, to kiss you with kisses of so great a number is enough and to spare for passion-driven Catullus: so many that prying eyes may not avail to number, nor ill tongues to bewitch.

Unhappy Catullus, cease your trifling and what you see lost, know to be lost. Once bright days used to shine on you when you used to go wherever your girl led you, loved by us as never a girl will ever be loved. There those many joys occured which you did wish, nor was the girl unwilling. In truth bright days used once to shine on you. Now she no longer wants you: you too, powerless to avail, must not want her, do not pursue her retreating, do not live unhappy, but with firm-set mind endure, harden yourself. Farewell, girl! now Catullus hardens himself, he will not seek you, will not ask you since you are unwilling. But you will be pained, when you are not asked. Faithless, go your way! what manner of life remains to you? who now will visit you? who find you beautiful? whom will you love now? whose will you be called? whom will you kiss? whose lips will you bite? But you, Catullus, remain firm in your hardness.

Veranius, standing in the front of all my friends, had I three hundred thousand of them, have you come home to your Penates, your longing brothers and your aged mother? You have come back. O joyful news to me! I'll see you safe and sound, and hear you speak of regions, deeds, and peoples Iberian, as is your manner; and reclining over your neck shall kiss your laughing mouth and eyes. Of all men most full of bliss, who is more happy or more blissful than I?

Varus drew me off from the Forum where I was passing the time to see his lover: a professional, as it seemed to me at first sight, neither inelegant nor lacking good looks. When we came in, we fell to discussing various subjects, among which, how was Bithynia now, how things had gone there, and whether I had made any money there. I replied what was true, that neither ourselves nor the praetors nor their company had brought away anything whereby to flaunt a better-scented hair-do, especially as our praetor, who boned us all, didn't care a hair for his company. "But surely," she said, "you got some men to bear your litter, for they are said to grow there?" I, to make myself appear to the girl as one of the fortunate, "No," I say, "it did not go that badly with me, ill as the province turned out, that I could not procure eight strapping men to bear me. (But not a single one was mine either here or there who could hoist on his neck the fractured foot of my old bedstead). And she, like the saucy tramp she was, "Please, Catullus," says she, "lend me those bearers for a short time, for I want to ride to the shrine of Serapis." "Hold it!" say I to the girl, "when I said I had this, my mind slipped; my friend, Cinna Gaius, he provided himself with these. In truth, whether his or mine—what is it to me? I use them as though I had paid for them. But you are awfully crude and a bother, not through you am I to be careless."