Carmen XVI: To Aurelius and Furius in Defence of His Muse's Honesty

Leonard C. Smithers's explanatory and illustrative notes to the Burton/Smithers translation of the Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus (1894; Project Gutenberg #20732), keyed "Carmen N, v. N" to the Latin verse.

1. Line 1 Paedicabo et irrumabo. These detestable words are used here only as coarse forms of threatening, with no very definite meaning. It is certain that they were very commonly employed in this way, with no more distinct reference to their original import than the corresponding phrases of the modern Italians, T' ho in culo and becco fottuto, or certain brutal exclamations common in the mouths of the English vulgar.
2. Line 5 Ovid has a distich to the same effect: Crede mihi, distant mores a carmine nostri; Vita verecunda est, musa jocosa mihi. "Believe me there is a vast difference between my morals and my song; my life is decorous, my muse is wanton." And Martial says: Lasciva est nobis pagina, vita proba est. Which is thus translated by Maynard: Si ma plume est une putain, Ma vie est une sainte. Pliny quotes this poem of Catullus to excuse the wantonness of his own verses, which he is sending to his friend Paternus; and Apuleius cites the passage in his Apology for the same purpose. "Whoever," says Lambe, "would see the subject fully discussed, should turn to the Essay on the Literary Character by Mr. Disraeli." He enumerates as instances of free writers who have led pure lives, La Motte le Vayer, Bayle, la Fontaine, Smollet, and Cowley. "The imagination," he adds, "may be a volcano, while the heart is an Alp of ice." It would, however, be difficult to enlarge this list, while on the other hand, the catalogue of those who really practised the licentiousness they celebrated, would be very numerous. One period alone, the reign of Charles the Second, would furnish more than enough to outnumber the above small phalanx of purity. Muretus, whose poems clearly gave him every right to knowledge on the subject, but whose known debauchery would certainly have forbidden any credit to accrue to himself from establishing the general purity of lascivious poets, at once rejects the probability of such a contrast, saying: Quisquis versibus exprimit Catullum Raro moribus exprimit Catonem. "One who is a Catullus in verse, is rarely a Cato in morals."