Catullus 10

Catullus 10
A bad moment with Varus and his girl
My Varus took me at leisure out of the forum
To see his love:
A chippy little bimbo ( that suddenly my view was her)
Who surely was not unbecoming nor unlovely;
That while we came upon her place, we fell upon
Topics of conversation, in which how
Bithynia was now, to which place they only have,
And because the air was fleeing.
I responded because of her: nothing and not himself
neither governor nor his entourage,
why she referred to anyone’s rich head:
especially how he the governor forced
oral pleasure, and not that his cohort was worth much.
“But certainly however,” they said “because those
Offspring were bestowed to you, obtain
To you your manly bed.” I (that one girl
Made me so happy)
“No,” I say “my spiteful flee was such,
So that, because evil fell upon the province,
They were not able to prepare the eight upstanding people.”
(But I was not hers neither in this nor that
Fact which your shameful cot
In it I set myself that I was able to arrange a marriage bed.)
This that, so that she said it as an unsavory character,
“Pray,” she said “to me, my Catullus, for a little while
This convenient: for I am willing to travel to the temple of Serapis.”
“In the morning,” says the girl,
“as for that which you only claim to have…
I made a mistake: my comrade –
Cinna- Gauis Cinna that is—that ready himself.
Actually whether these or mine, which to me?
Use as much of my good as prepared.
But your Evil Island and troublesome men,
For which no neglecting is permitted!”


1. Catullus claims to have brought 8 litter bearers back from Bithynia. He is caught when the mistress asks to borrow them and he cannot produce them.

2. The girl says that she wants to take the litter bearers to the temple of Serapis. This was an Egyptian god of healing. It would show that she was a prostitute of loose morals because the temple was a place of high standing in such communities.