(An original Latin version can be found at http://web.ltt.it/www-latino/catullo/canti2.htm [see the second poem], and notes on the original can be found at: http://books.google.com/books?id=c-okJobwcnAC&pg=PA418&lpg=PA418&dq=Furius+and+Aurelius+Latin&source=bl&ots=TKLWpksKB8&sig=K3OgA4D9Y6RDWu61jNd70JfB8pw&hl=en&ei=boQVSrmhD4ig8gT84oTHAg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3 [Peter V. Jones and Keith C. Sidwell, Reading Latin].)
Furius and Aurelius, comrades of Catullus,
Whether he goes to farthers Indian realms,*
Where the shore is hammered by the far
Eastern wave thundering,
Or to Hyrcanian realms and to those of the voluptuous Arabs,
Or to Scythian realms, and to those of the Parthian archers,**
Or to deltas where the seven-fold Nile*** spreads
Muddying waters,
Or whether he traverses in high Alpine air,
Surveying those monuments to magnaminous Caesar,
The Gaulish Rhine, the barbarous sea,
And farthest Brittania.
All those places,**** whatever the gods' will*****
Will bring, you who are with me,
Take to my girl
A few not nice words.
May she live and live well with her paramours,******
the three-hundred whom she holds at once embracing,
Loving not one truely, but continuously
Ruining all of them,
And let her not look back for my love as she once did
Which by her fault has been cut down, like that flower
At the edge of the meadow, that has been touched
By the plow passing
(Translated, 1978.)
NOTES
* extremos . . . Indos: lit., "the Indian extremes"; 'realms' has been inserted here for clarification while the preposition 'in' (Latin, 'in') has been omitted from the English since it is not needed with the verb, 'enter.'
** sagitiferros Parthos: lit., "arrow-bearing" [adjective] Parthians; 'Parthian' has been made the adjective and 'archers' the nouns in my translation, since this construction is more natural in English.
*** septegeminus [aequora Nilus}: lit., "seven-fold [waters of the Nile]"; Merrill gives 'seven-mouthed' but Ellis (1889, A Commentary on Catullus, Oxford: The Clarendon Press: 42) prefers the more literal 'seven-fold.'
**** omnia haec: lit., "all these;" 'places' has been supplied by the translator. According to Ellis, haec may also refer to the dangers that might be encountered, implicit in the previous lines.
***** voluntus/caelitum: lit., "little sky's will"; these are both nouns however, in opposition; 'caelitum' has been translated as a genitive here as this works better in English.
****** "May she live . . . ": this stanza been treated as an optative subjunctive; it can be read also as an indirect command, and, thus, 'that' can be substituted for 'May."
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