Catullus's Sparrow

Or rather, Lesbia's Sparrow

Catullus wrote a lot of naughty poems. But that doesn’t mean all his poems are racy. Some are heartfelt, many are witty, all are clever. He wrote, perhaps in his earliest phase, two poems about his sweetheart Lesbia’s house-sparrow (passer), which I translate below. This bird is called her ‘pet’ in the first poem (no. 2 in the collection): it hops about on her lap and occasionally nips her with its little beak. Catullus suspects (and hopes) it’s a sign of Lesbia’s secret passion for him; although she’s still a girl, (puella), she’s married (Roman girls were often married in their early teens, and there’s a good candidate (Clodia Cn. Pompeii) for the girl Catullus calls ‘Lesbia’). One day the sparrow dies, prompting Catullus to write an ode of extravagant lament (no. 3), the point of which is the very last line: it’s a tragedy - but only because the sparrow’s death has made Lesbia’s eyes red and puffy from crying.

The two poems have been dissected for centuries for signs of double entendre; theories abound, but they are unnecessary. The poems are passionate, sweet, and funny. Sometimes, after all, a sparrow is just a sparrow (or an ex-sparrow).

Poem 2

O sparrow, you’re the thing my girl loves best:
she fondles you and hugs you to her breast,
and teases you with wagging fingertip, 
drawing from time to time an eager nip;
and when she’s glowing from my adulation,               5
she turns to you for welcome recreation,
to find some solace for love’s pain, I guess,
and to relieve her amorous distress.
If only I, like her, for my own part
could play with you and soothe my aching heart!     10
[But now this pledge of passion, sparrow, feels]
as welcome as that golden apple felt,
they say, to the fleet-footed girl whose belt
of virgin virtue was at last released.

Note on lines 11-14: the last three lines are normally printed as a separate fragment (2A). There is a missing line, which I have filled in (11) to connect the address to the sparrow to Catullus’s hope that Lesbia’s attachment to the bird intimates a displacement of her desire for him. He links the symbolism to the golden apple that, in myth, allowed Milanion to catch Atalanta (‘the fleet-footed girl’) and marry her. It’s typical of Catullus to compare his feelings to that of a woman, in this case Atalanta, in an amatory situation.

Passer, deliciae meae puellae
quicum ludere, quem in sinu tenere,
cui primum digitum dare appetenti
et acris solet incitare morsus
cum desiderio meo nitenti
carum nescio quid lubet iocare,
et solaciolum sui doloris,
credo, ut tum gravis acquiescat ardor:
tecum ludere sicut ipsa possem
et tristis animi levare curas!
[signum quod mihi nunc moves amoris]
tam gratum est mihi quam ferunt puellae
pernici aureolum fuisse malum,
quod zonam soluit diu ligatam.

Poem 3

Weep Venuses and Cupids all,
and you who love’s delights recall!
Dead is my sweetheart’s little bird,
her sparrow, whom my love preferred
to her own eyes; for honey-sweet
it would just like a daughter greet
my girl alone; and it would stay
perched on her lap and barely stray,
but would hop forward and retreat,
and ever to its mistress tweet.
But now it treads that gloomy way
to go whence none returns, they say.
Damn you, infernal shades of gloom
and Death, who all things sweet consume!
So sweet a bird you’ve snatched away.
Oh monstrous deed! Poor little stray.
Now thanks to you the sparrow’s dead...
and my girl's eyes are sore and red!

Lugete, O Veneres Cupidinesque,
et quantum est hominum venustiorum!
passer mortuus est meae puellae,
passer deliciae meae puellae,
quem plus illa oculis suis amabat.
nam mellitus erat, suamque norat
ipsam tam bene quam puella matrem,
nec sese a gremio illius movebat,
sed circumsiliens modo huc modo illuc
ad solam dominam usque pipiabat;
qui nunc it per iter tenebricosum
illuc, unde negant redire quemquam.
at vobis male sit, malae tenebrae
Orci, quae omnia bella devoratis:
tam bellum mihi passerem abstulistis.
o factum male! o miselle passer!
tua nunc opera meae puellae
flendo turgiduli rubent ocelli!