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O Colonia, you who long to play on a
long bridge and have it readied to dance on, but fear the shaky legs of the
little bridge standing on second-hand sticks, lest it tumble flat in the deep
swamp; let the bridge be as good as you desire, on which even the Salian dances
may be undertaken: for which give to me, Colonia, the gift of greatest laughter. I want a certain
townsman of mine to go head over heels from your bridge into the mud, in truth
where the brimming, stinking swamp is darkest and an especially deep-sunk mire.
He's the biggest ass of a man, lacking the sense of a two-year-old dozing in his
father's cradling arm. Although a girl is wedded to him flushed with
springtide's bloom (and a girl more dainty than a tender kid needs to be watched
with keener diligence than the lush-black grape-bunch), he leaves her to play as
she wants, cares not a single hair, nor troubles himself with marital office,
but lies like an alder tree felled by a Ligurian hatchet in a ditch, as aware of
everything as though no woman were anywhere. Such is my thick-headed friend! he
sees not, he hears not. He also knows not who he is himself, or whether he is or
is not. Now I want to chuck him head first from your bridge, if it is possible
to suddenly rouse this sleepy dullard and to leave behind in the heavy mud his
sluggish spirit, as does a mule its iron shoe in the sticky mire.
Catullus. The Carmina of Gaius Valerius Catullus. Leonard C. Smithers. London. Smithers. 1894.
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