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To MANIUS ON VARIOUS MATTERS.

When to me sore opprest by bitter chance of misfortune

This thy letter thou send’st written wi’ blotting of tears,

So might I save thee flung by spuming billows of ocean,

Shipwreckt, rescuing life snatcht from the threshold of death;

Eke neither Venus the Holy to rest in slumber’s refreshment

Grants thee her grace on couch lying deserted and lone,

Nor can the Muses avail with dulcet song of old writers

Ever delight thy mind sleepless in anxious care;

Grateful be this to my thought since thus thy friend I’m entitled,

Hence of me seekest thou gifts Muses and Venus can give:

But that bide not unknown to thee my sorrows (O Manius!)

And lest office of host I should be holden to hate,

Learn how in Fortune’s deeps I chance myself to be drownèd,

Nor fro’ the poor rich boons furthermore prithee require.

What while first to myself the pure-white garment was given,

Whenas my flowery years flowed in fruition of spring,

Much I disported enow, nor ’bode I a stranger to Goddess

Who with our cares is lief sweetness of bitter to mix:

Yet did a brother’s death pursuits like these to my sorrow

Bid for me cease: Oh, snatcht brother! from wretchedest me.

Then, yea, thou by thy dying hast broke my comfort, O brother;

Buried together wi’ thee lieth the whole of our house;

Perisht along wi’ thyself all gauds and joys of our life-tide,

Douce love fostered by thee during the term of our days.

After thy doom of death fro’ mind I banishèd wholly

Studies like these, and all lending a solace to soul;

Wherefore as to thy writ:— Verona’s home for Catullus

Bringeth him shame, for there men of superior mark

Must on a deserted couch fain chafe their refrigerate limbs:

Such be no shame (Manius!): rather ’tis matter of ruth.

Pardon me, then, wilt thou an gifts bereft me by grieving

These I send not to thee since I avail not present.

For, that I own not here abundant treasure of writings

Has for its cause, in Rome dwell I; and there am I homed,

There be my seat, and there my years are gathered to harvest;

Out of book-cases galore here am I followed by one.

This being thus, nill I thou deem ’tis spirit malignant

Acts in such wise or mind lacking of liberal mood

That to thy prayer both gifts be not in plenty supplièd:

Willingly both had I sent, had I the needed supply.

Carmina. C. Valerius Catullus. Leonard C. Smithers (Translator), Sir Richard Francis Burton (Translator). London. 1894.

Sponsored by Perseus Project, Tufts University.

Funding provided by The National Endowment for the Humanities.

Current edition Perseus

Carmina (English) (Catullus, Gaius Valerius. The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus. Burton, Sir Richard Francis, translator. London, Printed for the Translators, 1894.)

Translations (1)

Carmina Perseus (Catullus, Gaius Valerius. The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus. Smithers, Leonard Charles, prose translator. London, Printed for the Translators, 1894. (Modernized by Perseus.)) — 68 focus

Because you, oppressed by fortune and bitter calamity, sent me this letter written with tears, that I might bear up shipwrecked you tossed by the foaming waves of the sea, and restore you from the threshold of death;

you whom neither sacred Venus suffers to repose in soft slumber, desolate on a lonely couch, nor do the Muses divert with the sweet song of ancient poets, while your anxious mind keeps watch:—I am grateful that you call me your friend,

and seek here the gifts of the Muses and of Venus. But so that my troubles may not be unknown to you, Manlius, and so that you not think that I hate the duty of host, hear how I myself am engulfed in the waves of fortune, and do not further seek joyful gifts from a wretched one.

In that time when the white toga was first handed to me, and my flowering age was passing its delightful spring, much and enough did I sport: nor was the goddess unknown to us who mixes bitter-sweet with our cares. But my brother’s death plunged all this pursuit into mourning.

O brother, taken from my unhappy self; you by your dying have broken my ease, O brother; all our house is buried with you; with you have perished the whole of our joys, which your sweet love nourished in your lifetime.

With your loss, I have dismissed wholly from mind these studies and every delight of mind. So then, because you write, it is shameful for Catullus to be at Verona , because here someone of the better sort warms up his frigid limbs on a desolate couch;

that, Manlius, is not shameful; rather it is a sorrow. Therefore, forgive me if I do not bestow on you these gifts which grief has snatched from me, because I am unable. For the fact that there is no great store of writings with me arises from this, that we live at Rome : there is my home,

there is my hall, there my time is passed; here but one of my book-cases follows me. As it is thus, I would not want you to think that we do this from ill-will or with a mind not open enough, because ample store is not forthcoming to either of your desires:

of my own accord would I grant both, had I the wherewithal.

68_41 I cannot conceal, goddesses, in what way Allius has aided me, or with how many good services he has assisted me, lest the flight of time through ages of forgetfulness cover with night’s blindness this care of his.

68_45 But I shall tell it to you, and you in time to come declare it to many thousands, and make this paper, grown old, speak of it And let him be more and more noted when dead, nor let the spider aloft, weaving her thin-drawn web,

68_50 carry on her work over the neglected name of Allius. For you know what anxiety of mind twofold Amathusia gave me, and in what manner she overthrew me, when I was burning like the Trinacrian rocks, or the Malian fount in Oetaean Thermopylae;

68_55 and my sorrowful eyes did not cease to dissolve with continual weeping, or did my cheeks to be dampened with sad showers. As the transparent stream gushes forth from the moss-grown rock on the airy crest of the mountain, which, when it has rolled headlong prone down the valley,

68_60 softly wends its way through the midst of the populous parts, sweet solace to the wayfarer sweating with weariness, when the oppressive heat cracks the burnt-up fields agape: or, as to sailors tempest-tossed in black whirlpool, there comes a favourable and a gently-moving breeze,

68_65 implored by prayer now to Pollux, now to Castor: of such kind was Allius’ help to us. He laid open my closed field with a wide path; he gave us a home and he gave it to our mistress, in which we both might exercise our loves in common.

68_70 There with gracious gait my bright-hued goddess betook herself, and pressed her shining sole on the worn threshold with creaking sandal; as once came Laodamia, flaming with love for her husband, to the home of Protesilaus,—a home

68_75 begun in vain—not yet had a victim appeased the lords of the heavens with sacred blood. May nothing please me overmuch, Rhamnusian virgin, that is undertaken rashly against the will of those lords! How the thirsty altar craves the pious blood

68_80 Laodamia was taught by the loss of her husband, being compelled to abandon the neck of her new spouse before one winter and another had come, in whose long nights she might sate her eager passion, so she could live despite her broken marriage-yoke.

68_85 The Parcae decreed that this would not be long distant, if her husband went a soldier to the walls of Ilium . For then with Helen’s rape Troy had begun to summon the Argive chiefs to itself; Troy (accursed!) the common grave of Asia and of Europe ,

68_90 Troy , the bitter ashes of heroes and of every noble deed, that also lamentably brought death to our brother. O brother taken from unhappy me! O delightful light taken from an unhappy brother! together with you is buried all our house,

68_95 together with you have perished all our joys, which your sweet love nurtured during life. Whom now so far away Troy , obscene, baleful Troy , an alien land, holds in far-distant soil laid not among familiar tombs or near the ashes of his kindred

68_101 There, it is said, hastening together from all parts, the Greek youth forsook their hearths and homes, lest Paris enjoy his abducted trollop with freedom and leisure in a peaceful bed.

68_105 Such then was your case, loveliest Laodamia, to be bereft of husband sweeter than life and breath; the tide of love swallowing you in so great a current bore you off into its steep abyss, as the Greeks say Pheneus near Cyllene

68_110 drains off the soil from the rich swampland. Once the falsely-born son of Amphitryon is heard to have dug this soil, having cut through the marrow of the mountain, at the time when he knocked down the Stymphalian monsters with sure arrows at the command of his inferior lord,

68_115 so that the gate of heaven might be pressed by a greater number of deities, and Hebe might not remain in long virginity. But deeper than that abyss was your deep love which taught you then, untamed, to bear the yoke. For not as dear to the parent consumed with age

68_120 is the head of the late-born grandchild an only daughter rears, who, [an heir] found at last for the ancestral wealth, scarcely having brought his name into the public records, casts off the impious joys of mocking kinsmen and stirs away the vulture from the whitened head;

68_125 nor so much does any dove rejoice in her snow-white consort, which they say is always plucking kisses with her nibbling beak: more shamelessly than a woman who is especially passionate. But you alone surpassed the great frenzies of these,

68_130 when you were once united to your yellow-haired husband. Worthy to yield to her in no respect or in little, my light brought herself into my embrace, round whom Cupid, often running here and there, gleamed radiantly in his saffron tunic.

68_135 Although she is not content with Catullus alone, we will bear the rare intrigues of our coy lady, lest we may be too much a bother, after the manner of fools. Often even Juno, greatest of heaven-dwellers, boiled with flaring wrath at her husband’s fault,

68_140 knowing the many intrigues of passionate Jove. Yet it is not fair to compare men with the gods bear up the ungrateful burden of a trembling father. After all she was not handed to me by a father’s right hand when she came to my house fragrant with Assyrian perfume,

100

68_145 but she gave me her stolen favors in the wondrous night, taken away from the embrace of her own husband. Therefore it is enough if to us alone she gives that day which she marks with a whiter stone.

105

68_149 This gift to you, Allius, completed in what verse I can, is in return for many services, so that this day and that, and other and other of days may not touch your name with flaking rust. To this the gods will add the many gifts, which Themis once used to bring to the pious of old.

68_155 May you be happy, both you and your life’s-love together, and your home in which we have sported, and its mistress, and he who first gave us earth takes it away, from whom all my good fortunes were first born, and lastly she whose very self is dearer to me than all these,—

115

68_160 my light, who living, living is sweet to me.

120

C. Valerius Catullus Carmina 68

Leonard C. Smithers (Translator), Sir Richard Francis Burton (Translator)

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