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Our last post was the poem that some commentators think was the first that Catullus wrote to Lesbia. Now we present the poem that may mark the end of the affair in bitterness and insult, written in a metre (Sapphics, developed on Lesbos more than five hundred years earlier by the poetess Sappho) that Catullus uses nowhere except in these two pieces. Perhaps as a final insult, perhaps because they are good and very tolerant friends, his messengers are two men who are used to some pretty gross treatment at his hands.

Hear Catullus’s Latin and follow in English here.

In on of the less well-known Lesbia poems, Catullus translates into Latin part of a famous poem by the poetess Sappho, using the “Sapphic” metre later adopted by Horace in several of his Odes.

Commentators find it a problem poem. On inconclusive  evidence, Granny Fordyce insists that it was “clearly” written in the early days of Catullus’s affair with Lesbia. He goes on to argue that the prosaic ending of the poem can have nothing to do with the more romantic first three quarters, and that its presence is probably a blip in the manuscript (there is also a line missing in the third stanza). But there are other scenarios, including one in which Catullus, at a loose end, embarks on his Sappho translation, is struck by its painful associations with his (lost?) Lesbia, and calls himself to order in a new final stanza. Who can say? The mystery does not spoil the poem. The sharp disagreements about interpretation also illustrate a general point about reading poetry: what you get out of it is often very dependent on what you bring to it.

Hear Catullus’s Latin and follow in English here.

Catullus and Julius Caesar knew one another, Suetonius tells us (Jul.73). The relationship must have been interesting, since Catullus wrote a number of poems attacking Caesar and his associate Mamurra (whom he calls “Mentula”, “the Prick”). In this mild example, Catullus has a go at four other probable members of Caesar’s circle.
Othonis caput oppido est pusillum;
Hirri rustica, semilauta crura,
subtile et leve peditum Libonis,
si non omnia; displicere vellem
tibi et Fufidio seni recocto …
irascere iterum meis iambis
immerentibus, unice imperator.

“Otho’s head is pathetically small, Hirrus has legs that are still half-covered in country mud, Libo’s fart is light and subtle, but not everything else about him; I want to offend you and that warmed-over old codger Fufidius … you are going to be angry at my iambics once again, sole Imperator (Caesar), though they don’t deserve it.”
Suetonius says that Catullus apologised to Caesar, who did not bear a grudge and invited him to dinner on the same day. If this is true, Caesar was very forgiving, as Catullus’s poems accuse him and “Mentula” of gross and shameful things including addiction to the passive role in gay sex and paedophilia with little girls. One wonders whether Suetonius’s anecdote, a hundred and fifty years on, was completely accurate; and if so, whether Caesar had seen all the poems that we have. These poems are not on PantheonPoets.com, though many other wonderful Catullus pieces are, at Latin Poetry/Latin Poets. If you want to check them out elsewhere, the main Caesar poems are 29, 57 and 93 and the ones referring to Mamurra “the Prick” are 94, 105, 114 and 115.
The text of Catullus is a bit of a mess and the little poem above is one of the most corrupted bits. More in another post about Catullus’s text and how it came to us.

Catullus is in an amorous mood again, but this time he is counting on something more substantial than kisses as he asks Ipsitilla to invite him for an afternoon siesta. There is explicit material in this, one of the Catullus pieces which used to be omitted from the scholarly editions.

Hear Catullus’s Latin and follow in English here.