Opera Antiqua: C. VALERII CATULLI CARMINA

I.

CVI DONO LEPIDVM NOVVM LIBELLVM

To whom do I bestow this witty, new -- yet tiny -- book,

A trifle just now polished off with dry pumice?
Why, Cornelius: it's for you! For it was you who long ago
Once did think that my trifles might amount to something.
And then you dared, for only you could, to publish 5
An entire history of Italy -- all of it! -- in three volumes!
Three learned and laborious volumes, by Jove!
So keep for yourself whatever this tiny book may be,
Whatever could come of it; O thou, patron Maiden,
May this tiny trifle last more than one lifetime!

I. Meter: Hendecasyllabics - also called The Phalaician, the first four syllables are interchangeable to suit what's needed, but the heart of the line is a choriamb (- u u -) which leads the second half of the eleven syllables (hendeka - "eleven") into a strong iambic (u - ) end.
The meter is very evocative of colloquial, lighter themes, street humor, and the comic stage.
It became the principle meter of Italian poetry and is used consistently by The Greats, chiefly Dante (La Divina Comedia is terza rime, a hendecasyllabic meter structured into rhymed triplets.) The most famous English example of hendecasyllabics is Catullus-centered:

"O you chorus of indolent reviewers,
Irresponsible, indolent reviewers,
Look, I come to the test, a tiny poem
All composed in a metre of Catullus..."
-Tennyson, "Hendecasyllabics"

The dedicatory poem to Cornelius Nepos is always numbered one and as such, appears first in all of the editions of the corpus Catullicum - of course, why not? It's certainly the dedicatory poem, it clearly reads like an intro poem, and even ends with an invocation to the Muse, common at the outset of ancient artistic endeavors. Likewise in ancient works, the opening line often tells the reader exactly what they are in for - one should not judge a book by its cover, but perhaps by its opening line. Here, Catullus has given us the words "lepidum", "novum", and "libellum" - "witty", "new" and "booklet", all agreeing with one another and set with an emphatic homoioteleuton to illustrate that the poems which follow are as witty as those Alexandrian epigramists under the school of Kallimakhos, those of the so-called neoteroi school; the poems are also new, both in that Catullus has fashioned them to play with the old meters of Grecian lyric past in new and clever ways, and also in that the book is just recently completed - it's so new that it's almost literally "hot off the presses!" (here in the form of an "eraser", a pumice stone used to smooth of the edges of the volumen - "the rolled work, scroll". One could say that the scroll is still warm from being sanded off). The dual imagery of physically polishing the edges of one's work with a pumice stone with putting the finishing, polishing touches on the work was surely not lost on Catullus - above all things, he was clever.
And finally, it's a booklet of Catullus' nugae "trifles" which is being dedicated to Cornelius Nepos, a fellow Italian from the north, a well-known historian and biographer. Indeed, Cornelius is to be congratulated - he's just completed his own work! Not one of "trifles" like Catullus', but a great and mighty three-volumed tome of such labor! Because Cornelius did indeed think that one day something could be made of Catullus' trifles, here they are, dedicated to him. The not-unfriendly playful condescension is easy to spot. Catullus, a follower of the neoteroi, favored quicker, wittier, less lofty themes than a three-volume history; while he most likely appreciated Cornelius' achievement for what it was, he certainly found his own work, his "trifles" more to his own liking.
The Muse is invoked as "O thou, patron Maiden" and he humbly asks her to preserve his poetry for more than "uno [,,,] perenne saeclo" - "one lifetime/an age, many-yeared".
As to the numbering, this poem surely came first -- in a different volume. Catullus surely wouldn't have included the longer Sixties Poems (especially LXIV - ye gods!) among the nugae ("trifles" - unless he was attempting to make some far-reaching, understated witticism. Probably not.), and so the long-ish LXIV would have probably occupied a scroll or tablet of its very own. That leaves Poem I to introduce a different libellus ("booklet, tiny book") of short, epigram-style poems, playing with various themes and meters. It may be inferred from the writing of the epigrammist Martial (c. A.D. 40 - c. A.D. 102) that his copy of Catullus began with Poem II. This implies the existence of a second libellus, one without the dedicatory Poem I. (see Publication and Manuscript Tradition). All in all, some time after the poet's death, all of his poems were compiled into a single volume which had a stressful and lonely existence until it was at last copied down some ten or so centuries later - it all takes your breath away. ^↩

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II.

PASSER DELICIAE MEAE PVELLAE

O Sparrow! O pet of my darling girl!
With thee she plays, in her lap holdeth she,
Her fingertip she offers to thee pecking away,
And sharp bites she is wont to rouse.
Whenever my long-for'ed, sexy girl 5
Makes some jest of which I am ignorant,
I believe it a meager comfort to her pain,
For grown restful is her heavy passion's fire.
Would that I could with thee play as yon sparrow,
And the sad cares of thy mind I could lighten. 10

II. Meter: Hendecasyllabics

Poems to pets were not unheard of, and the ease by which such a theme already bordering on silliness can be mocked makes it rife for parody (cf. Thomas Gray's "Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat Drowned in a Tub of Goldfishes"). Here, Catullus plays with the pet-ode theme and uses it for his own purposes: to talk about his current romance.
Is the puella in this poem the same woman as the famous Lesbia in the rest of the corpus? It's unknown, and it could go either way. In the end, it really doesn't matter in the context of this poem: all that matters is that by the time of this poem's writing, Catullus had already established using his poetry as a vehicle for that love and would typify a unifying theme of love elegy, Roman and beyond: the centrality of a near-unobtainable lover. For Catullus, it was Lesbia (or the puella of this poem) and sometimes Juventius; for Propertius, Cynthia; Gallus, Lycoris; Tibullus, Delia; Ovid, Corinna. Beyond the antique Romans, the Italian Renaissance authors such as Petrarch and Dante also have their un-obtainable muse, some chaste maiden with whom the poet becomes obsessed heart and soul. Even Shakespeare pens little songs (sonnets) for his young man and dark lady. But Catullus was one of the first poets to record his (often) unrequited infatuation in emotionally-charged language the feelings one has when one falls in love, and, in the end, cannot be happy or satisfied with that love or lover.
Sparrows were common pets amongst upperclass Roman women; of course Catullus' girl would have had one, especially given their connection with Venus, Goddess of Love. Catullus watches his girl's face as she plays with her sparrow, offering her fingertips to it to peck, and he imagines that she is madly in love with him and that the sparrow is a welcome and easy distraction; he, however, is not so easily distracted in his feelings.
Notably, many commentators have posited that the sparrow symbolically stands in for the poet's phallus. Though I don't feel there is any iron-clad evidence for this, I can't rule it out either. There is an underlying eroticism in the poem, but it doesn't necessarily mean that the sparrow is euphemism for a cock.^↩

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III.

Fletvs passeris Lesbiae

- In Mourning of His Girlfriend's Sparrow

LVGETE O VENERES CVPIDINESQVE

Mourn, ye O Venuses and Cupids,
And any of ye who are charmers!
The sparrow has died!, Yes, my girl's
Sparrow, that delight of my girl,
Which she loved more than her own eyes 5
For it was honeyed-sweet, and she knew
It as well as a girl knows her own mother.
Not from her own lap did it wander,
But jumping about, now hither, now thither,
For only his own mistress did he ever pip-pip. 10
Now goes the sparrow through the shadow-filled path
Thither whence it is denied anyone to return.
But may it go ill for ye, wicked shades
Of Orcus, since everything nice ye devour.
What a beautiful sparrow from me ye have taken! 15
Oh wicked deed! Oh wretched little sparrow!
For because of thine efforts have now my girl's
Little eyes by weeping grown puffy and red.

III. Meter: Hendecasyllabics

Having tackled the theme of the elegy in the form of an ode to a pet (Poem II), Catullus used a most unfortunate event in his girl's life to tackle yet another theme: the elegy upon the death of said pet, the famous sparrow. The poem is in no way meant to be seriously somber - the language is mocking of actual funeral dirges, only instead of devoting the deceased Dis Manibus ("to the Manes/Shades"), Catullus devotes the dead bird to the Venuses and Cupids, abstract plurifications of the deities (cf. LXIV - Sileni).

Dis Manibus - "To the Manes/Shades" was a regular epitaph, even well into the Christian era.

The only real emotion Catullus feels in the whole matter is that his girl's eyes have become puffy and swollen because of her weeping over the bird, the ghost of which he chides: "Bad bird! Because of you, my girlfriend's eyes are red and swollen!"
The humor of the poem is dependent on keeping Greco-Roman underworld imagery in mind: great heroes in mythology have visited the Underworld, complete with mighty pens and voices to record the dreadful scenes there. Imagine now Herakles traversing the Lower World, Orpheus navigating the Land of the Dead, Odyssey questioning the Shades of the Dead, and (though there was not yet a Vergil to craft the dactyls) Aeneas reunited with his father in Elysium. Now add to that august number Catullus' girlfriend's sparrow! Poor bird, fluttering this way and that past the Styx, lighting upon Charon's shoulder, now swooping past dread Cerberus and finding some happy branch in Elysium to make his nest.
Not to let Catullus have the last word on the matter of funeral dirges to pets, Ovid, in very much a Catullan fashion, penned a rather funny poem about the death of his lover's pet parrot:

"OUR parrot, winged mimic of the human voice, sent from farthest Ind, is dead. Come ye in flocks, ye birds, unto his obsequies. Come, ye pious denizens of the air; beat your bosoms with your wings and with your rigid claws, score furrows on your dainty heads. Even as mourners rend their hair, rend ye your ruffled plumes. Since the far-sounding clarion is silent, sing ye a doleful song. Wherefore, O Philomel, mourn ye the dark deed of the Ismarian tyrant? Time should have ended that lament. Keep it to mourn for the passing of the rarest of thy kind. The fate of Itys was once a mighty theme of sorrow; but all that was long ago. All ye who float with outspread wings in the liquid air, and thou before all others, loving turtle, breathe forth your mournful plaint. He was, all his life long, a faithful friend to thee and never did he waver in his loyalty. What young Pylades the Phocian was to Argive Orestes, such, my parrot, was the turtle-dove to thee, so long as thou didst live.
But how did this fidelity bestead thee, and what availed the brilliant colours of thy plumage rare? or that voice so skilled in mimicking the tones of human speech? What did it boot thee to win the affection of my mistress from the very moment thou wast given her? O hapless one, thou wast the glory of birds, and now thou art no more! With thy wondrous plumage, thou couldst outshine the green fire of the emerald, and the hue of thy beak was of the richest red. No bird on earth could speak so well as thou, so great thy skill in imitating, with thy nasal tones, the sounds that thou hadst heard.
Now envious death hath stricken thee; never wast thou at war with any bird. Thou wast garrulous and didst love the piping times of peace. See, the quails are for ever at war; that, perchance, is why they live so long. Thou didst ask for very little; and sith you loved so much to gossip, your beak had very little time for food. A nut was all thy dinner, a poppy-seed or two would bring thee sleep, and with a sip of water thou wouldst quench thy thirst.[...]"

-trans. by J. Lewis May

The poem carries on in the same way for a bit - you get the idea. Catullus is the clear model here - even though Catullus didn't invent the pet funeral dirge, he certainly was the Roman authority on the matter.
Speaking of dead parrots.^↩

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IV. PHASELVS ILLE QVEM VIDETIS HOSPITES

Yonder yacht, which you see, O good passer-by,

Says that she of all ships was fastest,
And any other wave-cutter's prow

She was not unable to outstrip, either by oars

If she should fly or if she plied by sail. 5

And saith not she that the stormy Adriatic

All its coast denies this, or the islands Cyclades,

Rhodes the delightful, shuddering Thracian

Propontis, or the wild Pontic Bay,

Back when that yacht was once before 10

A leafy'ed wood. For on Cyrtorian height,

Often a rustling she made with speaking leaves.

I know thee, Pontic Amastris! I know thee, Cyrtorian boxwood!

To thee, these have been and are the best known,

Spake the yacht. From the earliest beginning 15

On thy peak she says she once stood

And in thy waters she has dipped her oars,

And thence through so many raging channels,

Thy master thou bore, whether on port or starboard

Might a breeze invite, or whether a favorable Jove 20

Has at once filled both legs of the sail.

Nor have any dedications to shoreline gods

Been by sailors made, when came from the most distant

Sea right up to this shining lake.

But these things were so before. Now laid up, 25

She ages restfully and herself she devotes to thee,

Dear twin Castor and dear twin of Castor.

XI. Meter: iambic senarius (iambic trimeter)

Supposedly after Catullus completed his Quaestorship in Bithynia (57-56 B.C.), he composed this mock-epigram to the small yacht (phaselus "kidney bean" after which the boat was shaped) which conveyed him back to Italy and his hometown in the environs of Verona. The poet gives the yacht a speaking voice and has it, in the form of a personified bark-turned-ship like the speaking Argo of Grecian lore, relate its adventures from Bithynian tree to coming triumphant to Italy.

Roman Mosaic depicting a phaselus

Catullus here goes even further by dedicating the yacht to the twin seafarer-gods, Kastor and Polydeukes (Lat: Castor and Pollux) in the manner of the much-employed Grecian martial poetry in which (most commonly) a soldier dedicates his arms to a tutelary deity (examples are found in Anakreon and Simonides, and in Roman poets such as Vergil and Horace. cf. Sir Smith's A Concise Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, entry: donaria). While it is true non-weapons were known to have been dedicated (models of lost limbs, a painting of a the sailor's rescue from the shipwreck are some of the more interesting mentions), it is Catullus' particular charm which begins the poem by addressing the reader as "good passer-by" (hospites - "guest, stranger, passer-by"), which harkens to the Grecian poet Simonides' most famous epigram inscribed at Thermopylai for the fallen Three-Hundred Spartans:

ὦ ξεῖν', ἀγγέλλειν Λακεδαιμονίοις ὅτι τῇδε

O passer-by, report to the Lakedaimonions that here

κείμεθα τοῖς κείνων ῥήμασι πειθόμενοι.

We lie, their commands we keep and obey.

Catullus alludes to an extremely famous war-epigram for the fallen Three Hundred Spartans and applies the same address (Lat: hospes, hospitis m. and Gre: ξένος -ου ὁ are synonymous and have the same etymological origin) to his own epigram for a talking tree.
With his Greek model alluded to, Catullus then has the tree spark the interest of the audience by peppering his Latin with obscure names of places in Bithynia which would have been less-well-known to a Roman audience - the Alexandrian in Catullus would have delighted in the geographical additions. Then the yacht, complete with Hellenistic vocabulary and syntax, recounts her voyage Italy-ward -- or rather, it is Catullus' voyage (thou he is unnamed, mentioned only as "Thy master") but cleverly told by the yacht.

It is believed that the yacht was small enough to have put into the Arno river leading to Lake Garda (Catullus knew it as Lacus Benacus), the large lake near Verona in the environs of which Catullus grew up; today, however, the river's level has fallen such that a ship of even the yacht's small size cannot safely navigate it.

Now safely home, Catullus composed this poem, dedicating the little yacht from Bithynia to the god of sailors and sea-farers, Castor and "twin of Castor", Pollux (the less important twin, and less-often invoked by name; the pair were typically viewed as a singular entity, anyway).

i Dioscuri del Campidoglio

^↩

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V.

VIVAMVS MEA LESBIA ATQVE AMEMVS

Let us live, my Lesbia, and let us love!

But those rumors of rather stern old men?

Let us value them all at the price of a penny!

For day in and out can suns die and rise again --

But as for us? When once goes out our brief light, 5

We can do naught but sleep one ever-lasting night.

So give to me a thousand kisses, then a hundred,

Then a second thousand, then a second hundred,

Then even another thousand, then even a hundred!

Then, when we have kiss'd so many thousands of times, 10

We shall confuse the number, lest we know how many --

So no villain can then cast upon us the evil eye,

Since he cannot know how many times we've kiss'd.

V. Meter: Hendecasyllabics

Poem V is to Catullus what Sonnet 18 is to Shakespeare:

"Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date

[...]"

-Shakespeare, Sonnet 18

Even those who don't know the rest of the sonnet have still heard the lines, "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?". It, like "Let us live my Lesbia, and let us love," taps into an almost universally understood feeling of what the euphoria of being in love is like. It is a feeling of elation which makes us want to compare our lovers to summer days, and count the kisses we share between them, and not give a damn about what other people think of us. This poem almost certainly details the high point of the relationship with Lesbia, which raises an interesting question: how did Lesbia feel about the whole affair? Not very well, if we can judge by Catullus' own poems. For a man who, at the very least, is able to convincingly express a woman's emotions in his writing (e.g. Ariadne's speech, Poem LXIV), he gives us very little insight into Lesbia's feelings. If this poem represents the high point of the relationship, then the best he could muster with this woman with whom he was deeply infatuated seems to have been a cute answer to her pleading that he not make a public show of their love with a kiss here and there. "Can you please not kiss me here? People are watching!" she probably whispered angrily to him; his response was this poem, a poem telling her not to give a damn about the onlookers.
This does not sound like a woman madly in love with him.

"Let us value them at the price of a penny." - i.e. "worthless". It is worth noting that this line, "omnes unius aestimemus assis" is the textbook example of floccinaucinihilipilification. as it has assis as a Genitive of Value following aestimemus.

"...brief light / Night is then everlasting..." - The Latin runs as: "brevis lux / Nox est perpetua..." with the backslash indicating the line break. The abruptly spoken monosyllabic "lux" is placed in such a way at the end of the line that it almost sounds like uttering the whispered breath used to snuff out a candle - the perfect imagery for a brief life ended, and an everlasting night to be slept.

"evil eye" - the Latin here is a verb, invideo, invidere, invidi, invisus - "to envy, lit: to look upon". Here it is means something like "to cast the evil eye", a very powerful symbol in a culture which believed (and often still does) in magic and superstition. The Romans were fond of charms and other such witchery which would ward off the Evil Eye and other such spirits of envy and evil. Here, Catullus wards off the Evil Eye by mixing up the number of kisses - without knowing the exact number of kisses, the envious onlooker doesn't have the necessary information to cast a symbolic spell ("the Evil Eye") or throw any shade on the lovers. ^↩

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VI. FLAVI DELICIAS TVAS CATVLLO

O Flavius, you would tell Catullus

About your girlfriend unless she were ill-witted
Or uncharming -- otherwise you couldn't you keep quiet!

Truly I know not what sort of fevered
Whore you're in love with, I'm ashamed to say! 5

You don't lie in celibate nights -- I know it.

Your not-in-any-way-quiet bed shouts everything --

It's a-garlanded and soaked with Syrian oils!

And your pillow has been so evenly worn away
Here and there! The trembling bed has been shaken, 10

Creaking and walking to and fro!

For no perversion remains ever silent.

Why is that? Would you have a fucked-out body,

Unless you were engaged in some fucking around?

So, whatever you have, good or ill, 15

Tell me; I wish to invoke you and your love

Heavenward in a witty verse.

VI. Meter: Hendecasyllabics

This poem carries on the time-honored tradition of teasing a friend who has a new lover, a practice which carries on in a healthy fashion still today. Poem VI exemplifies the humorous, mocking banter of a friend who knows his/her friend is carrying on in secret with someone of whom they won't tell. "Unless she were 'ill-witted or uncharming'," Catullus reasons, "you would tell me who she is!" Here Catullus has some fun at Flavius' expense by pointing out all the evidence of slinking off with some "fevered whore": the bed literally shouts with groans and creaks (it's getting as good of a workout as Flavius is - it's practically walking across the floor!), the rooms smells like Syrian perfume, and the pillow has been dented in multiple places - almost as if more than one person has been sleeping on it. The joking reaches its climax - or anticlimax, as the case may be- with the line "Unless thou were engaged in some fucking around?" - the Latin here is "ineptiarum", meaning that this "fucking around" or "hanky-panky" isn't immoral, but stupid and foolish because Flavius won't open up about it. Once Flavius reveals all, then everything will be fine, "[f]or no perversion ever remains silent". It'll all come to light soon enough, so you'd better spill.
Catullus finishes by asking Flavius to reveal the name of his "slampiece", for he wishes to make them immortal by including them in his poem (like how Akhilles achieved immortality). The joke here is that the task is already done, without the girl's name - the poem Catullus says he wishes to write is this very one.^↩

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VII. QVAERIS QUOT MIHI BASIATIONES

Ask'st thou how many for me of thy kissings
May be, Lesbia, enough and overdone:
How great is the number of the Libyan sands
Which in silphium-bearing Cyrene lie,
Where the Oracle of lusty Jove is betwixt
There and ancient Battus' hallowed buried crypt?
Or how many stars when silent is the night
And the secret loves of people they espy?
So many! For thee, many kisses to kiss
For mad Catullus are enough and beyond
Which neither to number them a busybody
Could do nor with his wicked tongue could bewitch.

VII. Meter: Hendecasyllabics

This poem is most likely a response to Poem V. "How many kisses can you possible need?" Lesbia probably asked him; she may have asked teasingly and coy, or perhaps she was annoyed. Catullus (as usual) doesn't say.
There are a few good allusions here: comparing something to the "number of the [...] sands" is as old as writing, and "silphium-bearing Cyrene" (the most excellent "lasarpiciferis [...] Cyrenis") is an obscure reference favored by the Alexandrians.
The "Oracle of lusty Jove" here mentioned is the Oracle of Jupiter Ammon at Siwa in Egypt, famous for granting an audience with Alexander the Great and announcing his godhood. Battus, the ancient first king of Libya, constructed his tomb some three hundred miles from the Oracle at Siwa. The Grecian poet Kallimakhos, one of Catullus' models, was a native of Cyrene, Libya, and referred to himself as Battiades, "son of Battus", from whom he was descended.
In Poem V, Catullus attempted to allay Lesbia's concerns about the "evil eye" of someone watching - here, it's their tongues, their wagging tongues which can "bewitch" them - the Latin fascinare means "to cast a spell, bewitch". Again, the fear of the supernatural drives Lesbia's concerns; or, at least that's what Catullus addresses in his poems. "They can't curse our kissing if they don't know how many times we've kissed!" he tells her.
One doubts she was convinced.^↩

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VIII. Ad te ipsvm

-Addressed to himself, the one and only

MISER CATVLLE DESINAS INEPTIRE

Wretched Catullus, you should cease to play the fool,

And what you see as lost, lost you should consider it.

Once were the suns blazing bright fo ryou,

When you were wont to go wherever your girl led you,

Ah, I shall feel as such unlove towards her as much as I once did her.

Back when there were many joyous times,

When you wanted her and she wanted you back.

Ah, truly blazing bright once were the suns for you.

But now that girl does not want you -- so also, weakling, you don't want her!

She who flees, chase her not, but as a wretch let her live!

But with a firm mind, endure, stand strong.

Fare-thee-well, girl! Now Catullus stands strong.

Neither does he seek you, nor asks of you, since you don't want him,

Ah you! You will be in pain, when you shall be asked after by no one!

Wicked woman, woe to you! What life remains for you?

Who will approach you? To whom shall you be seen as lovely?

Whom now do you love? To whom will you say you belong?

Whom will you kiss? Whose lips will you bite?

No! Stop! You, Catullus: stand strong! Endure!

VIII. Meter: limping iambics/choliambics/scazons - invented by the Greek poet Hipponax (6th century B.C.), the meter is composed of five iambs (u -) and then the final sixth foot is either a trochee (- u) or a spondee (- -). Spondees may be substituted for the iambs in the first and third foot. The meter chiefly accompanies satirical themes.

This .^↩

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IX.

VERANI OMNIBVS E MEIS AMICIS

Veranius, of all of my own friends

You surpass all of them -- all three hundred thousand of them!

Have you come home to your hearth-gods,

Your like-minded brothers and aged mother?

Yes, you have! Oh, what glad tidings for me!

I shall see you unharmed and hear you tell

Of Spain: its countrysides, histories, peoples

--As is your wont -- and while embracing your neck,

Your joyful face and eyes I shall kiss!

O, out of all you happy people,

Is there anyone gladder than me or happier?

IX. Meter: Hendecasyllabics

This .^↩

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X. Ad Varvm

-To Varus

VARVS ME MEVS AD SVOS AMORES

Varus - a friend of mine -- took me to his new lover's,

Having espied me up to nothing, and so led from the Forum.

Oh, she was such a little whore (thus she instantly appeared),

Though not wholly ill-witted nor un-charming.

After hither came we together, then fell upon us
Were sundry idle chats, such now as how
Was Bithynia, how it was getting on,

And -- to the point -- to me what cash it had offered.

I told it like it was: nothing! neither for the very locals,

Nor for the Praetors, nor for their staff!

No reason why anyone shouldn't have a better cut hairdo!

And there was especially nothing for those who have a cocksucker
For a Praetor who doesn't care a hair for his staff.

"But nevertheless surely," spake they, "since in that place

Are bred litter bearers, so it is said-- you bought some up?

"So as to the girl myself one rather lucky guy to appear,

"No," spake I, "t'wasn't for me so bad as that --

Though the luck of a bad province had on me fallen--

That I couldn't buy up eight such straight-backed men!"

But really, for me no such men there were, neither here or there

Who the broken foot of an old cot

On his own neck could ever hoist.

Here then, just like quite the little slut,

"Please," spake she, "to me, my Catullus, for a short time

These men lend? For I wish to the Serapeum

To be thus carried." "Hold on now," spake I to the girl,

"Er--that which just now I had spoken-- that is, that I had them

-- Uh, my reason has left me: uh, it was my mate --

Cinna -- er, Gaius Cinna -- he -- yes he!-- for himself bought them!

But whether his or mine, what is to me,

I use them as well as if for myself I would have bought them.

But thou: insipid--exceedingly!-- and obnoxious thou art,

And around thee none can be careless!"

X. Meter: Hendecasyllabics

This .^↩

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XI. Ad Furium et Aurelium

-To Furius and Aurelius

FVRI ET AVRELI COMITES CATVLLI

O, Furius and Aurelius, ye acquaintances of Catullus,
Whether into furthest India will Catullus venture,
Where the coast by the far-sounding Eoän wave
Is beaten,

Or if among the Hyrcani he be, or luxury-soft Arabs,
Or among the Sacae he be, or the arrow-bearing Parthi,
Or where the seven-mouthed Nile paints
The smooth sea,

Or if across the high Alps shall he step,
Great Caesar's monuments doth he see again and again,
The Gallic Rhine, the rough Channel, and the farthest-
-Flung Britanni:

Since all of these things, whatever the will
Of heaven's dwellers be, to try out ye both are ready,
Then a few things announce to my girl,
-Nothing good spoken.

Since liveth she and is happy with her fuckers,
Whom in her embrace she has so many three hundred,
None of them she loves truly, over and again, does
She all of their dicks break,

So let her not look back, as it was before, at my love,
Which, because of her fault has fallen, just like on a field's
Furthest edge, hath a flower by a passing plow
Been touched.

XI. Meter: Sapphics
Many believe this poem to be the poet's final repudiation of Lesbia - Catullus is finally done with her. This is fitting, as the meter of this poem is the same as the first poem to Lesbia (LI), and so creates a satisfying bookend to that tempestuous relationship.
Catullus begins with Furius and Aurelius, his "frenemies" from XVI ("Aurielius, thou faggot, and bottom-bitch Furius!" - here they are comites "companions".) and then launches into a tour of the empire. Some readers wonder why the two parts of the poem seem unrelated and contrived: why does Catullus take us on this extra-Italian trip only to then pick up with some anti-Lesbia stanzas? The answer seems easy enough: "Go shout it from the rooftops, let the far corners of the empire know that I am done with her! In fact, you two go tell her, since you're still friends with her! Fuck her and her lovers!" The places Catullus mentions all were in the news at the time of writing: Crassus was marching into the East ("Hyrcani", "Sacae", "Parthians" - all Eastern powers), Caesar was invading Britain, and the reference to the Nile could be an allusion the Alexandrian scandal of Ptolemy Auletes. As such, this poem is noteworthy for dating purposes - Caesar's invasions of Britain weren't until 55 and 54 B.C., so the poem must be dated at or a little later than that time.
Lesbia's three-hundred lovers (trecentos) were not really counted out by Catullus to be an exact figure, for three-hundred is Roman shorthand for "a lot", just as Classical Hebrew uses "forty" to mean "a lot" or "for a long time" ("forty days and forty nights" = "for a long [indefinite amount of] time"), and English uses "-illion" ("I told you a million, billion, gajillion times!" = "I told you a lot!").
The simile concerning the flower in the field (one of my absolute favorites) comes from both Sappho and Homer:

οἴαν τὰν ὐάκινθον ἐν ὤρεσι
As when the hyacinth in the mountains
ποίμενες ἄνδρες
Do some shepherds
πόσσι καταστείβοισι, χάμαι δέ
O'er-run with trampling feet, and on the ground
τὸ πόρφυρον ἄνθος
There the purple flower
[κεῖται.] /
[Lies.]

-Sappho fr. 91 (Cox). Trans. is my own.

For Sappho, the hyacinth, the tender purple flower trampled by shepherds, represents lost virginity, gone forever and never regained. For Catullus, the tender flower represents his love (which he would describe as chaste and pure) and its destruction is a betrayal of his pure romantic intentions.

The Homer passage runs as such:

καὶ τοῦ μέν ῥ᾽ ἀφάμαρθ᾽, ὃ δ᾽ ἀμύμονα Γοργυθίωνα
And [Hektor] did [Teuker] miss, but he [Teuker] did blameless Gorgythion,
υἱὸν ἐῢν Πριάμοιο κατὰ στῆθος βάλεν ἰῷ,
A good son of Priam, hit in his breast with an arrow,
τόν ῥ᾽ ἐξ Αἰσύμηθεν ὀπυιομένη τέκε μήτηρ
Him a mother wedded from Aisyme had given birth,
καλὴ Καστιάνειρα δέμας ἐϊκυῖα θεῇσι. 305
She the lovely Kastianeira, who was in likness as unto the goddesses.
μήκων δ᾽ ὡς ἑτέρωσε κάρη βάλεν, ἥ τ᾽ ἐνὶ κήπῳ
And Gorgythion did to one side throw his head, just as a poppy in an garden,
καρπῷ βριθομένη νοτίῃσί τε εἰαρινῇσιν,
A poppy weighed down with both fruit and the dew of spring --
ὣς ἑτέρωσ᾽ ἤμυσε κάρη πήληκι βαρυνθέν.
Just so did he to one side bow his head, made heavy with his helm.

-Homer, Iliad H' 302-308. Trans. is my own.

The image is imitated by Vergil at the death of Euryalus:

"purpureus veluti cum flos succisus aratro
Just as when a reddish flower, severed by the plow
languescit moriens, lassove papavera collo
Droops while dying, or when poppies from their tired stem
demisere caput pluvia cum forte gravantur."
Have bowed strong buds and by a rain-shower are weighted down.

-Vergil, Aeneid IX.435-437. Trans is my own.

And also shows up here:

"They slit our throats,
Like we were flowers [...]"

-Marilyn Manson, Speed Of Pain, 1998

^↩
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XII.

MARRVCINE ASINI MANV SINISTRA

O, Marrucine Asshole, your left hand
You do not use nicely, in jest or in wine:
You lift the napkins of the too-forgetful!
Do you think this clever? Get out of it, dumbass!
How tacky is this shit? How uncool!
Don't believe me? Believe Pollio,
Your brother, who would wish your sneakings with money
Could be changed; for he is of wit
Fully stuffed, a young man of cleverness.
So, either wait for three hundred hendecasyllabics
Or send back to me my napkins!
It does not bother me because of the price;
On the contrary, it is a remembrance of my friends:
For these Saetaban handkerchiefs from Spain
They sent to me as a gift --both my Fabius
and Veranius did. These gifts I must love, as I love
Both my Veranius and my dear Fabius.

XII. Meter: Hendecasyllabics

This.^↩

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XIII. Ad Fabullum

-To Fabullus

CENABIS BENE MI FABVLLE APVD ME

Dine well you shall, my Fabullus, at my home,
In a few days, if gods grant you favor!
And if with you would bring with you a large and tasty
Meal -- and don't forget a fair-skinned girl,
And wine and Attic salt and all the laughs!
If these, say I, you shall bring over here, O charmer mine,
Then you shall dine well! For your Catullus'
Tiny, little purse is full of spiders' webs.
But in return, you will receive un-watered-down affection,
Or something sweeter and more tasteful:
For a perfume I will give, which to my girl
Did the Venuses and Cupids see fit to give,
Which when once you shall smell it, you'll ask the gods
That they may make you, Fabullus, entirely into a nose.

XIII. Meter: Hendecasyllabics

This .^↩

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XIV.

NI TE PLVS OCVLIS MEIS AMAREM

If thee more than mine eyes did not I love,
Most jestful Calvus, because of that gift of yours
I would hate you more than Vatianus does!
For what did I ever do or what ever did I say?
Why would you ill-ruin me with such poets?
May the gods many evils grant to your client,
Who such a books of hacks to you has sent!
Because if, as I suspect, this new and found
Gift Sulla the Litterateur has given to you,
Then to me not ill, but well and happy done,
Since perished not for naught have your labors!
Great gods! What a dreadful and accursed booklet!
This book thou --certainement!-- to thy Catullus
Didst send, that on the very spot he may die that day,
The Saturnalia! Yes, die! On the best of days!
No, not shall thou, O jokester, escape thus!
For, if the dawn should come, to the booksellers'
Cases I shall run, and the Caesians, Aquinans
Suffenans, all of them I shall gather, all those poisons,
And then thee with these tortures I shall re-gift.
In the meantime, begone hence! Away with ye,
And thither go, whence thy wicked foot ye bore,
Ye pests of this age, ye worst poets.

XIV. Meter: Hendecasyllabics

T.^↩

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XV.

COMMENDO TIBI ME AC MEOS AMORES

I entrust to you both myself and my boyfriend,
Aurelius. I beg you for a favor -- a modest one:
For should you have ever wished in your heart
That something you desired be kept pure and untouched,
Then keep my boyfriend whole and chaste!
I am not talking about other people -- not them do I fear,
Those fuckers in the street who now willy now nilly
Go by, those who are minding their own business --
But it is you I do fear and, of course, you cock,
Trouble as that thing is for boys both good and bad!
Let it go wherever it you want, as you please; let it guide you
As much as you will, ever at the ready -- just not in the house!
For this one lad I ask an exception -- a request made modestly, methinks.
But if your obsession -- not to mention your madness and insanity --
Forces you into committing such a wrong, O evil bastard,
That you would with tricky snares sully my rights,
Then alas! Pitiful fucker, what an evil fate you have wrought:
For first your feet are bound, and then though your yawning back-gate,
Shall radishes and gray mullets eagerly rush!

XV. Meter: Hendecasyllabics

".^↩

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XVI. PEDICABO EGO ET VOS IRRVMABO

I will assrape and throatfuck you both,
Aurielius, you faggot, and homo Furius!
Because you think my pet poems
To be sexy, then how little prim must I be.
For it is proper for the pious poet to be chaste,
Yes! himself chaste; but for his poems -- not at all!
Let's end it here: my poems have salt and charm!
And if they be sexy things and little prim,
And if some kind of an itch are able to arouse,
Then I say they're not just for youths, but also for hairy men,
Who can't get their pricks hard by themselves!
So the both of you, you read my many thousands of kisses
And now you don't think me much of a man?
Then I will assrape and throatfuck you both!

XVI. Meter: Hendecasyllabics

"I will assrape and ye both I will throatfuck, / Aurelius, thou faggot, and bottom-bitch Furius" - rape was (and unfortunately still is) used to humiliate and punish. In accordance with the sexual mores of many ancient cultures, the Romans (and Greeks) considered the activity/passivity of the participants to be the outstanding element of sexual congress, regardless of gender. Two men (less commonly, two women) may engage in sex acts, but the active, penetrating participant will not only maintain his masculinity, but he will confirm and strengthen it by dominating another passive male, who muliebria patitur - "submits like a woman does"; comparing the passive partner to a slave was also common. Catching a thief or adulterer in the act could have led to the offender being beaten, castrated, or raped; the ultimate humiliation would be to allow master's slaves to gangrape the offender.
Calling Aurelius "faggot" ("pathice") and Furius "bottom-bitch" ("cinaede"), both Greek words, Catullus is employing the Latin equivalent to the English "pardon my French", as Hellenisms were used by the Romans for profane or sexually charged language the same way earlier Americans employed French. Catullus also emphasizes the passive (and therefore, humiliating) position in which he wants to put these characters by calling them these words, which both essentially mean "he who shamefully submits to the passive role".
So, Catullus threatens to rape anally (pedicatio) and orally (irrumatio) these two "frenemies" (cf. XI) who have mocked the supposed effeminancy of Poem V ("Ye both, who my many thousands of kisses /Ye read, less me a man ye think?") and have called Catullus' manhood into question - what is the best (and most shocking) recourse for Catullus to assert his masculinity while humiliating his offenders? Rape. Ugh.
Many later poets (Ovid and Martial among them) have invoked Catullus when speaking of "the poet vs. the poem" - the poet should be a respectable person; his poetry, not so much. Whereas Catullus claims he is chaste (hmm...), his verses inspire an "itch", a sexual tingling or arousal. "You both should like my sexy poems - you can't get it up otherwise," quips the poet. Ouch.
XVI is famous for the shocking first line (so shocking it had to be repeated at the last!) and is often remarked as a "stumbling block" in the appreciation for Catullus - many students would disagree.^↩

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XVII.

O COLONIA QVAE CVPIS PONTE LVDERE LONGO

O Little Bumbfuckton, who long to play on that long bridge of thine,
And stand ready to jump in games -- but thou art wary, stupid town,
That the supports of this little bridge do stand with second-hand debris,
Lest it go both ends up and in that hollow swamp forever lie.
So that may the bridge be made well again, according to thy desire,
That even on it might the sacred rites of Salusubsalus be held,
Then this boon to me grant, Little Bumfuckton, one of the greatest laughter:
There is a certain citizen of my town -- I want thee to from thy bridge
Throw him headlong, not just into the muck -- yea head over heels! --
But in the place within the whole of that lake, of that disgusting swamp
Where most blue-gray and deep is the depth of that watery chasm!
So stupid is this man, for not does he have the wit of a boy,
A two years old on the dandling arm of a dozing dad.
Although to him was wed a girl of the most blossoming flower
-- Yea, this girl is more frisky than a tender young kid,
And must be guarded more carefully than the ripest grapes --
He allows her to play where she pleaseth, and not does he give a hair,
Nor doth he rouse himself on his own behalf, but just as an alder tree
In a ditch doth he lie, as if it were felled at the root by a Ligurian axe.
Everything he senses is just as if the thing were nothing at all.
This bastard of mine is the sort who sees nothing, hears nothing,
The sort who whether or not he himself exists he also knows not.
Now him I wish for thee to give a send-off from thy bridge, head before feet,
As if that could immediately rouse him from his dull torpor,
And so leave behind his lazy ass in the heavy slime,
Just as an iron sandal a mule might lose in the gripping grime.

XVII. Meter: Priapean

Every Catullus commentator worth their salt has a theory about where Colonia is: the poet's own Verona; Cologna, which lies a few miles east of Verona; Mantua and Comum are other contenders, as well as Cremona. Locals of Cologna, one commentator claims, can even point out a bridge, a certain "Ponte di Catullo", which crosses a sludgy mire. Despite all of this, I think the genius of Catullus here is that I theorize that all of these places are meant to be "Colonia", that there is no one real place that is "Colonia" -- the proper-noun-ification of the common noun colonia, a denomination all-to-familiar in the swampy regions of the Italo-Gallic north around the Po River Valley, seems to me to be a catch-all for any and all the northern Italian small towns Catullus would have been familiar with from his youth. It was common practice to add the suffix "-tucky " to any of the small towns of my own youth in the southwestern Ohio river valley/eastern Indiana/northern Kentucky (the origin of the "-tucky" suffix) tri-state area; it didn't matter which of the small towns was being talked about -- they were all the same and all deserved the same suffix. Catullus, in naming his Colonia so generically, may have felt much the same. So, in an earlier draft of this translation, I translated Colonia as Bumfucktucky; I soon after changed it to Bumfuckton, upon realizing that, although meaningful to me, Bumfucktucky would not carry the same universality to all modern readers as Bumfuckton. In the end, I wanted the translation to have the same generality as Catullus' Colonia.
The poem's content is joking and quaint, much like the local songs of any small country town: a swampy little town's rickety bridge can be magically saved by sacrificing the town idiot to the gods of the swamp. Catullus has put the song in the Priapean, a meter used in hymns to Priapus, the god of fertility and erections, most likely mocking the country imbecile who is inattentive to his sexy new wife. The idiot has no idea what he's doing in regards to just about everything, so, reasons the poet, why not make some use out of him and toss him into the mire head-first? Such an act might even be seen as a propitiatory offering, like the pharmakos ritual of ancient Athens, so the gods may bless your wobbly bridge, Bumfuckton.
In ancient Athens...
As to the identity of the moron (Insulsissimus) in question, he, like Colonia could be any old Paduan country town, could be any country fool belonging to any of them; odds are every village has its idiot, and given how common was the age difference between an older male and a younger female spouse at that time, the character of this older country buffoon of a man who is unable to keep up with his young, attractive, and "frisky" wife may have been a well-known sight and stock character. Further, it should be pointed out that Catullus had no trouble naming people worthy of lambast (Aurelius and Flavius) or providing a pseudonym for his subjects (Lesbia for Clodia; Mentula "The Prick" for Mamurra), so why does he not here? The charm (venustas) of the poem, I think Catullus would say, lies in the generality of the details: the town could be any country town; that town's rickety, yet otherwise nondescript bridge crosses a disgusting, yet otherwise nondescript swampy lake, and so could be any bridge crossing any swampy lake; the town has some dumb old man who's being taken for the proverbial "ride" by his young trophy wife -- and wouldn't it be funny to see the dumbass chucked headfirst off that dangerous bridge? Catullus seemed to think enough people would say "yes" that he wrote a funny (risus) poem about it.
There's a joke in the repetition and insistence in the idea that dumb old man be tossed off the bridge head-first (praecipitem; caputque pedesque; pronum), that it might be the first time in a long time that the lazy ass (supinum animum) hasn't been reclining at rest, his feet propped up higher than his head. The addition of the Salusubsalian rites (the what now?) and the Ligurian axe (always at the ready to fell trees) further lend to the poem's quaint country charm.
A final note: the horses and mules of the antique Italians had their shoes strapped on instead of nailed, with the result that these iron boots would often be stuck in persistent and grasping (tenaci) mud, such that by only pulling the shoe with great force -- and producing a terrific sucking sound -- could it be freed. Such effort was often seen as too taxing, and so the shoe would be discarded (derelinquere) -- the old man is described like the shoe in the mud, a useless thing to be likewise discarded.^↩

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XXI.

AVRELI PATER ESVRITIONVM

O Aurelius, you are the thirstiest daddy of thirsts,

And not just for any particular boys, but for as many as have ever been,

Or are now, or ever will be in any count of years --

And now you want to fuck my boyfriend!

You're not even secretive about it! Wherever he is, there you are!
You joke around with him! Cling to his side! Try every gambit!
All in vain, for despite the wicked plots you are laying for me,

I'll stick it to you first -- with my cock in your mouth!

And if you suck me off well enough, I might keep quiet.

Though now I worry for my boyfriend, for he shall learn --

Dammit! -- from you how to be as thirsty as you are.

So lay off it, while it's still possible for your throat to stay chaste,

Lest we end this with my cock in your mouth!

XXI. Meter: Hendecasyllabics