What a Book! : to Calvus the Poet
If I didn’t love you more than my eyes,
most delightful Calvus, I’d dislike you
for this gift, with a true Vatinian dislike:
Now what did I do and what did I say,
to be so badly cursed with poets?
Let the gods send ill-luck to that client
who sent you so many wretches.
But if, as I guess, Sulla the grammarian
gave you this new and inventive gift,
that’s no harm to me, it’s good and fine
that your efforts aren’t all wasted.
Great gods, an amazing, immortal book!
That you sent, of course, to your Catullus,
so he might immediately die,
on the optimum day, in the Saturnalia!
No you won’t get away with this crime.
Now when it’s light enough I’ll run
to the copyists bookstalls, I’ll acquire
Caesius, Aquinus, Suffenus,
all of the poisonous ones.
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poem by Gaius Valerius Catullus
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His Boat
This boat you see, friends, will tell you
that she was the fastest of craft,
not to be challenged for speed
by any vessel afloat, whether
driven by sail or the labour of oars.
The threatening Adriatic coast won’t deny it,
nor the isles of the Cyclades,
nor noble Rhodes, nor fearful Bosphorus,
nor the grim bay of the Black Sea
where, before becoming a boat, she was
leafy wood: for on the heights of Cytorus
she often hissed to the whispering leaves.
The boat says these things were well known to you,
and are, Amastris and box-wood clad Cytorus:
she says from the very beginning she stood
on your slope, that she dipped her oars
in your water, and carried her owner from there
over so many headstrong breakers,
whether the wind cried from starboard
or larboard, or whether Jupiter struck at the sheets
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poem by Gaius Valerius Catullus
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The Yacht
STRANGER, the bark you see before you says
That in old times and in her early days
She was a lively vessel that could make
The quickest voyages, and overtake
All her competitors with sail or oar;
And she defies the rude Illyrian shore,
And Rhodes with her proud harbor, and the seas
That intersect the scattered Cyclades,
And the Propontic and the Thracian coast,
(Bold as it is) to contradict her boast.
She calls to witness the dark Euxine sea
And mountains that had known her as a tree,
Before her transformation, when she stood
A native of the deep Cytorian wood,
Where all her ancestors had flourished long,
And, with their old traditionary song,
Had whispered her responses to the breeze.
And waked the chorus of her sister trees.
Amastris, from your haven forth she went,
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poem by Gaius Valerius Catullus
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Home Truths for Varus’s girl: to Varus
Varus drags me into his affairs
out of the Forum, where I’m seen idling:
to a little whore I immediately saw,
not very inelegant, not unattractive,
who, when we came there, met us
with varied chatter, including, how might
Bithynia stand now, what’s it like, and where
might the benefit have been to me in cash.
I told her what’s true, nothing at all,
while neither the praetors nor their aides,
return any the richer, especially since
our Praetor, Memmius, the bugger,
cared not a jot for his followers.
‘But surely,’ they said, you could have bought
slaves they say are made for the litter there.’
I, so the girl might take me to be wealthy,
said ‘no, for me things weren’t so bad,
that coming across one bad province,
I couldn’t buy eight good men.’
But I’d no one, neither here nor there,
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poem by Gaius Valerius Catullus
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