Page:The poems of Gaius Valerius Catullus - Francis Warre Cornish.djvu/41



You who arc the flower of the Juventii, not only of those we know, but of all who either have been or shall be hereafter in other years, — I had rather you had given the riches of Midas to that fellow who has neither servant nor money-box, than so allow your- self to be liked by him. ' What? is he not a gentleman?' you will say. O yes; but this gentleman has neither a servant nor a money-box. You may put this aside and make as little of it as you like: still, he has neither a servant nor a money-box. '°

Effeminate Thallus, softer than rabbit's fur or down of goose or lap of ear, or dusty cobweb; and also, Thallus, more violent than a wild storm when f f Send me back my cloak which you

have pounced upon, and my Saetaban napkin and. Bithynian tablets, you silly fellow, which you keep by you openly, as if they were heirlooms. Unglue and let drop these at once from your claws, lest your soft downy flanks and pretty tender hands should have ugly figures branded and scrawled on them by the whip, and lest you should toss about as you are little used to do, like a tiny boat caught in the vast sea, when the wind is raging wildly.

Furius, my little farm stands exposed not to the blasts of Auster nor Favonius nor fierce Boreas or Apheliotes, but to a call of fifteen thousand two hundred sesterces. A wind that brings horror and pestilence!

c. 4