Aetia (“Causes”) of Callimachus (prologue: aesthetics)
Often the Telchines grumble at my song—
Fools who are not friends of the Muse! —
because I haven’t written a single continuous song
in thousands of verses on kings or
[...] heroes, but I [tell my stories] little by little just like a child,
though the decades of my years are not few . . .
. . . judge poetic skill by art, not by the Persian chain.
Don’t search for a huge noisy song to be born from me;
it is not for me to do the thundering, that’s Zeus’ job!
In fact the very first time I put the writing tablet
on my knees, Lykian Apollo said to me:
"[...] poet, nurture your sacrificial victim to be as fat as possible,
but your Muse, O good fellow, to be slender!
One more thing, I enjoin you this: the paths that wagons don’t drive on,
tread on those, don’t drive your chariot in the same tracks as the others,
don’t take the broad street, take instead unworn paths
even though you drive on a narrower road."
I am making a gift of this smart little book [lepidum novum libellum]
just now polished to a shine with dry pumice.
To whom? To you, Cornelius, because you [Cornelius Nepos, historian & biographer]
always thought my foolish fluff was worth something,
even when you dared, first of the Italians,
to unravel every age of the world
in three papyrus rolls—Gods! Elegant, elaborate! What hard work.
So, take this book for yourself, whatever it's worth,
and for what it is. And may it, O Virgin Muse, Patroness,
last forever—or more than one lifetime.
Poem 51 (READER: Jordan)
That man seems to me to be a match for a god
—even, if it’s not sacrilege, to surpass gods—
that man who sits by you, stealing glances at you
again and again,
and hanging on your sweet laugh. It tears me apart,
ripping at all my senses. You see, Lesbia, when you
come into view, nothing exists for me but you
****
My tongue’s numb. An exquisite tension sinks
burning into my limbs. My ears ring,
the noise building. My shining eyes grow dim,
covered by dark night.
Idle time . . . Catullus, it’s dangerous for you. [otium]
Idle time . . . you revel in it, you take too much of it.
Idle time . . . in the past it has brought to ruin
kings and prosperous cities both.
Julius Caesar
Poem 11 (empire-trotting speaker's private/personal request to Furius & Aurelius; "companions of Catullus / if he travels to . . . announce these few words to my sweetheart")
Let her live and be happy with her gigilos,
wrapped around three hundred of them at the same time,
loving none truly, but wearing out their balls
over and over and over again.
And let her not look to return to my love, as before,
a love that has been cut down by her failings
just as a flower, in bloom on the edge of a field,
is grazed and falls as the plow passes by.
