Source: [x]
Click HERE for more facts!
The text, if anyone was curious:
“I will sodomize you and face-fuck you,
bottom Aurelius and catamite Furius,
you who think, because my poems
are sensitive, that I have no shame.
For it’s proper for a devoted poet to be moral
himself, [but] in no way is it necessary for his poems.
In point of fact, these have wit and charm,
if they are sensitive and a little shameless,
and can arouse an itch,
and I don’t mean in boys, but in those hairy old men
who can’t get it up.
Because you’ve read my countless kisses,
you think less of me as a man?
I will sodomize you and face-fuck you.”
-Catullus (87BCE-54BCE)
In the original Latin:
“Paedicabo 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 habent 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?
Paedicabo ego vos et irrumabo.”
Me after the first line
I’d read this poem before (my Latin instructor had to supply us with photocopies of it because it was left out of our text that was supposed to be the complete Catullus) and never quite realized until this moment, reading this translation…
This is Catullus firing back at antis. This is Catullus responding to accusations that because his poems are erotic and obscene, he himself must be a wicked person. That he should only write morally correct poetry. And he was having none of it.
For it’s proper for a devoted poet to be moral
Himself, [but] in no way is it necessary for his poems
One of the reasons it’s so infamous is Catullus was part of the standard Latin education in Europe, so all those monk boys would one day find out why that poem in particular was left out
^I suspect that’s why it gets labeled so extraordinarily explicit, because this is not even close to extraordinary in terms of ancient and medieval dirty poetry
