Happy Catullus Tuesday everybody!

Ah yes, you see, in a holiday revered on almost the same level as Talk Like a Pirate Day, today is Catullus Tuesday.

Unfortunately for you, it's a holiday only celebrated by me. Today in my Roman Civilization class, we talked about Catullus. From there, I went straight to my Latin class where we translated four Catullus poems. So unless you were following me around, which I would've noticed with my super deductive spy powers, you weren't in my classes with me (I wish you were though-you smell nice).
The reason why this is worth celebrating is because Catullus, to put it simply, was the greatest writer that ever walked the face of the Earth. And yes, that's including Jose Canseco's memoir!
I got into Catullus last year when we read him in class and Latin Teacher Who I Still Pine For (Sad But True) mentioned that Catullus was his favorite poet. This made me sit up and pay attention. I ended up totally falling in love with Catullus, which is weird because I hate all other poetry. But poetry that uses metaphors to talk about the poet's girlfriend masturbating? Yeah, I think I can stomach that.

A little history for the non Classics majors/nerds in the house (or, as we call you, "normies"):
Catullus was born in 84 BCE. He was part of a group of poets called The New Poets who said "futuo te!" to the old school and started writing personal poetry about their feelings and such. Catullus, like most poets, was passionate to the nth degree. So when he met this girl Clodia, he gave her his heart within a millisecond. The world was full of jellybeans and stickers:

"for the instant I glance on you, Lesbia, nothing is left to me [of voice], but my tongue is numbed, a keen-edged flame spreads through my limbs, with sound self-caused my twin ears sing, and my eyes are enwrapped with night."

"Let us live, my Lesbia, and let us love, and count all the rumors of stearn old men at a penny's fee. Suns can set and rise again: we when once our brief light has set must sleep through a perpetual night. Give me a thousand kisses, and then a hundred, then another thousand, then a second hundred, then another thousand without resting, then a hundred. Then, when we have made many thousands, we will confuse the count lest we know the numbering, so that no one can cast an evil eye on us through knowing the number of our kisses."

"You ask, how many kisses of yours, Lesbia, may be enough and to spare for me. As the countless Libyan sands which strew asafoetida-bearing Cyrene between the oracle of sweltering Jove and the sacred tomb of ancient Battus, or as the many stars, when night is silent, look upon the furtive loves of mortals, to kiss you with kisses of so great a number is enough and to spare for passion-driven Catullus: so many that prying eyes may not avail to number, nor ill tongues to bewitch."

"Farewell, girl! now Catullus hardens himself, he will not seek you, will not ask you since you are unwilling. But you will be pained, when you are not asked. Faithless, go your way! what manner of life remains to you? who now will visit you? who find you beautiful? whom will you love now? whose will you be called? whom will you kiss? whose lips will you bite? But you, Catullus, remain firm in your hardness."

"May she live and flourish with her fornicators, and may she hold three hundred at once in her embrace, loving not one in truth, but bursting again and again the guts of all: nor may she look back upon my love as before, which by her lapse has fallen, just as a flower on the meadow's edge, after the touch of the passing plough."

"0 Caelius, our Lesbia, that Lesbia, the self-same Lesbia whom Catullus loved more than himself and all his own, now at the cross-roads and in the alleyways husks off the high-spirited descendants of Remus." (this is a way of saying she's a whore)

"Once you used to say you knew only Catullus, Lesbia, that you would not hold Jove before me. I loved you then, not only as a fellow his mistress, but as a father loves his own sons and sons-in-law. Now I do know you: so if I burn at greater cost, you are nevertheless to me far viler and of lighter thought. How can this be? you ask. Because such wrongs drive a lover to love the more, but less to respect."

"Lesbia in her husband's presence says the utmost ill about me: this gives the fool the greatest pleasure. Mule, you perceive nothing! If she had forgotten about us and were silent, she would be all right: now becasuse she snarls and scolds, not only does she remember, but, what is far more to the point, she is angry. That is, she is enflamed and is speaking."

"No woman can say truly that she has been loved as much as you, Lesbia, have been loved by me: no trust in any pact has ever been found so great as was that on my part in the love of you."

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