Poems of Catullus

Poem 17: He's a most absurd man

O Colonia, quae cupis ponte ludere longo,

et salire paratum habes, sed uereris inepta

crura ponticuli axulis stantis in rediuiuis,

ne supinus eat cauaque in palude recumbat:

sic tibi bonus ex tua pons libidine fiat,

in quo uel Salisubsali sacra suscipiantur,

munus hoc mihi maximi da, Colonia, risus.

quendam municipem meum de tuo uolo ponte

ire praecipitem in lutum per caputque pedesque,

uerum totius ut lacus putidaeque paludis

liuidissima maximeque est profunda uorago.

insulsissimus est homo, nec sapit pueri instar

bimuli tremula patris dormientis in ulna.

cui cum sit uiridissimo nupta flore puella

et puella tenellulo delicatior haedo,

adseruanda nigerrimis diligentius uuis,

ludere hanc sinit ut lubet, nec pili facit uni,

nec se subleuat ex sua parte, sed uelut alnus

in fossa Liguri iacet suppernata securi,

tantundem omnia sentiens quam si nulla sit usquam;

talis iste meus stupor nil uidet, nihil audit,

ipse qui sit, utrum sit an non sit, id quoque nescit.

nunc eum uolo de tuo ponte mittere pronum,

si pote stolidum repente excitare ueternum,

et supinum animum in graui derelinquere caeno,

ferream ut soleam tenaci in uoragine mula.

Colony, you who love to fete on your long bridge

and are ready to dance, but fear the badly-fitting legs

of the silly thing standing on its second-hand planks

lest it falls back and sinks into the vacuous marsh –

may your bridge become a good one, all you desire 5

(where even the rites of Salisubsalus are accepted),

but grant me, Colony, this gift of a topping joke.

I want a certain fellow-townsman of mine to topple

down, head over heels, from your bridge into the mud,

but only where, in the whole of the lake’s putrid morass, 10

the depression’s at its murkiest and most profound.

He’s a most absurd man, not even as wise as a child

of two lying asleep in its father’s rocking arms,

for though he’s married to a girl, the freshest flower,

a girl more skittish than the tenderest little goat, 15

to be guarded more diligently than the blackest grapes,

he allows her to romp as she likes, doesn’t care one hair;

nor does he rise up on his own part, but lies like

an alder in a ditch maimed by a Ligurian axe,

feeling all just as if she didn’t exist at all! 20

Such that dullard of mine: sees nothing, hears nothing;

who he is, if he exists or not, he doesn’t know.

Now that’s who I want to throw headlong from your bridge,

to see if it can suddenly rouse his stolid sloth

and leave his supine mind behind in the cloying mud, 25

just as a mule her iron shoe in a clinging bog.

Notes
The ‘Colony’ is probably Catullus’ own Verona, and its rickety bridge, for this little prank. The ‘rites of Salisubsalus’ were probably rites performed in a procession by the dancing priests of the god Mars. Hence Salisubsalus is a synonym for Mars. The language in this poem is striking (mud-rich, so to speak).

The rare comic seven-and-a-half foot metre used by Catullus here is called priapean; the English metre is hexameters.