Catullus 60

Surely a lion on African mountains or a Scylla, barking from the lowest part of her loins, bore you with so hard and vile a mind that you hold in contempt the voice of supplication in the last and final crisis, ah (you of) too wild a heart!

Catullus 51

That man seems to me to be a god, that man, if it is right, surpasses the gods, who sitting opposite (you) again and again sees and hears you sweetly laughing, (a thing) which tears all senses from wretched me: for as soon as I have caught sight of you, Lesbia, there is nothing of a voice left in my mouth, but my tongue grows numb, a thin flame runs down under my limbs, my ears ring with their own sound, my lights are covered with a twin night. Leisure, Catullus, is a bother to you; you rejoice and exult too much in leisure; leisure has ruined both kings and beautiful kingdoms before.

Catullus 50

Yesterday, Licinius, at our leisure we played much on my tablets, a it had been agreed to be frisky: each of us writing little verses was playing at one time in this number, at another time in that, returning reciprocities through joke and wine. And thence I left, inflamed by your charm and wits, Licinius, so that neither did food aid me nor sleep touch my eyes with rest, but untamable with madness I tossed and turned over the whole bed, desiring to see the light so that I might speak with you and at the same time be (with you). But after my limbs, tired with the effort, lay half dead on the little bed, I made this poem for you, pleasant one, from which you might appreciate my pain. Now beware lest you be rash and beware lest you spurn our prayers, we beg, darling, lest Nemesis demand penalties from you; she is a violent goddess: beware lest she harm (you).

Catullus 46

Now spring brings back unchilled warmth, now the madness of the equinoctial sky grows quiet with the pleasant breezes of the Zephyr. May the Phrygian fields be left, Catullus, and the rich land of steamy Nicaea: let us fly to the bright cities of Asia. Now the anticipating mind yearns to wander, now happy feet grow strong with eagerness. O sweet band of companions, goodbye, whom, having set off far from home, varied roads call back variously.

Catullus 45

Septimius, holding Acme, his love(s), in his lap, said “My Acme, unless I love you to destruction, I am prepared to love (you) hereafter continuously for all the years, as much as one who is able to die entirely, let me come alone in Lydia and scorched India in the path of a grey eyed lion.” As he said this, Love sneezed his approval on the left as before on the right. But Acme, lifting up her head lightly and having kissed the intoxicated eyes of the sweet boy with that rosy mouth said thus, “My life, little Septimius, thus let us serve continuously this one master so that a greater and sharper fire burns more sweetly in my soft marrow.” As she said this Love sneezed his approval on the left as before on the right. Now having set out from a good auspice they love (and) are loved with equal spirits. Wretched little Septimius wanted his one Acme more than Syrias and Brittains: faithful Acme makes delights and pleasures in Septimius alone. Who has seen any happier men, who (has seen) a more auspicious Venus?

Catullus 44

Our farm, whether Sabine or Tibertine—for the say that you are Tibertine, for whom it is not in their heart to hurt Catullus; but for whom it is in the heart, at whatever bet they contend that you are Sabine—but whether you are Sabine or more truly Tibertine, I was gladly in your villa close to the city, and I drove out a bad cough, which my belly gave to me not undeserving while I sought (lit. am seeking) a rich dinner. For while I wanted to be Sestius’ dinner companion, I read his speech against the candidate Antius, full of poison and pestilence. Hereupon a chill head-cold and frequent cough shook me right up until I fled into your lap and restored myself with both rest and nettle. Therefore restored, I give you greatest thanks because you did not avenge my error. Nor now do pray if I receive horrible writings of Sestius but that the chill bear a head-cold and cough not to me but to Sestius, who calls me then when I read (his) bad book.

Catullus 43

Greetings girl with neither a short nose nor a pretty foot nor black eyes nor long fingers not a dry mouth nor an entirely elegant tongue. Girlfriend of the debtor Formianus, does the province say that your are pretty? Are you to be compared with our Lesbia? O unwise and graceless age!

Catullus 40

What evil intention drives you, wretched little Ravidus, headlong into my iambs? What gods, not well called, prepares to excite frenzied quarrels for you? Or (do you do this) to arrive in the face of the crowd? What do you want? Do you hope to be well-known by whatever means? You will be, since the time when you wanted to love my love(s) with a long penalty.

Catullus 36

Chronicles of Volusus, poop-y paper, fulfill a vow for my girl. For she vowed sacred Venus and Cupid that if I would be returned to her and I would cease to brandish my fierce iambs, she would give choicest writings of the worst poet to be burned for the slow-footed god in unlucky stumps. And the worst girl perceives that she vows this wittily to the jesting gods. Now, (goddess) begotten from the cerulean sea, you who inhabit sacred Idalium and open Urii and (you) who (inhabit) Ancon and reedy Cnidus, and (you) who (inhabit) Amathus and (you) who (inhabit) Golgi and (you) who (inhabit) the Durrachian inn of the Adriatic, make the vow accepted and rendered , if it is not witless and charmless. But you, meanwhile, come into the fire, full of the country and crudities, Chronicals of Volusus, poop-y paper.

Catullus 35

Papyrus, I would that you tell Caecilius, the tender poet, my comrade, to come to Verona, leaving the walls of Novum Comum and the shore of Larius Lacus: for I want him to hear some thoughts of his friend and mine. Therefore, if he is wise, he will eat up the road, however thousands of times a fair girl calls him back as he goes, and, throwing both hands around his neck, asks him to delay. Who now, if true things are reported to me, loves him to death with wild love: for from which time she read his unfinished mistress of Dindymus, from that time wretched little fires have been eating (lit. eat) her inner marrow. I forgive you, girl wiser than the Sapphic muse: for Caecilius’ Great Mother is charmingly unfinished.

Catullus 31

Darling of almost islands and of islands, Sirmio, whatever each Neptune bears in calm waters and the vast sea, how freely and how happily I see you, myself scarcely believing that I have left Thynia and Bithynian fields and see you in safety. O what is happier than loosed anxieties, when the mind puts down its burden, and, weary from wandering work, we come to our own Lar and we rest in (our) longed-for bed? This is one which is for such labors. Greetings, o lovely Sirmio, and rejoice with your rejoicing master; and you, o lake of Lydian water, laugh whatever there is of laughter at home.

Catullus 30

Alfenus, forgetful and false of my like-minded buddies, does nothing pain you about (lit. of) your sweet friend, unfeeling one? Now do you not hesitate to betray me, now (do you not hesitate) to fail me? Now impious deeds of deceitful men please the sky-dwellers which you neglect and abandon me, wretched in evils. Alas, what may men do, tell me, or in whom might they have faith? Certainly you used to order me to hand over my heart, unfair one, leading me into love, as if everything would be safe for me. Likewise now you draw yourself back and you allow the wind and airy clouds to carry all your words and deeds in vain. If you have forgotten, yet the gods remember, Faith remembers, who will make it so you regret your deed afterward.

Catullus 22

That Suffenus, Varus, whom you know well, is a charming man and witty and urbane, and the same man makes very, very many verses. I think that he has a thousand or ten (thousand) or more written, nor thus, as it is done, recorded on palimpsest: royal pages, new books, new scroll ends, red ties, covers, lines with lead and everything leveled with pumice. When you read these, that fine and urbane one Suffenus seems on the contrary a goat-herder or a ditch-digger, so does he differ and change. Why do we think this is? Who once seemed a wit or if there is anything wittier than this thing, the same man is more witless than a witless rube as soon as he touches poetry, and likewise never is he as happy as when he writes poetry, he so rejoices in himself an he himself wonders at himself. We all are too deceived similarly, and there is no one whom you cannot see as a Suffenus in some matter. His own error is attributed to each, but we do not see (of) the knapsack which is on (our) back.

Horace Ode 1.13

When you praise the rosy neck of Telephus, the waxy arms of Telephus, alas, my boiling liver swells with intractable bile, Lydia. Then neither my mind nor my complexion stays in a fix seat, and a moisture secretly slips onto my cheeks, arguing how deeply I am stewed with soft fires. I burn whether quarrels immoderate with wine foul your white shoulders or the mad boy presses a tale-tell mark with his tooth on your lips. If you would hear me enough you would not hope him evermore harming—barbarically—sweet lips (lit. kisses) which Venus has steeped in the quintessence of her own nectar. Three times lucky and more (are they) whom unbroken embrace holds nor a love torn by evil complaints releases earlier (lit. more swiftly) than the last day.

Horace Ode 1.11

You, do not ask—it is not right to know—what end for me, what for you the gods have given, Leuconoe, nor try Babylonian numerology. How much better to endure whatever will be, whether more winters or the last Jupiter has allotted, which now wears out the Tyrrhenian Sea on the rocks opposite. Be wise, strain the wine, and cut long hope back to our short time. While we speak, envious time will have flown: seize the day, trust as little as possible to the future.

Horace Ode 1.9

You see how Soracte stands white with deep snow and now the laboring trees do not bear their burden and the rivers halted with sharp ice. Melt the cold, heaping logs plentifully over the hearth and more generously draw off the four year old Sabine wine from the jug, Thaliarchus. Leave the rest to the gods, (who) once they calm the winds battling with the roiling water, neither cypresses not ancient ash trees are bothered. Do not ask what will be tomorrow, and put down as gain whatever of days Chance will give, as a boy spurn neither sweet loves nor the dances, while gloomy white hair is gone from green (youth). Now both the field and the plazas and the soft whispers at nightfall at the appointed hour are to be sought, now both the pleasing laugh from farthest corner, betrayer of the hidden girl, and the pledge stolen from arms or finger badly resisting.

Horace Ode 1.5

What slender boy, soaked in liquid scents, presses you in much rose under the pleasant grotto, Pyrrha? For whom do you tie up your yellow hair, simple in its complexities? Alas! how many times will he weep for changed faith and gods and, unaccustomed, wonder at seas rough with black winds, who now uses you, believing (you) golden, who hopes (you will be) always available, always lovable, unknowing the deceitful breeze. Wretches, for whom you shine untried. A sacred wall with a votive tablet marks that I have hung up my soaking garments to the powerful god of the sea.

Horace Ode 1.1

Maecenas, born from ancient kings, o! both my bulwark and sweet glory, there are (those) whom it pleases to have gathered Olympic dust on their chariot and the turning post cleared by the hot wheels, and the noble palm lifts the lords of the lands to the gods; (it pleases) this man, if the crowd of mobile Quirites strives to lift with triple honors, that man if he has stored away in his own granary whatever is turned up from Libyan threshing-floors. You would never move with the terms of Attalus the one rejoicing to split his paternal fields with a hoe to cut the Myrtoan sea as a fearful sailor in a Cyprian boat (lit. log). The merchant fearing the African wind striving with Icarian waves praises leisure and the fields of his own town; soon he refits his shaken ships, not taught to endure poverty. There is one who spurns neither cups of old Massican (wine) nor to subtract part from the work day, having spread his limbs now under the green arbutus, now at the gentle head of a sacred water. Camps please many and the sound of the trumpet mixed with the horn and wars hated by mothers. The hunter remains under a cold Jove forgetful of his tender wife if a deer has been seen by his faithful pups or a Marsian boar bursts the close-twisted nets. Prizes of the ivy of the learned brows mix me with the gods above, the chill grove and the light choruses of Nymphs with Satyrs separate me from the people, if neither Euterpe withholds the flutes nor Polyhymnia refuses to offer the Lesbian lyre. But if you count me among the lyric prophets, I shall strike the stars with my lofty head.