IV. Phasellus ille...
Friends, observe my bean-shaped boat,
Once the fastest thing afloat,
No question - nothing made of timber
With oars or sail-sheets was more limber.
Does the Adriatic coast deny it?
Did Rhodes’ Colossus when we sped by it?
Nor did bleak and nasty Thrace -
And as for Cytorus, that’s the place
Where long before she was a yacht
She lived in some dense wooded spot
Upon a sunlit slope, a tree
Whose leaves kept moving, whisperingly.
Amastris, all of this you know,
And Cytorus, where the box-trees grow.
You observed her when she first
Dipped in her oars and tried a burst
Of speed, and saw how those oars flashed
Through choppy seas, and how she dashed,
And whether winds blew East or West,
Or Jupiter gave calm, she, unimpressed,
Kept on. She never paused to make
Oblations just for safety’s sake.
No, swift and surely see her go
To journey’s end, to Sirmio.
But that was then; and this is now.
These days her once-so gallant prow
Rests far from the ocean’s din,
Offered now to Castor and his twin,
The pair who look protectively
On all who venture on the sea.
Gaius Valerius Catullus
Translated by George Simmers
