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And you just wanted to name your children after beautiful things
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strange_selkie requested I translate Catullus 15. I admit I wouldn't have filed it under "hands off my boy-toy," but only because I have always considered "radishes up the ass" an especially memorable image. Otherwise the rest of it is pretty accurate. "Give me back my stuff, expressed beautifully" is at least two poems that I can think of. "Screwed by politicians" introduced me to a whole sexual vocabulary. Anyway, Catullus 15:I commend myself and my lover to you,
Aurelius, I come with a modest request
that if ever you desired in your spirit
something you would want chaste and untouched,
keep my boy safe, modestly, for me—
I don't mean from the crowd, I have no fear
of those who this way and that on the street
pass by pursuing their own affairs,
frankly it's you and your cock I'm afraid of,
a menace to good boys and bad alike.
Employ it wherever you like, however you like,
however often, whenever you get the chance outdoors,
this one is off limits—modestly, I think.
Because if an evil mind and senseless fury
drive you like a blasphemer to such a crime
that you assault me with double-dealings,
oh, you poor bastard, then an evil fate is yours
because with your feet bound and your gate wide open
mullets and radishes are going to run you through.
Radishes up the ass: a possibly apocryphal punishment for adulterers mentioned in Aristophanes' Clouds: when Stupid Logic attempts the argument that adultery is cool because Zeus got away with it all the time, Reasonable Logic retorts (lines 1083–84),
Τί δ᾿ ἢν ῥαφανιδωθῇ πιθόμενός σοι τέφρᾳ τε τιλθῇ,
ἕξει τινὰ γνώμην λέγειν τὸ μὴ εὐρύπρωκτος εἶναι;
But what if he should get radished from listening to you, and plucked with ashes—
will he have any defense that he's not a wide-ass?1
The fish appears to have been Catullus' addition. Juvenal invokes a similar threat about a century later, minus the radishes. I have no idea if there is any evidence for the real-life practice of this punishment rather than ouchy literary allusions.
Bonus: while looking through Craig Williams' Roman Homosexuality (2010) to see if he had anything to say about the radishes (he didn't), I ran into the following graffito from Pompeii (Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum 4.2360):
amat qui scribet, pedicatur qui leget,
qui opscultat prurit, pathicus est qui praeterit.
ursi me comedant et ego verpa(m) qui lego.
"Who writes [this] loves, who reads [it] is fucked,
who listens gets horny, who passes by takes it in the ass.
May bears eat me and me [eat] a dick who reads [this]."
Which is, you know, not especially how I think of the writer-reader contract, but I am disappointed in the grade of graffiti to be found in this city. I have never read anything that meta on a bathroom wall in Boston.
1. Because this is Aristophanes, of course, Stupid Logic ends up proving that a reputation for being anally penetrated is a resounding non-threat, because everybody who is anybody in Athens c. 423 BCE—lawyers, playwrights, orators; the audience—has engaged in same at one time or another, so Reasonable Logic yields the stage. I disagree with most of the rest of the play, but I am totally with Stupid Logic on this one.
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...? Is it all in the sensory interpretation? I'm never going to understand BDSM.
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Well, I imagine the crucial difference is doing it for fun, rather than unwanted punishment. And whether you find it hot rather than awful. And whether you trust the person with the ginger peeler. Context makes a difference.
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Love. And radishes.
Nine
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(I seem to recall hearing about some lover escaping out the window with a radish up his arse, but I don't know where that was, or if the story may have been apocryphal.)
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Possibly because you don't go into men's bathrooms. Those have...at least a tendency to have...things like word bubbles written on the mirror, saying "I eat cocks" or whatever. Not as clever, doesn't work as well as it would in a society that read graffiti aloud; but same rough principle.
(The part of me that is still fourteen would also like to point out the greater range of meanings in the phrase "May bears eat me" that has evolved over the last decades.)
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I never cease to be made happy by Greek verbs.
(I seem to recall hearing about some lover escaping out the window with a radish up his arse, but I don't know where that was, or if the story may have been apocryphal.)
It's not apocryphal! Or, at least, you didn't make it up. I found the reference in Liddell & Scott; it's from Lucian of Samosata's Περὶ τῆς Περεγρίνου Τελευτῆς (On the Death of Peregrinus). From Chapter 9:
τὸ γὰρ τῆς φύσεως τοῦτο πλάσμα καὶ δημιούργημα, ὁ τοῦ Πολυκλείτου κανών, ἐπεὶ εἰς ἄνδρας τελεῖν ἤρξατο, ἐν Ἀρμενίᾳ μοιχεύων ἁλοὺς μάλα πολλὰς πληγὰς ἔλαβεν καὶ τέλος κατὰ τοῦ τέγους ἁλόμενος διέφυγε, ῥαφανῖδι τὴν πυγὴν βεβυσμένος.
"This model and masterpiece of nature, this canon of Polykleitos, when first he came to manhood, was caught in the act of adultery in Armenia and received many blows for it, finally leaping down from the roof and making his escape with a radish stuffed up his rump."
Just to be evenhanded about it, Lucian tells us that Peregrinus next debauched a boy and bought his parents off so as to avoid facing charges. I'm getting the impression Lucian didn't much like Peregrinus Proteus. Unfortunately, his satire appears to be the most detailed source on Peregrinus' life. Anyway, there's your radish.
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I do read Tumblr; I just can't take the chance of getting one.
Radishes I can live with (if I use any other term I'll end up typing like Kenneth Williams)
"Infamy, infamy!"
I misread mullets for the hairstyle, just for one moment.
Okay, that's genuinely frightening.
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Well, I've seen things like the mirror-dialogue and "He who writes upon these walls . . ."; they're endemic to high schools. I'm just a lot more impressed by the Pompeiian graffiti. Pulling in the listeners and the passers-by is new to me.
(The part of me that is still fourteen would also like to point out the greater range of meanings in the phrase "May bears eat me" that has evolved over the last decades.)
(Is true I don't think the Roman graffitist even thought of that.)
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You're very welcome! I'm glad.
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I don't actually like radishes all that much . . .
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Love your translation.
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*shoves derspatchel over and genteelly slobbers*
Sorry, sorry. It's just not every day a person translates sushi sodomy for me.
You are brilliant and you should do all of them and I worry that the radish threat, in addition to being hard to, er, accommodate, might have been a version of what the kids today call figging. AUGH.
Additional bonus levels awarded for graffiti. "Suck it, and exeunt pursued by a bear" is leagues beyond the usual "You can't afford me, I'm more sesterces than you make in a year."
*puffy rainbow unicorn hearts and wreaths of radishes*
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No, "radish" in Greek is ῥάφανος or ῥαφανίς (raphanos or raphanis), which it looks like Latin just calqued into raphanus. English radish is apparently derived from Latin radix, simply meaning "root." It's just a lucky coincidence of sound which I totally took advantage of.
I mean, if we're talking radishes, daikon would be the threat to bring to bear, but I guess the Greeks didn't probably know about daikon.
Actually, Latin descriptions and depictions of radishes accord much more closely with daikon—long-rooted and pale—than with the little round red buttony kind that turn up on salads here, so they probably did. Or at least something similar enough to threaten with.
Love your translation.
Thank you!
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I do what I can.
and I worry that the radish threat, in addition to being hard to, er, accommodate, might have been a version of what the kids today call figging. AUGH.
You know, this came up over on Dreamwidth. I didn't actually know it was a thing. And involves no figs. I guess "gingering" was already taken by quack horse doctors?
Additional bonus levels awarded for graffiti. "Suck it, and exeunt pursued by a bear" is leagues beyond the usual "You can't afford me, I'm more sesterces than you make in a year."
I love Roman graffiti so much. I should translate more.
*puffy rainbow unicorn hearts and wreaths of radishes*
*hugs*
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You're welcome!
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I am glad to help.