Yes, you are burdened by fate and bitter circumstance,
But the fact you send me this little letter, tear-written,
Hopeful I might lift you from your shipwreck, your thrall
To the sea’s foaming waves, might rescue you from
Death’s threshold, as holy Venus permits you
No calming sleep, abandoned on a bed, bereft,
The Muses no distraction with sweet song of
Classic writers so long as the troubled mind wakes,
It makes me grateful: you call me your friend
And seek me as the fount of gifts of Muse and Venus.
But in case my misfortunes are news to you, Manlius,
And so you don’t feel I shirk the obligations owed a host,
Hear how I too am drowned in the waves of fate
So you ask no more a sad man for gifts of happiness.
From the time the pure toga was first put upon me,
When the bloom of my youth enjoyed its pleasant spring,
I sported hard enough. I was no stranger to the goddess
Who mixes sweet bitterness with love’s woe,
But the death of my brother and ensuing grief has stolen
From me all enthusiasm for it. Ah poor brother, stolen from me,
By dying you have splintered my happiness, brother,
With you our whole household has been buried,
With you all our joys have perished together,
Joys which your sweet love encouraged in life.
Upon his death I banished these pursuits from my
Every thought, and all the pleasures my spirit indulged too,
So when you come to write ‘It is shameful to be at Verona,
Catullus, when this man, one of the better sort,
Warms his chilly limbs in the bed you left behind,’
That, Manlius, is more than shameful, it’s pathetic.
So you will forgive me if I do not grant you these gifts
Which grief stole from me – since I cannot.
The reason is I do not have a great collection of scrolls
With me here since I live at Rome; that is my home,
That is where I base myself; it is there I pluck the years;
Just one crate of many followed me here.
Since this is how it is I would not want you to think I act
From malice or too disingenuous a mind
So neither of your demands enjoys tangible returns.
I would confer them heartily, if only I had them.
I cannot remain silent, goddesses, about how
Allius helped me, the great service he performed,
For fear time, flying over the ages of forgetfulness,
Will veil with blind night this endeavour of his.
I shall tell you, but I ask that you tell many thousands
In turn and make this manuscript speak in old age.
… [corruption in text] …
And in death may his fame grow more and more,
If only no spider spinning thin web on the ceiling completes
Her work over Allius’ name and renders it obscure.
For you know what trouble duplicitous Venus
Gave me, how she burned me
As I blazed as much as Trinacrian Etna
And the waters of Malis in Oetean Thermopylae,
And my sad eyes melted and melted in continual weeping,
My cheeks drenched with rain showers of sorrow.
Just as on the pinnacle of an air-lying mountain a sparkling
Stream launches itself off moss-covered rock,
And rolls unstoppably from the vertical ravine,
And feeds its way through the middle of a deep crowd,
Sweet respite for a traveller, wearied and perspiring,
When oppressive heat makes the scorched fields gape,
And as a favouring breeze arrives and gently exhales
Upon sailors caught in a black hurricane,
An answer to their prayers to Pollux and Castor,
So was the help of Allius to me.
He flung wide open a door closed before,
And he gave a house to me and my mistress
Where we could exercise our mutual passion,
Where my shining goddess with gentle footsteps
Approached and rested her shining sole on
Worn threshold and faltered with her creaking sandal,
Just as once, blazing in love for her husband,
Laodamia came to the house of Protesilaos,
A home begun in vain; not yet had beast of sacrifice
Appeased the heavenly gods with holy blood.
I hope I never desire anything so much, Ramnusian Virgin,
That I undertake it rashly without the will of the gods.
Laodamia learned how much the thirsty altar longs
For the blood of the devoted through the loss of her man,
Forced as she was to release her grip on her new husband’s
Neck before the coming of one winter and another
Had quenched love’s thirst over long nights
So she could live on despite the rupture of her marriage
Which the Fates knew was not far off
If Protesilaos went as a solider to the walls of Troy.
It was at the time when Helen had been captured and Troy
Began to fire up the foremost men of Greece,
Troy (Unspeakable!) common grave of Asia and Europe,
Troy, bitter ash of men and each last virtue,
Did she also bring wretched death to my brother?
Ah poor brother, stolen from me,
Pitiable brother, ah, stolen from the pleasant light,
With you our whole household has been buried,
With you all our joys have perished together,
Joys which your sweet love encouraged in life.
Laid to rest now so far away, not among familiar graves,
Not near the ashes of relatives,
Terrible Troy, ill-fated Troy, holds your tomb
In foreign soil in a distant land.
Hastening there, the choice youth of all Greece are
Said then to have left their familiar hearths
To stop Paris gasconading on the slut
He stole and dallying languidly in bed subdued.
In such circumstances, beautiful, beautiful Laodamia,
Your husband, sweeter than life and soul, was stolen
From you; swallowing you down from so august a height,
The swell of love had dipped you into a steep abyss
Such as the one near Cyllenean Pheneus the Greeks
Say drains and dries the rich mud of the swamp,
And Hercules of false paternity is said once to have
Cut from the marrow of mountains he destroyed
The time he shot with sure arrows the Stymphalian birds
At the command of an inferior master,
So the door to the heavens might be touched by more gods
And Hebe not long be a virgin.
But your deep love was deeper than that chasm,
And taught the untamed to endure the yoke.
Not so dear to a grandparent wearied by old age
Is the child their only daughter feeds, born to her late in life,
An heir found at last for his grandfather’s riches,
His name put on the testament tablets,
Quelling the impious hurrahs of a relative now mocked,
Putting to flight the vulture from the old man’s head.
Nor has any dove rejoiced so much in her snowy
Mate, though she is said forever to steal kisses
On her pecking beak, more shamelessly by far
Than a particularly lascivious woman.
But you alone excelled their great passions
The moment you were united with your blond husband.
Capable then of yielding nothing or only little to Laodamia,
The light of my life brought herself into my arms,
As resplendent in a yellow tunic Cupid
Fluttered around her, now here, now there.
And although she is not satisfied with Catullus alone,
I shall make the most of the stolen pleasures
Of my modest mistress, few and far between,
So as not to live too much by the prudish precepts of dolts.
Often even Juno, mightiest of the heavenly gods,
Stifled her blazing anger at her husband’s indiscretions
And she learnt of very many pleasures
Stolen by All-Wanting Jupiter.
But it is not fair to liken men to gods
(Stop shouldering the thankless task of an anxious parent!)
Nor did her father lead her to me in marriage
But she came to a house fragrant with Assyrian perfume
And gave me secret and wondrous little gifts in the night,
Taken from the very lap of her own husband.
So it is enough if I am the only one given the day
She marks with a whiter stone.
This gift, performed here in song, all I have managed,
Allius, is sent to you in return for your many favours,
So that this day and other days, and still others,
Should not brush your name with thick rust.
The gods will add to it all the gifts which Themis
Used to bring the dutiful men of old.
May you be happy, both you and your life,
And the house in which my mistress and I played,
And he who first introduced us … [corruption in text]
From that first moment all my joys were born,
And far above all the other joys, the woman dearer to me than myself,
My light, whose living makes life sweet for me.