Page:The poems of Gaius Valerius Catullus - Francis Warre Cornish.djvu/29
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Carm.
praetor such a beast, one who did not care a straw for his subalterns. 'Well, but at any rate' say they, 'you must have got some bearers for your chair.15 I am told that is the country where they are bred.' I, to make myself out to the girl as specially fortunate above the rest, say, ' Things did not go so unkindly with me — bad as the province was which fell to my chance — as to prevent my getting20 eight straight-backed fellows.' Now I had not a single one, here or there, strong enough to fit to his shoulder the broken leg of an old sofa. Says she (just like her shamelessness) ' I beg you, my dear25 Catullus, lend me those slaves you speak of for a while; I want just now to be taken to the temple of Serapis.' ' Stop,' say I to the girl, ' What I said just now, that I had those slaves — it was a slip — there is a friend of mine, Gaius Cinna; it was he who bought 3° them for his own use; but it is all one to me whether they are his or mine, I use them just as if I had bought them for myself: but you are a most illmannered and tiresome creature, who will not let one be off one's guard.'
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Furius and Aurelius, who will be Catullus' fellowtravellers, whether he makes his way as far as to the distant Indies, where the shore is beaten by the farresounding eastern wave, or to the Hyrcanians and soft Arabs, or Sacae and archer Parthians, or the5 plains which sevenfold Nile discolours, or whether
