Catullus

Notice that these guys span 500 years of history.

It's pretty naive to assume that Catullus, who was growing up in the first century BCE, was celebrating Saturnalia the exact same way that Macrobius was in the fifth century.

Even the length of the festival changed throughout its history.

In the time of Catullus, it lasted seven days until December 23rd, but then was shortened to three days before the emperor Caligula extended it to four or five days.

So any summary of Saturnalia is an imperfect reconstruction based on what time period we're talking about or based on what location we're talking about.

Also notice that these dudes are mostly super elite members of society.

Seneca talks about slaves serving their slave owners dinner while they themselves stood by hungry.

So this is what I mean by taking our sources with a healthy dose of skepticism.

nor shall i have a carver to whom the whole carving-school must bow a pupil of the learned typhirus in whose school is cut up with blunt knives a magnificent feast of hares and sows paunches of bulls and antelopes of scythian fowls and tall flamingoes and kushuian gazelles until the whole subura rings with the clatter of elmwood banquet my raw youngster untutored all his days has never learnt how to filch a slice of kid or the wing of guiana fowl unpractised save in the theft of scrapes cups of common bought for a few pence will be handed round by an unpolished lad clad so as to keep out the cold no phrygian or lycian youth none bought from a dealer at a huge price will you find when you want anything as for it in latin they are all dressed alike their hair cut close and uncurled and only combed to-day because of the company one is the son of a hardy shepherd another of the cattleman he sighs for the mother whom he has not seen for so long and thinks wistfully of the little cottage and the kids he knew so well a lad of open countenance and simple modesty such as those ought to be who are clothed in glowing purple no noisy frequenter he of baths presenting his armpits to be cleared of hair and with only an oil-flask to conceal his nudity he will hand you a wine that is bottled on the hills among which he was born and beneath whose tops he played for wine and servant alike have one and the same fatherland you may look perhaps for a troop of spanish maidens to win applause by immodest dance and song sinking down with quivering thighs to the floor such sights as brides behold seated beside their husbands though it were a shame to speak of such things in their presence my humble home has no place for follies such as these the clatter of castanets words too foul for this trumpet that stands naked in a reeking archway with all the arts and language of lust may be left to him who spits wine upon floors of lacedaemonian marble such men be pardoned because of their high station in men of moderate position gaming and adultery are shameful but when those others do the same things they are called gay fellows and fine gentlemen my feast to-day will provide other performances than these what matters it with what wise strains like these are read and now put away cares and cast business to the winds present yourself with a welcome holiday now that you may be idle for the entire day let there be no talk of money and let there be no secret wrath or suspicion in your heart because your wife is wont to go forth at dawn and to come home at night with crumpled hair and flushed face and ears cast off straightway before my threshold all that troubles you all thought of house and slaves with all that slaves break or lose and above all put away all thought of thankless friends meantime the solemn idean rite of megalisian napkin is being held there sits the praetor in his triumphal state the prey of horse flesh and all rome to-day is in the circus a roar strikes upon my ear which tells me that the green has won for had it lost rome would be as sad and dismayed as when the consuls were vanquished in the dust of cannae such sights are for the young whom it befits to shout and make bold wagers with a smart damsel by their side but let my shrivelled skin drink in the vernal sun and escape the toga you may go at once to your bath with no shame on your brow though it wants a whole hour of midday that you could not do for five days continuously since even such a life has weariness it is rarity that gives zest to pleasure satire

How Catullus Escaped Shipwreck dearer to me corvinus is this day when my festal turf is awaiting the victim's vow to the gods than my own birthday to the queen of heaven i offer a snow-white lamb a fleece as white to the goddess armed with the moorish gorgon Hardby is the frolicsome victim destined for Tarpeian Jove, shaking the tight-stretched robe and brandishing his brow, for he is a bold young steer, ripe for temple and for altar, and fit to be sprinkled with wine.

It already shames him to suck his mother's milk, and with his budding horn he assails the oaks.

were my fortune large and as ample as my love i should have been hauling along a bull fatter than his spola slow-footed from his very bulk reared on no neighbouring herbage he but showing in his blood the rich pastures of the clitumnus and marching along to offer his neck to the stroke of the stalwart priest to celebrate the return of my still trembling friend who has lately gone through such terrors and now marvels to find himself safe and sound for besides the perils of the deep he escaped a lightning stroke a mass of dense black clouds shut out the heavens and down came a flash of fire upon the yards every man believed himself smitten by the bolt and soon in his terror bethought him that no shipwreck could be so terrible as a ship on fire all happened in the same way and as frightfully as when a storm arises in a poem when lo a new kind of peril came hear it and give your pity once again though the rest of the tale is all of one piece a fearful lot well known to many and testified by many a votive tablet in our temples who knows not that it is isis who feeds our painters A fate like to these befell our friend Catullus also.

For when the hold was half full of water, and the waves rocked the hull from side to side, so that the white-haired skipper, with all his skill, could bring no succor to the laboring mast, he resolved to compound with the winds like the beaver, who gives up one part of his body that he may keep the rest.

So conscious is he of the drug which he carries in his groin.

With Jens Poldemulier I went through the New Testament in Greek.

And with Julius Lang, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Pindar, Horace, and Ovid, and a little of Aristotle and Theocritus, Catullus, Martial, and Caesar I read for myself.

But I did not find any positive inspiration in my studies until I approached my nineteenth year.

In philosophy I had hitherto mastered only a few books by Soren Kierkegaard; but now I began a conscientious study of Heiberg's philosophical writings, and honestly endeavored to make myself familiar with his speculative logic.

And so in our day does Walter de la Mere dreaming of the shadowless asphodel of a kingdom where neither moth nor mortality doth corrupt, but even poets, much less averse than these two, accepting their fate as sons of earth reveal in their songs a longing for the things that are not.

Catullus, Vivamus mea Lesbia atque amemus.

My Lesbia, let us live and love, was once perhaps a poem of triumphant love, and it may be only our knowledge of the bitter sequel which makes us read it as a pathetic prayer for security in a passion where no security is.

But we do read it so.

For instance, the iron tire of a wheel is called cantus, though Persius uses it as established in the Latin language.

Catullus picked up ploxenum, a box, in the valley of the Po, while the author of the In Polionem, be he Labienus or Cornelius Gallus, imported casamo from Gaul in the sense of follower.

As for mastruca, which is Sardinian for a rough coat, it is introduced by Cicero merely as an object of derision.

Another kind of barbarism proceeds from the speaker's temper.

Older authors used it, but rarely even before vowels, saying aidus or ircus, while its conjunction with consonants was for a long time avoided, as in words such as gracus or triumphus.

Then, for a short time, it broke out into excessive use, witness such spellings as corona, centuria, or praicho, which may still be read in certain inscriptions.

The well-known epigram of Catullus will be remembered in this connection.

The spellings vehementer, comprehendere, and mihi have lasted to our day, and among early writers, especially of tragedy, we actually find mehe for me in the older manuscripts.

and had the honour to be set forth the second time by Cicero, so great a father of the commonwealth, although himself disputes against that opinion in his own writings.

Nor was the satirical sharpness or naked plainness of Lucilius, or Catullus, or Flassus, by any order prohibited.

And for matters of state, the story of Titus Livius, though it extolled that part which Pompey held, was not therefore suppressed by Octavius Caesar of the other faction.

but that Neso was by him banished in his old age for the wanton poems of his youth, was but a mere covert of state over some secret clause.