Catullus Poems

85: ODI et amo. Quare id faciam, fortasse requiris. Nescio sed fieri sentio et excrucior

I hate and I love, why do I do it? Perhaps you ask. I dont know, but I feel it happen, and I am being tortured.

75: Huc est estmens deducta tua mea, Lesbia, culpa atque ita se officio perdidit ipsa suo, ut iam nec bene velle queat tibi, si optima fias, nec desistere amare, omnia si facias.

From here, my mind has been led down by your fault Lesbia, it destroyed itself in this way by it’s own sense of responsibility, with the result that it is now not able to wish well for you, even if you become the best woman, and cease to love, if you do all the bad things.

72: Nunc te cognovi: quare etsi impensius uror, multo mi tamen es vilior et levior.

Now I have learned about you: for which reason even if I am burned more greatly, nevertheless you are to me cheaper and more trivial by alot.

72: Dicebas quondam solum te nosse Catullum, Lesbia, nec prae me velle tenere Iovem.

you were saying that you had known only Catullus, Lesbia, and were not able to hold jupiter before me.

8: Fulsere quondam candidi tibi soles, cum ventitabas quo puella ducebat amata nobis quantum amabitur nulla.

The sun’s once shone bright for you. When the girl was leading, you were often coming there having been loved by us as much as no girl will be loved.

70: Nulli se dicit mulier mea nubere malle quam mihi, … sed mulier cupido quod dicit amanti, in vento et rapida scribere oportet aqua.

My woman says that she prefers to marry no-one than to me… but what a woman says to a desirous lover, it is fitting to write in the wind and the water.

87: Nulla Fides ullo fuit umquam foedere tanta,

No trust has ever been so great in any treaty,