Catullus 16

I'm gonna tell you right off the bat...I'm not sure about the veracity of this story.  But it's been going around the Interwebs the past few days and either it is too ridiculous or too funny NOT to be relayed.

So there was this Roman Poet from the 1st Century BC named Gaius Valerius Catullus, see?  And there was another poet who lived in the same era named Marcus Furius Bibaculus, right?  And this second guy had an affair with the first guy's boyfriend, okay?  Yeah, the were all a bunch of catty gay Roman poets in togas.

And this affair led to a poetic feud that puts the Ice Cube/Eazy E or the 50 Cent/Ja Rule feuds to shame.  Even the Biggie/Tupac feud, and those guys wound up shot to death!

Catullus, in his infamous Catullus 16 poem, raked both Furius and his friend Aurelius over the poetic coals.  In the most explicit of ways.  So explicit, in fact, that a full English translation of the poem wasn't published openly until late in the last century.  

Now I don't know a lick of Latin, but the Wikipedia translates the poem thusly:

Original Latin

1 Pedicabo ego vos et irrumabo,
2 Aureli pathice et cinaede Furi,
3 qui me ex versiculis meis putastis,
4 quod sunt molliculi, parum pudicum.
5 Nam castum esse decet pium poetam
6 ipsum, versiculos nihil necessest(necesse est);
7 qui tum denique habent salem ac leporem,
8 si sunt molliculi ac parum pudici
9 et quod pruriat incitare possunt,
10 non dico pueris, sed his pilosis
11 qui duros nequeunt movere lumbos.
12 Vos, quod milia multa basiorum
13 legistis, male me marem putatis?
14 Pedicabo ego vos et irrumabo.

English Translation*

1 I will sodomize you and face-fuck you,
2 Cock-sucker Aurelius and catamite Furius,
3 You who think, because my verses
4 Are delicate, that I am a sissy.
5 For it's right for the devoted poet to be chaste
6 Himself, but it's not necessary for his verses to be so.
7 Verses which then have taste and charm,
8 If they are delicate and sexy,
9 And can incite an itch,
10 And I don't mean in boys, but in those hairy old men
11 Who can't get their flaccid dicks up.
12 You, because you have read of my thousand kisses,
13 You think I'm a sissy?
14 I will bugger you and face-fuck you.


I don't know about you, but I would think twice about pissing off any of these 1st Century BC gay Roman toga-wearing poets. 

They.
Are.
Fierce!

*I threw some of these phrases into a Latin/English translator and, well...let's just say that some of the English Translations shown here are a bit of a reach.  Fun and obscene, but a bit of a reach.

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Note: Remember to play the Bug-Eyed Trivia Challenge every day. I will bugger and face-fuck you.