Page:The poems of Gaius Valerius Catullus - Francis Warre Cornish.djvu/29



praetor such a beast, one who did not care a straw for his subalterns. 'Well, but at any rate' say they, 'you must have got some bearers for your chair. I am told that is the country where they are bred.' I, to make myself out to the girl as specially fortunate above the rest, say, ' Things did not go so unkindly with me — bad as the province was which fell to my chance — as to prevent my getting eight straight-backed fellows.' Now I had not a single one, here or there, strong enough to fit to his shoulder the broken leg of an old sofa. Says she (just like her shamelessness) ' I beg you, my dear Catullus, lend me those slaves you speak of for a while; I want just now to be taken to the temple of Serapis.' ' Stop,' say I to the girl, ' What I said just now, that I had those slaves — it was a slip — there is a friend of mine, Gaius Cinna; it was he who bought them for his own use; but it is all one to me whether they are his or mine, I use them just as if I had bought them for myself: but you are a most ill-mannered and tiresome creature, who will not let one be off one's guard.'

Furius and Aurelius, who will be Catullus' fellow-travellers, whether he makes his way as far as to the distant Indies, where the shore is beaten by the far-resounding eastern wave, or to the Hyrcanians and soft Arabs, or Sacae and archer Parthians, or the plains which sevenfold Nile discolours, or whether