Early Spring seems as good a time as to post this unexpurgated entry from Ira Maine Esq, Poetry Editor
Another one, gentlemen from that reprobate Catullus (circa 84-54,BC) but this time a disgraceful tale of a shameful plunge into forbidden fruit which he seems to think is amusing. I, personally, myself have never been so appalled in my life. Such vulgarity! Such flouting of the conventions! Where, I ask, will it all end?
We have our backs to the wall, here, chaps, and a good thing too…
Pierce May- Bottom,
Cato, it’s ludicrous.
Cato, it’s ludicrous, too absurd!
Do listen, it’s worth chuckling over.
If you hold Catullus in affection,
Laugh, Cato, for what’s just occurred
It’s the funniest thing you ever heard.
I caught a tender little lover,
Bottom up, rogering his bird,
And, brandishing my own erection
(Venus forgive me!) made a third.
And there is more!
Whose eyes are blue as seas offshore
From Paradise, persuades all men
To ride her depths with dripping oar.
In the first century before Christ, Meleager composed this disgraceful, politically incorrect ditty. Meleager was a highly Hellenized Palestinian , more Greek than Roman, whose greatest works may only be known to us by reputation.
We have lost so much of the Hellenistic world that we have only the Arabs, those highly sophisticated Middle-Easterners, to thank for the little we do know of the ancient Hellenic world. Without them, we would know little or nothing of the great mathematicians, thinkers and philosophers who have so helped to democratize and civilize our world.
May the Lord look sideways on us whilst we try to get to the root of it all,
Will. Albi-Fact.