| 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 |