Chapter 66

He who scanned all the lights of the great firmament, who ascertained the rising and the setting of the stars, how the flaming splendour of the swift sun was darkened, how the planets disappear at certain seasons, how sweet love with stealth detaining Trivia beneath the Latmian crags draws her away from her airy circuit: he that same Conon saw me, a lock of hair from Berenice’s head, in the celestial light, gleaming brightly, which she outstretching graceful arms promised to all of the gods, when the king, magnified by his recent marriage, had gone to lay waste the Assyrian borders, bearing the sweet traces of nightly contests, in which he had borne away her virginal spoils.

Is Venus abhorred by new brides? And are the parents’ joys turned aside by feigned tears, which they shed copiously within the threshold of the bedchamber? Their groans are untrue, by the gods I swear! This my queen taught me by her many lamentings, when her bridegroom set out for stern warfare. Yet, when deserted, you did not grieve the widowed couch, did you, but the tearful separation from a dear brother? How care consumed your marrow, sad deep within! Such that, your whole bosom being agitated, and your senses being snatched from you, your mind wandered! But in truth I have known you great of heart ever since you were a little maiden. Have you forgotten that noble deed, by which you gained a royal marriage, than which none dared other deeds bolder? Yet what grieving words you spoke when bidding your bridegroom farewell!

Jupiter! how often with sad hand [you wiped] your eyes! What mighty god changed you? Was it that lovers are unwilling to be long absent from their dear one’s body? Then did you promise me to the whole of the gods on your sweet consort’s behalf, not without blood of oxen, if he should be granted safe return. In no long time he added captive Asia to the Egyptian territory. For these reasons I, bestowed amidst the celestial host, by a new gift fulfil your ancient vow. Unwillingly, O queen, did I quit your brow, unwillingly: I swear to you and to your head; if anyone swears lightly, may he bear a suitable penalty: but who may claim himself equal to steel? Even that mountain was swept away, the greatest on earth, over which Thia’s illustrious progeny passed, when the Medes created a new sea, and the barbarian youth sailed its fleet through the middle of Athos. What can locks of hair do, when such things yield to iron? Jupiter! may the whole race of the Chalybes perish, and whoever first began to seek the veins beneath the earth and invent the hardness of iron! Just before severance my sister locks were mourning my fate, when Ethiop Memnon’s brother, the winged steed, beating the air with fluttering wings, appeared before Locrian Arsinoe, and he bearing me up, flies through aethereal shadows and lays me in the chaste bosom of Venus. Zephyritis herself had dispatched him as her servant, a Greek settler on the Canopian shores. For it was the wish of many gods that the golden crown from Ariadne’s temples stay fixed, not alone in heaven’s light, but that we also should gleam, the spoils dedicated from your golden-yellow head; when moist with weeping I entered the temples of the gods, the goddess placed me, a new star, among the ancient ones.

For touching the Virgin’s and the cruel Lion’s gleams, hard by Lycaonian Callisto, I turn westwards, a guide before the slow-moving Bootes who barely sinks into the vast ocean. But although the footsteps of the gods press upon me in the night, and the daytime restores me to the white-haired Tethys, (grant me your grace to speak thus, O Rhamnusian virgin, for I will not hide the truth through any fear, even if the stars revile me with ill words, yet I will unfold the pent-up feelings from truthful breast)

I am not so much rejoiced at these things as I am tortured by being forever parted, parted from my lady’s head, with whom I, in all ointments having not a share, drank many thousands when she was still a virgin. Now do you, whom the gladsome light of the wedding torches has joined, yield not your bodies to your desiring husbands nor throw aside your robes and bare your nipples, before your onyx cup brings me delightful gifts, your onyx, you who seek the dues of chaste marriage-bed. But she who gives herself to foul adultery, ah! may the light-lying dust responselessly drink her vile gifts, for I seek no offerings from folk that do ill. But rather, O brides, may concord always be yours, and constant love ever dwell in your homes.

But when you, O queen, while gazing at the stars, will propitiate the goddess Venus with festal torch lights, let not me, your own, be left lacking of unguent, but rather gladden me with large gifts.

Why do the stars hold me back? would that I become a royal tress, that Orion might gleam next to Aquarius.

Catullus: O dear in thought to the sweet husband, dear in thought to his sire, hail! and may Jove augment his good grace to you, Door! which of old, they say, did serve Balbus benignly, while the old man held his home here;

and which on the contrary, so it is said, did serve grudgingly after the old man was stretched stark, you doing service to the bride. Come, tell us why you are reported to be changed and to have renounced your ancient faithfulness to your lord?

Door: No, (so may I please Caecilius to whom I am now made over!)

it is not my fault, although it is said so to be, nor may anyone impute any crime to me; albeit the fabling tongues of folk make it so, who, whenever anything is found not well done, all clamor at me: Door, yours is the blame!

Catullus: It is not enough for you to say this by words merely, but so to act that everyone may feel it and see it.

Door: In what way can I? No one questions or troubles to know.

Catullus: We are wishful: be not doubtful to tell us.

Door: First then, the virgin (so they called her!) who was handed to us was spurious. Her husband was not the first to touch her, he whose little dagger, hanging more limply than the tender beet, never raised itself to the middle of his tunic: but his father is said to have violated his son’s bed and to have polluted the unhappy house, either because his lewd mind blazed with blind lust, or because his impotent son was sprung from sterile seed, and therefore one greater of nerve than he was needed, who could unloose the virgin’s belt.

Catullus: You tell of an excellent parent marvellous in piety, who himself urinated in the womb of his son!

Door: But Brixia says that she has knowledge of not only this, placed beneath the Cycnean peak, through which the golden-hued Mella flows with its gentle current, Brixia, beloved mother of my Verona.

For she talks of the loves of Postumius and of Cornelius, with whom that one committed foul adultery.

Catullus: Someone might say here: How do know you these things, O door? you who are never allowed absence from your lord’s threshold, nor may hear folk’s gossip, but fixed to this beam are accustomed only to open or to shut the house!

Door: Often have I heard her talking with hushed voice, when alone with her serving girls, about her iniquities, quoting by name those whom we have spoken of, for she did not expect me to be gifted with either tongue or ear.

Moreover she added a certain one whose name I’m unwilling to speak, lest he uplift his red eyebrows. He is a lanky fellow, against whom some time ago was brought a grave law-suit over the spurious child-birth of a lying belly.