Catullus XXXXVIII: Ad Iuventium

Salvete! I felt like doing a quick Catullus poem before the week was up! This poem is a love poem written to another one of Catullus’s lovers. His name is Iuventius, and there are a couple poems about him—the most dramatic of which is Catullus XCIX, which I’d like to translate next. Here is Catullus XXXXVIII, or Ad Iuventium:

Mellitos oculos tuos, Iuventi,
si quis me sinat usque basiare,
usque ad milia basiem trecenta
nec numquam videar satur futurus,
non si densior aridis aristis
sit nostrae seges osculationis.

If it was always permitted for me, Iuventius,

to kiss your honey-sweet eyes,

I would kiss all the way up to three hundred thousand times

and not ever seem to be sated,

not even if our crop of kissing was

thicker than a field of corn.

Catullus really seems to love kissing, there’s quite a theme between the two poems I’ve translated so far. Catullus is never one for subtlety, rather he writes whatever emotion he feels passionately. This one I found pretty easy in terms of the grammar construction, the only hard bit came at the end, because I wasn’t sure why there were two words for corn field/crop. However, I figured it out, and Catullus is essentially saying, I could kiss you forever and always. It’s very sweet, hope you enjoyed, valete!