(no subject)

Religious frenzy drives a man to cut off his own balls....and then -- the morning after.
I think this is the best English translation of Catullus 63. It is slightly long.
But if you have 5 minutes, try it, you might find it worth your time...

	Over deep seas Attis, carried on a rapid catámaran,
	eagerly with hurrying footsteps sought that forest in Phrygia,
	penetrated the tree-thick coverts, the goddess' shadowy habitat,
	and there, by furious madness driven, wits adrift in insanity,
5	seized a keen flint, slashed away the weight of his groin's double complement;
	and when she felt the members left her shorn of all their virility
	dropping still a spatter of fresh-shed • blood on the ground as she sped along,
	quickly with snow white hand she seized the lightweight rat-a-tat tympanum—
	yours the tympanum, a Cybébé, yours, great Mother, the mysteries—
10	and on the hollow drum-skin beat a • táttoo with delicate fingertips,
	making this passionate invocation, body convulsed, to her followers:
	"On together with me, you Gallae, seek the high forests of Cybelé,
	on together, you roving herd of the Dindyménian Dómina,
	who like exiles in pursuit of new and alien territory,
15	following me as leader, comrades to my orders obedient
	bore the salt sea's tidal swiftness, its rough oceanic truculence,
	and now have all unmanned your bodies • from too great hatred of venery—
	by your impetuous wanderings let your • mistress' heart be exhilarate!
	Purge your spirits of slow reluctance, and all together now follow me
20	to the Phrygian home of great Cybébé, the goddess' Phrygian forest groves,
	where the sound of cymbals echoes, and the sharp rattle of kettledrums,
	where the Phrygian player's déep notes boom from the curve of his basset-horn,
	where the maenads, ivy-garlanded, toss their heads in mad ecstasy,
	where with shrilling ululations they act out their ritual ceremonies,
25	where the goddess's roving troupers long have flitted perégrinant—
	there is where we now must hasten with our impetuous sarabands!"
	As soon as Attis, woman no woman, had uttered these words to her followers
	an instant cry went up from the quivering • tongues of the ululant revellers,
	echoing cymbals clashed, there thudded the light tattoo of the tambourines,
30	as headlong to leafy Ida hastened with scurrying footfall her company.
	Leading them, breathless, pressing onward, gasping her heart and spirit up,
	threading thick woodlands Attis wandered, the drumbeat still her accompaniment,
	like some heifer, as yet unbroken, fleeing the collar's grim discipline,
	while the Gallae crowded hotly after their swift-footed pacesetter.
35	So when they reached Cybébé's precinct, swooning-exhausted, woman-faint,
	shot with huge effort, breadless, empty, soon they collapsed into somnolence.
	Tides of slumber, slow and languorous, closed their eyes, rippled over them:
	in soft repose there ebbed to nothing all their minds' rabid delirium.
	But when the Sun with his golden orb and eyes of sharp-dazzling radiance
40	lightened the pale white empyrean, harsh earth, the sea's liquid riotousness,
	chasing away Night's gloomy shadows, his fresh steeds' hooves briskly clattering,
	then Sleep arose from Attis wakened, fled away swiftly, precipitate,
	sought comfort in the trembling bosom • óf the goddess Pasíthea.
	So after slumber, now abandoned by her frenzied paroxysm,
41	Attis reflected on the deed that she herself had initiated,
	saw where she was, what things she'd lost, mind purged to diaphanous clarity.
	Back to the shore she forced her footsteps, heart full of simmering bitterness,
	and there, as she gazed with tear-filled eyes at the ocean's lonely immensity,
	thus she addressed her distant homeland, in saddest accents and piteously:
50	"Ah, dear country that shaped my being, country that bore and delivered me,
	which to my misery I abandoned-like some runaway minion
	fleeing his master—and pressed on hotfoot to Ida's wildwooded forestry,
	passed the snowline, made my way to the wild beasts' frost-riven ádyta,
	reaching as far, in my mad frenzy, as their remotest covert—ah where,
55	where, in which quarter, O my country, must I now look for your territory?
	My eyes, unbidden, long to turn their • gaze upon you, motherlandwards,
	while, for this too-brief space, my mind stays • free of its savage insanity.
	Ah, am I doomed to these alien forests, far from what's home, what's familiar—
	absent from country, from my possessions, from friends and those who engendered me
60	absent from forum and from palaestra, from race-course and from gymnasium?
	Ah wretch, ah wretch, whose life henceforward is nothing but wailing and misery!
	What variation of human figure exists that I haven't appropriated?
	This I, now woman, was I the ephebe, the child; this I the young teenager,
	this I the gymnasium's finest flower, the glory of oil-smooth athleticism.
65	For me all thresholds were warm, for me all hallways were crowded with visitors,
	for me the house was a riot of posies, of flowers all looping and garlanded,
	when the sun came up and the time was on me to rise and abandon my bedchamber.
	Am I now to be known as the gods' own handmaid, the serving girl of great Cybelé?
	Shall I be a maenad, I but a part of me, I unmanned to sterility?
70	Am I to dwell on verdant Ida's chill and snow-clad escarpments? Shall
	I waste my remaining lifespan under • the lofty columns of Phrygia,
	there with the hind that roams the forest, there with the boar in his timberland?
	Now, ah now, what I've done appalls me; now, ah now, I repent of it!"
	As from those rose red lips there issued with arrowy speed her sharp utterance,
75	bringing a new report to the ready ears of the gods, those keen listeners,
	Cybelé then, unyoking the reins that harnessed the lions to her chariot pole,
	goaded the left one, the cattle killer, kindling its wrath with her urgency:
	"Go now, my fierce one, go, pursue him, plague him with savage dementia,
	make the stroke of his frenzy drive him back to the groves of my habitat,
80	he who yearns so overfreely to shake off my mastering dominance!
	Flog your back with your tail in fury, lash yourself into rabidity,
	roar till each hidden covert reechoes your fierce and terrifying utterance—
	go, my fierce one, toss the tawny • mane on your neck's muscularity!"
	So spoke Cybébé in rage, with one hand • slipped the yoke pin. The beast took off
85	in a feral fury, driven wild by its self-incitement to savagery,
	sprang on roaring, paws in motion sending the brushwood skittering.
	But when it neared the sea-damp shoreline, the bright white stretch of the littoral,
	and there saw delicate Attis standing by the sea's marbled infinity,
	it charged. Demented, she scuttled headlong back to the wild woods, a fugitive,
90	there to remain for ever, a lifelong • slave girl, a feminine acolyte.
	Goddess, great goddess, O Cybébé, goddess, mistress of Díndymos,
	far from my own house be all your • furies, Lady, and madnesses—
	whip up others into frenzy, goad on others to ecstasy!
	Gaius Valerius Catullus
	translated by Peter Green