This is one of Catullus's longer poems, and a major work. It may seem very puzzling to a reader coming to it unprepared. A post on the Snakeskin blog explains something of the poem's context, and discusses the challenge it gives to the translator.

LXIII


A theatrical mask of Attis, second century A.D.

Across the sea goes Attis in his ship of sleek rapidity,
To Phrygia, and its forest, which he rushes into eagerly,
The great goddess’s territory, her tree-dark sanctuary.
There he grabs a flint; he jabs and savages his genitals,
Stabs until he’s sure he’s lost the burden of virility;
His blood spills its darkness on the sacred ground surrounding him.
SHE now, never he, SHE reaches for a tambourine,
The tympanum, Cybele, that is used by your initiates,
She beats out her message on the leather of the instrument;
Up she rises, and calls out to all her followers:

        My she-priests hurry, to these woods of our divinity.
        Hurry all you wanderers, all great Cybele’s worshippers,
        You searchers for an otherwise, you riskers and adventurers
        You voyagers who’ve dared the seas that match you in your truculence,
        You like me whose dream has been self-immolated genitals,
        Like me detesting Venus with the utmost of ferocity,
        Set free your minds with the liberty of ecstasy.
        Gladden our goddess, hurry here to worship her,
        Hurry to this Phrygian domain of femininity,
        Hurry to the cymbals, to the gentle flute’s seductiveness,,
        Towards the fevered drums and the Maenads’ ululations
        There we must hurry for the celebration ritual.

Attis thus addressed them; she had all the look of womanhood;
Tongues lisped lovingly and cymbals clashed resoundingly.
Attis led on frenziedly, her wild breath labouring
Free as a heifer who’s escaped the yoke of drudgery,
Weary in her lungs, she through the woods leads rhythmically
The Gallae, who are following behind her storming leadership.

They reach the home of Cybele, wearied out and staggering,
Hungry, over-stretched, exhausted by excessiveness.
Sleep commands their eyelids to slide down sluggishly
Excitement leaves their bodies; rage gives way to drowsiness.

Dawn comes. Sunlight. The golden face that radiates
Alike above the firm soil and the great sea’s turbulence,
Which drives away darkness and banishes the weariness
Even from Attis, who is gradually awakening.
(For the goddess Pasithea’s taking Somnus to her bosom now.)
Attis, pseudo-woman, is freed now from delirium
Remembers what she did before, and sees herself now lucidly,
And knows what she has lost, and now her heart weighs heavily.
It labours in her body as she turns and walks back steadfastly,
Steadfastly and sadly, heading back towards her landing-place.
Her tearful eyes look out to sea; she renders this soliloquy
Remembering her birthplace despairingly, lamentingly.
   
        My motherland, my origin, the one place that created me,
        I must shun you like a thief now, like some dishonest runaway.
        Deserting you for Ida, for a bleak and chilly wilderness,
        Where brute beasts lurk, fired by hunger and rapacity.
        Freed now from my madness by the shock of the reality,
        My eyes weep with a longing for the home that was my nourisher.
        Must life be now this wilderness, with only fading memories
        Of when I was a man – but I have severed that identity -
        A young man, supple, and the flower of the gymnasium,
        A champion of champions among the oily combatants
        Who wrestled for the glory – one who won the admiration
        And the friendship of so many – how my home was garlanded!
        But nevermore now I’ve become Cybele’s mere serving-wench,
        Now that I’m a Maenad, a half-man, whose sterility
        Must sentence me to exile, to a life of pointless wandering,
        Neighbour to the boar and the wild deer in its solitude.
        On these wild slopes of Ida, shadowed by the peaks of Phrygia.
        How I hate my rashness; my regret becomes an agony,


Cybele with a lion.

Her words flying upward reached the ears of a deity,
They reached the ears of Cybele, who unleashed from their harnesses
The lions of her anger, with instructions to the left-hand one:
‘Go seek out Attis,  be my agent of ferocity,
Pursue him till he’s overtaken by insanity,
Make him regret attempting to escape from my supremacy,
Lash your flanks with your tail, whip up your aggressiveness
Let the place re-echo with untamed outlandish bellowing,
Toss your long red mane in anger,’ so ordered Cybele,
Loosening the brute, who charged away unstoppably,
Raging, careering, crashing through the undergrowth,
Till it reached the white shore, where the sea was opalescent,
And that is where it saw him, Attis, solitary, delicate.
The lion charged and Attis, in a terrified delirium,
Fled towards the forest,  to a destiny of hopelessness,
To existence as a slave there, the property of Cybele.

Great Goddess Cybele, Lady of Dindymus,
Vent your anger, I beseech you, far from my place of residence.
May only others feel your goad to madness and to ecstasy.

Translated by George Simmers

If you have any thoughts about this translation, George Simmers   would be pleased to hear them