Page:The poems of Gaius Valerius Catullus - Francis Warre Cornish.djvu/53



Your Catullus is ill, Cornificius, ill and in distress, and that more and more daily and hourly. And you, the lightest and easiest task, with what cheering word have you consoled him? I am getting angry with you — what, treat my love so? Give me only some little word of comfort, something as moving as the tears of Simonides!

Egnatius, because he has white teeth, is everlastingly smiling. If people come to the prisoner's bench, when the counsel for the defence is making everyone cry, he smiles: if they are wailing at the funeral of an affectionate son, when the bereaved mother is weeping for her only boy, he smiles: whatever it is, wherever he is, whatever he is doing, he smiles: it is a malady he has, neither an elegant one as I think, nor in good taste. So I must give you a bit of advice, my good Egnatius. If you were a Roman or a Sabine or a Tiburtine or a thrifty Umbrian or a plump Etruscan, or a black and tusky Lanuvian, or a Transpadane (to touch on my own people too), or anybody else who washes his teeth with clean water, still I should not like you to be smiling everlastingly; for there is nothing more silly than a silly laugh.....

What infatuation, my poor Ravidus, drives you headlong in. the way of my iambics? What god invoked by you amiss is going to stir up a senseless