A Log Cabin Out of Stone: - Dartmouth College

words to make the poem seem ancient would be entirely incorrect. It is not at all a formal
or an academic poem; in fact Catullus threatens to sodomize his friends.
Pedicabo ego vos et irrumabo,
Aureli pathice et cinaede Furi
Qui me ex versiculis meis putastis,
Quod sunt molliculi parum pudicum
Nam castum esse decet pium poetam
Ipsum, versiculos nihil necesse est;
Qui tum denique havent salem ac leporem,
Si sunt molliculi ac parum pudici
Et quod pruriat incitare possunt,
Non dico pueris, sed his pilosis
Qui duros nequeunt movere lumbos
Vos, quod milia multa basiorum
Legistis, male me marem putatis?
Pedicabo ego vos et irrumabo.
This poem is so invectively extreme that it is extremely hard to capture in a translation.
What is the voice of Catullus in this poem? Who is he embodying and what does he
portray?
Again, for comparison purposes let’s look at a more conservative translation.
F.W. Cornish writing for the Loeb classical library offers a translation which is very
conservative. Cornish has given formal lexical equivalents and has focused on rendering
the word-for-word understanding of the poem.
I’ll bugger you and stuff you, you catamite Aurelius and you pervert
Furius, who have supposed me to be immodest, on account of me verses,
because these are rather naughty. For the sacred poet ought to be chaste
himself, though his poems need not be so. Why, they only acquire wit and
spice if they are rather naughty and immodest, and can rouse with their
ticklings, I don’t mean boys, but those hairy old ‘uns unable to stir their
arthritic loins. Because you’ve read of my many thousand kisses, do you
think I’m less virile on that account? Yes, I’ll bugger you and stuff you all
right! 5
5
Catullus, Gajus et.al. Catullus, Tibullus, and Pervigilium Veneris (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1988).
37