Page:The poems of Gaius Valerius Catullus - Francis Warre Cornish.djvu/71



Rufa of Bononia the wife of Menenius, she

whom you have often seen in the graveyards grabbing the baked meats from the very pyre, when as she ran after the loaf rolling down out of the fire she was thumped by the half-shaved slave of the under- taker.

Was it a lioness from Libyan mountains or a Scylla barking from her womb below that bare you, you that are so hard-hearted and monstrous as to hold in contempt your suppliant's voice in his last need, ah, too cruel-hearted one?

Haunter of the Heliconian mount, Urania's son, thou who bearest away the tender maid to her bridegroom, O Hymenaeus Hymen, O Hymen Hymenaeus!

Bind thy brows' with the flowers of sweet marjoram, put on the marriage veil, hither, hither merrily come, bearing on thy foot the yellow shoe, I

and wakened on this joyful day, singing with resonant voice the nuptial songs, strike the ground with thy feet, shake with thy hand the pine torch. 15