Catullus, “Carmen XXXIX”
 

Warning: Catullus is best known for his emotional poems to Lesbia. He also wrote some of the filthiest poems in the Latin canon, usually directed at his personal and political enemies. This one is pretty mild, but is a bit vulgar.


Egnatius, whose teeth are snowy white and gleaming,
grins wherever he goes. At the prisoner in court,
when the speaker from the bench provokes our weeping,
he grins and spoils the lawyer’s smooth rapport.
If a grieving mother, sobbing at the pyre
of her dutiful only son pours out her grief,
he grins. Whatever the time and place require,
he grins. It almost seems beyond belief.
He has this illness, neither polite, I gather,
nor elegant. Egnatius, be on guard!
If you were a suave Sabine or from Tibur,
spare Umbrian or Tuscan stuffed with lard,
Lanuvian—a dark-skinned, toothy creature—
or from Cisalpine Gaul, home of my tribe,
or whoever you choose that clean their teeth with water,
nevertheless I never would prescribe
grinning, for nothing’s ruder than rude laughter.
Now you’re a Spaniard: in the Spanish land
when people take a leak in early morning,
they save the urine as their customs demand,
then scrub their teeth and gums with it. I’m warning
you, the more polished that smile of yours may be
the more it says that you’ve been drinking pee.

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Edits:
L1: Egnatius, whose teeth are snowy white and gleaming > Egnatius, whose teeth are snowy white and gleaming,
L7: he grins. whatever the time or place require, > he grins. Whatever the time and place require,
L9: He has this illness, not polite, I gather, > He has this illness, neither polite, I gather,
L22: you, the more that smile of yours shows polish, > you, the more polished that shiny smile of yours is, > you, the more polished that smile of yours may be,
L23: the more you tell that you’ve drunk your own piss. > the more it says that you’ve been drinking piss.> the more it says that you’ve been drinking pee.

—————————-
Original:

Egnatius, quod candidos habet dentes,
renidet usque quaque, si ad rei ventum est
subsellium, cum orator excitat fletum,
renidet ille. si ad pii rogum fili
lugetur, orba cum flet unicum mater,
renidet ille, quidquid est, ubicumque est,
quodcumque agit, renidet. hunc habet morbum
neque elegantem, ut arbitror, neque urbanum.
quare monendum est te mihi, bone Egnati.
si urbanus esses aut Sabinus aut Tiburs
aut parcus Umber aut obesus Etruscus
aut Lanuvinus ater atque dentatus
aut Transpadanus, ut meos quoque attingam,
aut qui libet qui puriter lavit dentes,
tamen renidere usque quaque te nollem;
nam risu inepto res ineptior nulla est.
nunc Celtiber es: Celtiberia in terra,
quod quisque minxit, hoc sibi solet mane
dentem atque russam defricare gingivam
ut quo iste vester expolitior dens est,
hoc te amplius bibisse praedicet loti.

Source: Pegasus Project, Tufts U.

————————
Crib:

Egnatius, who has white/gleaming teeth
grins continually everywhere. If the defendant has come to court,
on the bench, when a speaker provokes weeping,
he grins. If at the funeral pyre of a dutiful son
being mourned, when the grieving mother weeps for her only son,
he grins. Whatever it is, wherever he is,
whatever happens, he grins. He has a sickness
neither refined, as I judge, nor polite.
Therefore you must be warned by me, good Egnatius.
Whether you were a city-dweller or a Sabine or from Tibur,
or a stingy/spare Umbrian or a fat Etruscan,
or a dark-skinned, toothy Lanuvian
or from Cisalpine Gaul, as I will touch on my own people,
or whoever you choose who wash their teeth hygienically,
nevertheless I do not wish you to grin continually everywhere;
for nothing is more unrefined than unrefined laughter.
Now you are a Celtiberian, and in the Celtiberian land,
The custom is that someone who urinated in the morning
scrubs his tooth and red gums with it
so that the more polished that tooth of yours is
the more it announces that you have drunk of urine.

Hi, Glenn. I haven’t read a lot of Catullus, but I’ve always found his passion, directness and even vulgarity refreshing. Despite my qualms about imposing rhyme on the ancients, I really like what you’ve done here.

I was trying to figure out why the translation is two lines longer than the original, and it wasn’t easy to locate the filler in L4 and L8, so I guess that’s a good sign.

L1 needs a comma at the end.

the lawyer’s smooth rapport — I first thought you meant “report,” but I guess you mean “rapport [with his audience].”

Whatever the time or place require, — Should be “time and place” for the plural verb.

nor elegant — I won’t claim that “nor” is wrong, but “or” would be more normal.

a suave Sabine — This is apparently a compression of “a city-dweller or a Sabine.” Were the Sabines known for their sophistication?

Now you’re a Spaniard — For some reason, I kept wanting to stress “Now,” which is misleading. “But” would prevent me from doing that, but you may not welcome the opposition. Would a comma after “Now” help? Or is this just another of my typically perverse misreadings? Not sure.

the more you tell that you’ve drunk your own piss. — “Tell” sounds off without an object, and my grammar-checker suggests “say,” but I really want to take the opportunity to regularize the meter of this final line. How about: “The more it tells us you’ve been drinking piss.”

That’s all for now. I’m into it!

Hi, Carl—

Thanks for the suggestions. I used almost all of them. I have become dependent upon your eagle eye to help me clean up my grammatical goofs.

In “Carmen 44,” Catullus writes about his farm, which is located on the border between the Sabine and Tiburtine areas. He insists that it should be called Tiburtine, which shows that this area was considered more sophisticated than the Sabine. More than a hundred years later, Tibur (modern Tivoli) became the site of Emperor Hadrian’s villa, and enjoyed great prestige. I’m not sure, but I don’t think that Catullus is necessarily leaning into conventional stereotypes. Umbrians, as far as I know, were not traditionally scrawny or stingy; Etruscans were not known for being fat.

Thanks again for your diligent and encouraging post, Carl.
Glenn

If he’s not playing on ethnic stereotypes, I don’t understand what he’s doing. Why specify that only fat Etruscans shouldn’t grin?

Annalisa Motta writes: “Moralising criticisms were made by Greek and Latin authors about the luxury that marked Etruscan banquets, which featured precious vessels and embroidered textiles, a great number of servants. Someone tells that they banquet twice in a day! (The Greek and Roman lunch was very light and fast). The Romans went so far as to refer to the Etruscans as “slaves of their bellies” (gastriduloi), and the image of the obese Etruscan coined by Catullus became quite popular.”

But it didn’t start with Catullus. M. I. Finley, perhaps reviewing a book on Etruscan art (I can’t access the site), speaks of “reclining, obviously well-fed, fat Etruscan gentlemen in stone on the lids of cinerary urns and sarcophagi.”

As for the Umbrians, Basil Gildersleeve has this in a footnote to his Satires of A. Persius Flaccus:

“In MART., 7, 53, an Umbrian sends by eight huge Syrian slaves a miscellaneous lot of presents, value 30 nummi—a proceeding due as much to stupidity as to stinginess (parcus Umber, CAT., 39, 11).”

Facebook is blocked for me, but this may shed some light: https://m.facebook.com/museoarcheolo...6755997779114/

Anyway, this is all just a way of putting pressure on “suave Sabine,” which may not be what Catullus intended, especially if the Sabines, as you say, were less sophisticated than their neighbors. How about “If you were urbane, a Sabine or from Tibur …” And a little more research may reveal that Umbrians were the Scots of the Roman world.

Now I’ll treat you to one of my ridiculous misreadings. Knowing Catullus as bawdy and quick to sling insults, I thought Egnatius’s unseemly illness was venereal disease! I have a knack for such readings, but I was also misled by “I gather,” meaning that Catullus was inferring the nature of the illness, rather than judging it to be impolite, as in the original.

Me again, Glenn. If you do more Catullus, you might try jazzing up the language. It seems to me that his cocky, in-your-face attitude translates well into today’s colloquial, slangy language. Here’s a translation that attempts to do that: https://blackbird-archive.vcu.edu/v1...xix_page.shtml. I’m not citing it as a model translation—far from it—but I do like:

I’d still prefer you’d cover up those pearly whites.
Because there’s nothing dumber than a dumb-ass grin.

To me, that sounds like Catullus, though it’s for you, not me, to say what he sounds like in the original.

Hi, Carl—

Thanks for the interesting research on Catullus’ use of stereotypes. I did not know that these were well-established caricatures. I think you’re right about choosing more low-class diction. Catullus loved mixing it up with people who irritated him.
Glenn

Glenn, I've translated that same Catullus poem, though many years ago. I recall that Romans use "city-dweller" to imply "Roman." He is therefore starting in Rome itself and moving outward with each group, implying that no matter how far they are from Rome, they still don't grin at inappropriate moments. The punchline, then, is that Spaniards, the furthest away, not only grin inappropriately, but also have unsavory habits of cleaning their teeth. The "illness" is a mental one, as we might say "your behavior is sick." Calling it "inelegant" is an understatement, but also related to the context (not mentioned in the poem) that Egnatius is one of the rivals of Catullus for the extremely elegant Lesbia's affections.

I don't like translations that insert things that are not in the original in order to create a rhyme, as you do with "court/rapport." When I translated it, I also used rhyme, so I am not objecting to that. I rhymed every other line, to give me more wiggle room so that I would not have to add details that aren't there. It's a matter of taste, but I particularly value accuracy in a translation. I like the polish that rhyme adds, since English readers usually can't appreciate the classical meters of the original, and those meters are a bad fit with English prosody traditions.

Susan

Thanks for the fascinating background, Susan. The research that you and Carl provide make reading the poem a much richer experience. I wondered when the poem says “nunc Celtiber es” in line 17 whether he meant “Now since you are a Spaniard,” or “Now you are [acting like] a Spaniard.” There were a number of highly civilized and refined Romans who came from Hispania, although many lived 100-150 years after Catullus. Martial comes to mind as well as Trajan, Hadrian, and Marcus Aurelius. I wonder if Egnatius was actually of Hispanic origin and if inhabitants of Hispania (many of whom might be suspect because of their Carthaginian ancestry) were considered unrefined in Catullus’ day. Catullus himself came from Verona in Cisalpine Gaul, so he might want to be careful about calling his rival’s lack of urbanitas into question.

I put some thought into choosing a meter and rhyme scheme. The Latin original is in choliambic or “limping iambic,” one of Catullus’ favorites, so-called because the last foot of (in this case) hexameter substitutes a trochee for the iamb and seems to trip at the end of the line. I decided on elegiac quatrains in IP, but this is a rather neutral background. I thought I could add some enjambments to roughen it up a bit, but couldn’t really find a way to make that happen except in lines 5-6 and lines 20-21.

Thanks again for helping me to understand the poem better, Susan.
Glenn

Glenn, I'm glad you found it helpful. There were many different peoples inhabiting Hispania, and Egnatius is identified as a Celtiber (an Iberian Celt, which is also the ancestry that Martial claims). I think Catullus is implying that Egnatius is not merely from a distant province, but also from a barbaric tribe. Educated provincials (like Martial) gravitated to the capital, but I think Catullus is trying to differentiate his own status (from a civilized nearby province) from that of one of those people from the outer fringes of civilization. Egnatius is not a Roman who just happened to own an estate in Hispania.

Susan

Hi, Glenn!

I enjoyed this, but I have difficulty making the final couplet's "POL-ish" rhyme with "PISS."

If you were to end the penultimate line on "is" (as in the crib) it would make for a much more satisfying punchline.

Unlike Susan, I don't mind the addition of "court," which I think provides helpful context for the comment about prisoners.