Poems of Catullus

Poem 16: The pious poet

Pedicabo ego uos et irrumabo,

Aureli pathice et cinaede Furi,

qui me ex uersiculis meis putastis,

quod sunt molliculi, parum pudicum.

nam castum esse decet pium poetam

ipsum, uersiculos nihil necesse est;

qui tum denique habent salem ac leporem,

si sunt molliculi ac parum pudici,

et quod pruriat incitare possunt,

non dico pueris, sed his pilosis

qui duros nequeunt mouere lumbos.

uos, quod milia multa basiorum

legistis, male me marem putatis?

Pedicabo ego uos et irrumabo.

I’ll fuck you in the arse and mouth, pathic

Aurelius and bum-boy Furius,

for judging me over my little lines:

that they’re effeminate and not so proper.

For it’s right for the pious poet himself 5

to be pure, but no need for his little lines.

In the end, they only have salt and wit

if they’re effeminate and not so proper

and can stimulate something of an itch,

I don’t say in boys, but in those hairy 10

fellows who can’t excite insensate loins.

Do you, because you’ve read of my many thousands

of kisses, consider me not much of a man?

I’ll fuck you in the arse and in the mouth!

Notes
The ‘mates of Catullus’ again – daring to criticise Catullus through his poetry. A classic of bilious invective, and a justification of writers saying what they like.

This poem has been generally misinterpreted. Aurelius and Furius have read Catullus’ poem Three hundred thousand kisses (Poem 48) and they think he’s effeminate and acting improperly for wanting to spend his time with Juventius giving him so many kisses. Catullus replies that he can be improper and unmanly as he likes in his poetry, particularly if he’s being witty; that doesn’t mean he’s like that in real life. And to prove his manhood, he’ll ‘fuck’ them both ‘in the arse and mouth’. (In Roman sexual mores, homosexual intercourse was not considered impure or effeminate as long as a man adopted the ‘active’ role – only playing the passive or female role, such as over-zealous kissing, was considered ‘not so proper’, especially for anyone no longer a youth. Hence, the point is that Catullus is threatening to make Aurelius and Furius the ones that look effeminate.) The use of the word 'pious' to describe himself – a word he also uses in Thankless love (Poem 76) – is not as strange as it might seem in this context. Catullus considered himself generally 'high-minded' in his love affairs, and his righteous indignation and threatened revenge at the insult he has received is not something the Roman gods would have necessarily disapproved of as they were no strangers to such behaviour themselves.

‘Those hairy fellows who can’t excite insensate loins’ may be a stock characterisation – ‘hairies’ are all show and actually prefer the female role, a point echoed by Juvenal in Satire II (see also Poem 33 about Vibennius and his son); but it may also be a swipe at love rivals like Egnatius, and perhaps Aurelius and Furius.

The Latin metre is hendecasyllables; the English metre is iambic pentameters.