April soft and cold: Making a hole in my tunic and cloak

Today we’re setting the poetic WAYBAC Machine to late Republican Rome. Give it up, folks, for Gaius Valerius Catullus, a guy who really knew how to turn a phrase. Especially when it comes to love. And lust. And bodily functions.

I’ve already shared with you my relationship with Ovid, and Virgil. (And I find it extremely interesting that my post on the former is about my top-ranked post ever. My guess is that high school and college students around the world are being assigned Metamorphoses, and that there isn’t a whole lot around the Web on it.) Catullus influenced them (and others) a great deal.

Many of Catullus’ love/lust poems are about the woman he calls Lesbia, who was in fact Clodia, a married woman whose husband, Quintus Caecilius Metellus Celer, died in suspicious circumstances. She also had an active sex life, which included Catullus’ friend Marcus Caelius Rufus.

(Clodia and Caelius broke up hard. No, I mean tabloids-hard. She accused him of attempted poisoning—the suspected method of Metellus’ death, and he ended up in court on a murder charge. He was defended by Marcus Tullius Cicero, who counter charged Clodia of being a seducer and a drunkard. Cicero also hinted strongly of an incestuous relationship between Clodia and her brother Clodius Pulcher. I’m telling you—you study Roman history or literature, you really get your money’s worth.)

But back to Catullus. You remember Catullus, right?

He took on a lot of public figures, including many swipes at Gaius Julius Caesar, but he also wrote about friendship and just, you know, stuff.

One of my favorite poems about Lesbia/Clodia is V, “Let’s Live and Love”.

Vivamus mea Lesbia, atque amemus,

rumoresque senum severiorum

omnes unius aestimemus assis!

soles occidere et redire possunt:

nobis cum semel occidit brevis lux,

nox est perpetua una dormienda.

da mi basia mille, deinde centum,

dein mille altera, dein secunda centum,

deinde usque altera mille, deinde centum.

dein, cum milia multa fecerimus,

conturbabimus illa, ne sciamus,

aut ne quis malus invidere possit,

cum tantum sciat esse basiorum.

Let us live, my Lesbia, let us love,

and all the words of the old, and so moral,

may they be worth less than nothing to us!

Suns may set, and suns may rise again:

but when our brief light has set,

night is one long everlasting sleep.

Give me a thousand kisses, a hundred more,

another thousand, and another hundred,

and, when we’ve counted up the many thousands,

confuse them so as not to know them all,

so that no enemy may cast an evil eye,

by knowing that there were so many kisses.

Things heat up graphically when we get to XXXII, “Siesta", to a woman he names Ipsithilla.

Amabo, mea dulcis Ipsitilla,

meae deliciae, mei lepores,

iube ad te veniam meridiatum.

et si iusseris, illud adiuvato,

ne quis liminis obseret tabellam,

neu tibi lubeat foras abire,

sed domi maneas paresque nobis

novem continuas fututiones.

verum si quid ages, statim iubeto:

nam pransus iaceo et satur supinus

pertundo tunicamque palliumque.

Please, my sweet Ipsíthilla,

my delight, my charmer:

tell me to come to you at siesta.

And if you tell me, help it along,

let no-one cover the sign at your threshold,

nor you choose to step out of doors,

but stay at home, and get ready

for nine fucks, in succession, with me.

Truly, if you should want it, let me know now:

because lying here, fed, and indolently full,

I’m making a hole in my tunic and cloak.

In LXXV, “Chained” he pretty much nails the hell of love:

Huc est mens deducta tua mea, Lesbia, culpa

atque ita se officio perdidit ipsa suo,

ut iam nec bene velle queat tibi, si optima fias,

nec desistere amare, omnia si facias.

My mind’s reduced to this, by your faults, Lesbia,

and has ruined itself so in your service,

that now it couldn’t wish you well,

were you to become what’s best,

or stop loving you if you do what’s worst.

And again in XCII, “Sign of Love”:

Lesbia mi dicit semper male nec tacet umquam
de me: Lesbia me dispeream nisi amat.
quo signo? quia sunt totidem mea: deprecor illam
assidue, verum dispeream nisi amo.

Lesbia always speaks ill of me, never shuts up

about me: damn me if she doesn’t love me.

What’s the sign? Because it’s the same with me: I’m

continually complaining, but damn me if I don’t love her.

Well, I could go on forever. Or you could go look him up. Because Catullus is definitely a slice.