Joyful homecoming

Catullus returns to glorious Lake Garda

Grotte di Catullo, Sirmio (photo: Wolfgang Moroder)

Not Odysseus’ nostos (homecoming) this time, but Catullus the Roman poet (c. 80-50 BC) comes home from his spell of duty in Asia Minor (the dry, flat, province of Bithynia) and greets his beloved ancestral home, the islet of Sirmio on Lake Garda, with one of his happiest poems.

It’s in a metre called ‘limping iambics’, which trots along until the long penultimate syllable, which seems to add an unexpected halting feel to the line. Catullus uses it in a poem of resigned misery (poem 8), but here turns it into an expression of joy that leads up to the last word ‘cachinnorum’ - peals of laughter.

My new translation:

Sirmio - pearl of isles, peninsulas,
whatever’s found in undulating lakes
or in vast oceans (both are Neptune’s realm) -
what heaven to set eyes on you again! -
scarce trusting that I’ve left Bithynia’s plains
and Thynia's fields - and see you safe and sound.

What’s lovelier than, when our tasks are done,
our minds unburdened, and exhausted from
our foreign toils, we come back home at last
and throw our bodies on our longed-for bed?
This is the thing that makes it all worthwhile.

Now lovely Sirmio, greet your happy lord,
and you too, waves of Garda’s lake, rejoice
with every peal of laughter you can muster!

Paene insularum, Sirmio, insularumque
ocelle, quascumque in liquentibus stagnis
marique vasto fert uterque Neptunus,
quam te libenter quamque laetus inviso,
vix mi ipse credens Thuniam atque Bithunos
liquisse campos et videre te in tuto!

O quid solutis est beatius curis,
cum mens onus reponit, ac peregrino
labore fessi venimus larem ad nostrum,
desideratoque acquiescimus lecto?
hoc est quod unum est pro laboribus tantis.

Salve, O venusta Sirmio, atque ero gaude
gaudente, vosque, O Lydiae lacus undae,
ridete quidquid est domi cachinnorum!