*
A. To Manlius
*
That, battered as you are by Fortune’s harsh
Onslaught, you send me this tear-written note–
Will I rescue this shipwrecked man, outcast
In the frothing waves and sprawled on death’s threshold,
Whom Holy Venus suffers not to rest***************************5
In soothing sleep on deprivation’s bed,
Nor by the Muses’ solace can he find ease
In long-dead poets, while anguish keeps awake?–
That you should ask me this for friendship’s sake,
Is surely something that can’t help but please,******************10
First that you count me friend, and then your plea
For Venus’s and the Muses’ gifts, through me.
Yet, Manlius, I’d not have you ignorant
I too am burdened by affliction (lest
You think I grudge the duty of a guest).*************************15
In Fortune’s waves I too flounder
So don’t request what only Content can grant.
It’s true that from the time I was first allowed
The pure white toga, while my youth flowered,
I played, and plenty! Nor is that goddess unaware***************20
Of me who laces bitter-sweet with care.
But now my brother’s death has emptied
Me of all such interests. (Brother, stolen
Away from me, in dying you have broken
My content. All our house with you is buried,********************25
All our joys with you perished, vanished,
Joys which in life your sweet love nourished.)
For, since his passing, from my mind I’ve banished
All those delightful, frivolous pursuits I’d cherished
When in love’s toils I frolicked as I languished,******************30
Ignorant of grief’s meaning as I anguished.
So when you write, “It’s shameful that Catullus
Stays up in Verona while some distinguished
Personage warms chilled limbs in a deserted bed,”
That’s not shameful, Manlius–rather, wretched!*****************35
So you’ll forgive me if I do not grant
Gifts of which grief’s deprived me, for I can’t!
As for the second option you suggest,
To turn to Latin some Greek masterwork
Again I must decline, but would not shirk***********************40
To honour your request.
That I can’t lay my hands on a great store
Of writers is because I live in Rome;
That’s where my life is spent, my base, my home.
One book-box follows me up here, no more.*********************45
This being so, I would not have you task
Me with meanness or disingenuous malice,
In thus withholding either source of solace.
Had I supply, you would not need to ask.
*
*
B. For Allius
*
Never, Muses, shall I be reconciled
In silence to the years’ dismembering flight
Nor that this memory be concealed
In ignorant, impenetrable night:
How Allius helped me and with what weight*********************5
Of kindnesses, as I proclaim to you
And you’ll broadcast to many thousands, who
Will hear my pages speak, speak as they age;
And more and more his fame will have the edge
On death, nor will the spider, weaving on high*******************10
Her slender web, over his forsaken name
Work her fine tracery. For the sly
Amathusian Goddess played her double game
On me–as, Muses, you know well–scorching
Me with such fire as, searching**********************************15
Crag and crevice, licks Mount Etna’s slopes,
Or, as the Hot Springs at Thermopylae
On Mount Oeta, in Malis, scalding me,
While I, seeing the death of all my hopes,
Wore out my eyes with such a heavy rain*************************20
As drenched my cheeks. But as, gleaming on high,
Down from the mossy stone a torrent leaps
And tumbles headlong down a steep ravine,
To cross a crowded road, offering sweet
Relief to wayfarers, who toil and sweat***************************25
Their way, while from on high the heat
Pounds the burnt-out gaping fields; as when
For sailors, in a black storm tossed, a gen-
-tle following wind brings proof they prayed
To Castor and to Pollux not in vain–*****************************30
Such help was Allius to me. He made
A space for love by opening up a fenced
Field with a broad bridle path, supplied
A house for us and for that house a mistress,
That there our shared love might be evidenced,*******************35
And there my goddess, in her radiant progress
Softly stepping, rested her dazzling foot.
Her sandal drew a shrill creak from the worn
Threshold. She seemed like Laodamia, brought
Ablaze with love to the house in vain commenced*****************40
By Protesilaus. Her husband would be torn
From her embrace before two winters were out,
Or even one. What had she to look back
On? For a neglected sacrifice,
No sacred blood to slake the altar’s thirst, plac-*******************45
-ate the Lords of Heaven (Nemesis,
Maiden of Rhamnos, never may I fulfil
Any desire without these Lords’ consent!)
The Fates foresaw he’d be the first to fall,
Not far the day, joining in that long brawl*************************50
Provoked by Troy, when Argive chiefs, in all
Their gathered fury, should resolve to strike
Troy’s walls in bloody punishment
For Helen’s abduction. Troy, common grave
Of all Europe and Asia, the ash of men****************************55
And manliness alike!
Did she not bring also my brother death? Stolen
From me, poor brother, to my grief, I grieve
You and our whole house buried with you, you
With whom our joys have been devoured, joys which***************60
Your sweet love nourished while you were alive
Before Death stole the light out of your eyes,
That light by which our lives were made so rich
The short time that it lasted. We little knew
That so far off would be your rendezvous**************************65
With Death, so soon. There you lie buried
Far off from where your family are laid
To rest–in Troy, remote, repugnant, al-
-ien soil, and to that very place were ferried
All Hellas’s warlike elite, who did not fail**************************70
The vengeful summons, but, rather, hurried,
Forsaking hearth and home, lest Paris should avail
Himself at too great leisure in her chamber
Of his adulterous, abducted renegade.
Your wedding song turned to a strain more sombre,****************75
Fairest Laodamia, in that long raid
Robbed of a husband sweeter than life and breath,
Sucked from contentment by Love’s seething tide
And plunged into a sheer abyss, such as the Greeks report
Hercules himself, Amphitryon’s son (as falsely thought!),***********80
Dug out to drain a swamp’s gross soil beneath
Mount Cyllene, near Pheneus in Arcadia, cut-
-ting deep into the mountain’s marrow, what
Time he pierced with his unerring arrows
Monstrous Stymphalian birds that chose**************************85
Living human flesh for meat. Thus he obeyed
A lesser lord, taskmaster king who laid
Those heavy labours on him. Yet his reward
To be raised up, a new god treading
Heaven’s gateway, by his true lord********************************90
And father, Jove, and find a goddess bride,
Hebe, who would preserve her virgin pride
No longer than their wedding.
But deeper than that famed
Abyss, Laodamia (stlll untamed),*********************************95
Your deep Love taught you to sustain that yoke.
Your love surpassed an old man’s for his late-
Born grandson, even as some fortune-hunt-
Ing kinsman circles round. The joke
Is on the vulture shooed out of his legacy.*************************100
Your love surpassed even the passionate
She-dove, who hangs more shameless on her mate,
Pecking at kisses more incessantly,
Than the most much-desiring woman. You did not stint
Your love, Laodamia, but you went*******************************105
Beyond all those and their crazed passion in
Your loving union with your fair-
Haired husband. Nor do I demean
My light by any false compare
In claiming she fell short of such a one****************************110
By no means or by little. That day she gave
Herself into my lap, and often Cupid, run-
-ning here and there about her, gleamed
Dazzling in saffron tunic. She doesn’t save
Herself for just Catullus, that is true.******************************115
But I don’t see that she is to be blamed
For this (let her keep always in view
Discretion!) I would not be numbered
Among the stupid crew.
I love the lady, would not have her lumbered.**********************120
Even Juno, greatest of
Her sex in heaven, slammed
Down hard on her own blazing anger,
Learning the thefts of All-Desiring Jove,
(Though likening men to gods is deemed***************************125
Impiety). I would not be damned
As overbearing, over-anxious, one who seemed
More like a parent than a lover. I can’t anchor
Love on any contract, for she came
Not on her father’s arm to her new home***************************130
Fragrant with Assyrian perfume
But on a night of wonder bearing little stolen
Gifts lifted from her husband’s lap. I am content
Should she but celebrate that day’s magnificence
With me, and with no other, spent.*********************************135
And so to you, Allius, this grateful token,
Achieved in song, no better recompense,
For all your many kindnesses is sent,
Lest this day and the next and next corrode
Your name with rust. Whatever else is owed************************140
By ancient custom to a faithful soul
The gods in their good time will add.
I wish all happiness to you and to
The one you call your life, and to the house
Where, man and mistress, my love and I both played****************145
Together, and to Afer,
Who introduced us to you, and thus the source
Of all the good things in my life that make it whole,
And, beyond all, to her, dearer to me by far
Than my own self, my light,***************************************150
Who
Merely by living makes my life delight.
Notes on individual lines
Part A
32-34. I suggest that the “distinguished personage” is Metellus, to whom Catullus has for now abandoned his “bed,” i.e. sexual relations with Lesbia. There are many interpretations, however.
Part B
13. Amathusian: from Aphrodite’s shrine at Amathos in Cyprus.
38-9. A touch of irony here, as this was regarded as a bad omen.
39–109. These lines, a long digression containing further digressions, recount the myth of Protesilaus and Laodamia summarised by Garrison as follows: “The story is that Laodamia first crossed the threshold of her new husband, Protesilaus, without making due sacrifice. He left soon after their wedding to become the first Greek to land at Troy and the first to die in the Trojan War. The relevant points of the simile, which emerge slowly, are deep love and rash haste” (Garrison, D.H. The Student’s Catullus, Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 2004).
47. From the temple of Nemesis, goddess of retribution, at Rhamnos in Attica.
79-83. The word used for abyss is barathrum, also an underground drainage shaft.
84-6. In his fifth labour, Hercules killed the man-eating birds by Lake Stymphalus in Arcadia.