Page:The poems of Gaius Valerius Catullus - Francis Warre Cornish.djvu/33



You shall have a good dinner at my house, Fabullus, in a few days, please the gods, if you bring with you a good dinner and plenty of it, not forgetting a pretty girl and wine and wit and all kinds of laughter. If, I say, you bring all this, my charming friend, you shall have a good dinner; for your Catullus' purse is full of cobwebs. But on the other hand you shall have from me love's very essence, or what is sweeter or more delicious than love, if sweeter there be; for I will give you some perfume which the Venuses and Loves gave to my lady; and when you smell it, you will pray the gods to make you, Fabullus, nothing but nose.

If I did not love you more than my own eyes, my dearest Calvus, I should hate you, as we all hate Vatinius, because of this gift of yours; for what have I done, or what have I said, that you should bring destruction upon me with all these poets? May the gods send down all curses upon that client of yours who sent you such a set of sinners.. But if, as I suspect, this new and choice present is given you by Sulla the schoolmaster, then I am not vexed, but well and happy, because your labours are not lost. Great gods! what a portentous and accursed book! And this was the book which you sent your Catullus, to kill him off at once on the very day of the Saturnalia, best of days. No, no, you rogue, this shall not end