JUVENAL, SATIRE XII
SATIRE XII
How Catullus escaped Shipwreck
Dearer to me, Corvinus, is this day, when my festal turf is awaiting the victims vowed to the Gods, than my own birthday. To the Queen of Heaven I offer a snow-white lamb; a fleece as white to the Goddess[1] armed with the Moorish[2] Gorgon; hard by is the frolicsome victim destined for Tarpeian Jove, shaking the tight-stretched rope and brandishing his brow; for he is a bold young steer, ripe for temple and for altar, and fit to be sprinkled with wine; it already shames him to suck his mother's milk, and with his budding horn he assails the oaks. Were my fortune large, and as ample as my love, I should have been hauling along a bull fatter than Hispulla, slow-footed from his very bulk; reared on no neighbouring herbage he, but showing in his blood the rich pastures of the Clitumnus,[3] and marching along to to offer his neck to the stroke of the stalwart priest, to celebrate the return of my still trembling friend who has lately gone through such terrors, and now marvels to find himself safe and sound.
17For besides the perils of the deep he escaped a lightning stroke. A mass of dense black cloud shut out the heavens, and down came a flash of fire upon the yards. Every man believed himself smitten by the bolt, and soon in his terror bethought him that no shipwreck could be so terrible as a ship on fire. All happened in the same way and as frightfully as when a storm arises in a poem, when lo! a new kind of peril came; hear it and give
