Monday 26 October 2009

Roman Poetry.

Gotta say I've never really had much to do with the Romans outside of Gladiator. Always thought their gear looked cool and shit but just today I came across some Roman poetry.

It seems they found humour in obscenities. My BROTHERS. And got joy from giving eachother shit.

The following was written by Gaius Valerius Catullus (ca. 84 BC – ca. 54 BC) and was considered by scholars to be too obscene to translate right up to last century.

Ironic, really.

Check this out:

In Latin:

Pedicabo ego vos et irrumabo,
Aureli pathice et cinaede Furi,
qui me ex versiculis meis putastis,
quod sunt molliculi, parum pudicum.
Nam castum esse decet pium poetam
ipsum, versiculos nihil necesse est;
qui tum denique habent salem ac leporem,
si sunt molliculi ac parum pudici,
et quod pruriat incitare possunt,
non dico pueris, sed his pilosis,
qui duros nequeunt movere lumbos.
Vos, quod milia multa basiorum
legistis, male me marem putatis?
Pedicabo ego vos et irrumabo.


Translation:

I’m gonna fuck you guys up the ass and shove my cock down your throats,
yes, you, Aurelius–you fucking cocksucker–and you too, Furius, you faggot!
Just because my verses are tender doesn’t mean
that I’ve gone all soft. Sure, a poet should focus
on writing poetry and not on sex; but does that
mean they can’t write about sex? If a poem is
in good taste, well-written and erotic,
it can give massive boners to hairy old men,
not just to horny teenagers. You think I’m a sissy
just because I write about thousands of kisses?
I’m gonna fuck you guys up the ass and shove my cock down your throats!


Sounds like a literal translation to the subtext of convo's at the Instrument.

12 comments:

  1. Translation of translation: How dare you call me a poof for writing soft shite! I'll pound you in the arse. Um, I mean... yeah. What?

    Aristophanes, ancient Greek playwright, taught me that comedy has ALWAYS been about knob and plop jokes. His stuff was and he was writing in the hundreds BC.

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  2. Catullus is fantastic! His political satire is just too funny.

    Ovid's poetry is quite risque too

    Lermontov

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  3. Gaius Valerius Catullus rocks! Nothing like plain speaking.

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  4. Ok maybe there is something in this poetry lark afterall.

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  5. lol Yeah it's good shit. Nothing like spelling it out how you see it. I'm with Doc though. Displaying offense at being called gay by threatening arse rape?. lol Funny shit.

    No different to Youtube comments really.

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  6. Its great, some of the graffitti at the Pompeii exhibit was fairly obscene as well.

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  7. it seems that the romans were fans of writing youtube comments

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  8. lol Thanks for stopping in.

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  9. There's another I remember from Catullus where he catches his lover's "monkey" masturbating, and "beats him", the punchline being "in tandem". I never quite untangled the idiom there...

    The "vivamus mea lesbia, atque amemus" one is still probably the best though, at least by modern standards.

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  10. I think it's a case of not being called gay, but of being called soft. The Romans did like a bit of the ass play, but you better be ready to go into battle after getting freaky in a public bath with a 12 year old Egyptian slave boy.

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  11. That's gold! Wonder if they also did limericks.

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  12. odi et amo

    See! I've got a line from Catullus tattooed on my forearm. So there, assholes!

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