forever sing songs of mourning like the nightingale, mourning the death of
Itys. This is a poem that requires a closer look.
Etsi me assiduo confectum cura dolore
seuocat a doctis, Ortale, uirginibus,
nec potis est dulcis Musarum expromere fetus
mens animi, tantis fluctuat ipsa malis
namque mei nuper Lethaeo in gurgite fratris
pallidulum manans alluit unda pedem,
Troia Rhoeteo quem subter litore tellus
ereptum nostris obterit ex oculis.********
numquam ego te, uita frater amabilior,
aspiciam posthac? at certe semper amabo,
semper maesta tua carmina morte canam,
qualia sub densis ramorum concinit umbris
Daulias, absumpti fata gemens Ityli
sed tamen in tantis maeroribus, Ortale, mitto
haec expressa tibi carmina Battiadae ....(Although I am beset with constant sorrow and heartache keeps me from the
learned maidens, Hortalus, and my mind is unable to bring forth the sweet
children of the Muses, so great is the sea of troubles on which it floats for
waters that run in the pool of Lethe have just now bathed my brother’s pallid
little foot, my brother whom the Trojan land, under the shore of Rhoeteum,
treads upon, hidden from my sight.***Shall I never again see you, brother
more loveable than life? But surely I will always love you, always will I sing
songs that are mournful because you are dead, like those Daulius’s daughter
sings, bewailing the fate of the murdered Itylus, under the dense shadows of
branches nevertheless, in the midst of such sorrow, Hortalus, I send you
these versions of poems by Callimachus, scion of Battus.. .. )Like poem 1, poem 65 is a dedication poem. It introduces poem 66,
theComa Berenices, which Catullus, as we are told, has produced at
the request of his friend Hortalus. In this dedication poem, Catullus is
concerned to explain how difficult it has been for him to fulfill Hortalus’s
request. The death of Catullus’s brother has left him paralyzed and has
severed his relationship to the Muses (1–4); nevertheless, he has managed
to translate a poem of Callimachus, theComa Berenices, which follows.
Poem 66 is of course a major statement about Catullus’s literary ideals
and, as a translation, an extraordinary masterpiece.^25 But Catullus pres-
ents it in a rather particular light. First, as we have just seen, it is charac-
terized as a piece that was written to order. Second, although the
translation is certainly Catullus’s work, he refers to it ascarmina Battiadae
(65.16), a poem of Callimachus. It is therefore, we might say, alienated
- Marinone 1997.
176 Books and Texts