My farm! which those who wish to please
Thy master's heart, Tiburtian call;
But they who call thee Sabine, these
Respect his feelings not at all:
And wishing more to tease and fret,
Will wager thou art Sabine yet--
How well it pleased me to retreat
To thy suburban country-seat;
Where I sent summarily off
That plaguy pulmonary cough;
Which, half-deserved, my stomach gave
Just for a hint no more to crave
Luxurious living. I had hoped
With a good dinner to have coped
At Sextius' table; when he read
A poisonous speech might strike one dead,
All gall and venom, to refute
One Attius in a certain suit.
Since when, a cold cough and catarrh
Against my battered frame made war;
Until I came in thee to settle,
And cured it with repose and nettle.
So, now I'm well, I thank thee, farm!
And that I got so little harm,
From such great fault. I may be pardon'd
If to this pitch my heart is harden'd:
To pray, when Sextius reads again
Things so abhorr'd of gods and men,
That that my cough and cold catarrh
Not mine but Sextius' health might mar--
Who never sends me invitation
But for such wretched recitation.
GRATIAN.--A charitable wish this of our good Catullus! But these
heathens knew little of "do as you would be done by." One of the neatest
wishes of this kind is in a Greek epigram. I can't remember word for
word the Greek, so I give the translation:--"Castor and Pollux, who
dwell in beauteous Lacedemon, by the sweet-flowing river Eurotas, if
ever I wish evil to my friend, may it light upon me; but if ever he
wishes evil to me, may he have twice as much."
AQUILIUS.--In a note on _villae_, I see the derivation of that word
given, _quasi vehilla_, because there the fruits of the farm were
carried; so that the original idea of a villa was quite another thing
from the modern suburban construction. Architects, when they call these
suburban edifices villas, might as well remember how inappropriate is
the term. But here you have my version of this address to his farm:--