Original:
Pedicabo ego vos et irrumabo,
Aureli pathice et cinaede Furi,
qui me ex versiculis meis putastis,
quod sunt molliculi, parum pudicum.
nam castum esse decet pium poetam
ipsum, versiculos nihil necesse est,
qui tum denique habent salem ac leporem,
si sunt molliculi ac parum pudici
et quod pruriat incitare possunt,
non dico pueris, sed his pilosis,
qui duros nequeunt movere lumbos.
vos quod milia multa basiorum
legistis, male me marem putatis?
pedicabo ego vos et irrumabo.
Three forms of physical sexual acts are renderable in Latin
1. Pedicator- Literally, "lover (fucker) of boys."
2. Futator - Literally, "lover (fucker) of women."
3. Irrumator- No literal translation. Oral sex either involving taking a penis in one's mouth, or licking a vagina. The only way to know if the act is being performed on a man or a woman is the gender attached to the stem of the verb. This was considered filthy by the Greeks and Romans, although it certainly did not stop oral sex from being performed frequently.
e.g. pedicabo is masculine single, pedicabi is masculine plural.
In Greek there were two types of love:
Aphrodite Pandemos- Common love. Love for pure physical need. Oral sex was always "pandemos," fucking a woman was common, and certain acts between male partners was common or pandemic.
Aphrodite Urania - Heavenly love. Love that transcended the mere physical act. Anal sex was mostly pandemic, except with your young man, but the physical expression that was always "heavenly" was diamerion, where the aggressor inserted his penis between his lover's thighs from either front or behind.
Now prepared with a short course on Greek and Roman practices, we launch into Catullus's poem.
Poems were used to woo, comment, or respond to daily life. Catullus 16 is a response to Aurelius (Marcus) and Furious, who asserted that Catullus was soft (molle) or womanly (mulierius).
I will make you my boys and fuck you (in the mouth),
passive# Aurelius and sissy* Furius,
you think, because my verses are delicate,
that I am a sissy. It is right that a poet be chaste himself;
it is not at all necessary for his verses to be.
My verses may have taste and charm,
if they are delicate and sexy enough,
and because they are sexy and can arouse.
I do not say boys—but this hairy pair
who can't shake their stiff penises.
Because you have read of my many thousand kisses,
you deny my masculinity?
I will make you my boys and fuck you (in the mouth)!
#pathice (pat-ee-kay)- literally means "passive" which is an insult to an adult Greek or Roman. In all affairs, an adult man was supposed to be aggressive or the top. Boys who had yet become adult were not considered having a male gender, they could bottom without repurcussions. There was no role switching or "versatiles" in Greece or Rome.
*cinaede - This word has no direct translation into modern English. We have many words to describe things that the Greeks did not think about or have the linguistic tools to create. It could mean "sissy boy" or "gay man," but scholars have argued about this word as much as the Greek "arsenokotai."
~J
