Catullus: “The little bean of a boat”

Although there are different interpretations of this poem, I think it’s a parody of an epic, since this fit’s Catullus’s personality and it’s talking about the greatness of a little bean boat, from the time it was cut from the woods in Mount Cytorius to the epic journeys it made through straits and sea, the fastest boat floating on the water. Translating note: I used the modern names of the Sea of Marmara and the Black Sea instead of the ancient names for ease of recognition.

  

This little bean of a boat, you see, dear guests,

says it was the fastest of ships,

that there was no piece of timber floating whose attack

it could not pass, if ever an oar blade

worked or ever a sail cloth flew.

And it denies that the Adriatic’s menacing

sea-shore can say otherwise, or Cycladic islands,

noble Rhodes, the rough Thracian

Sea of Marmara, or the ferocious Black Sea gulf.

Where it’s now a boat, before it was

a leafy tree on the Cytorian mountain range,

often speaking with whistling leaves—

Pontic Amastris and boxtree-bearing Cytorius,

To you these things have always been known,

said the little bean boat: from the deepest source

I stood on your peak,

and wet my oars in your sea,

and from thence, impossibly through your straits,

I bore my master, whether to the right or left,

called by the wind, or Jupiter, or both, if ever

set forth the sails full square;

nor were there any prayers to sea-shore gods

that I made, when I came from the sea

to this limpid lake at last.

But these things are all in the past: now you’re laid up,

and the old men quietly pay their respects.

Phaselus ille, quem uidetis, hospites,

ait fuisse nauium celerrimus,

neque ullius natantis impetum trabis

nequisse praeterire, siue palmulis

opus foret uolare siue linteo.

et hoc negat minacis Hadriatici

negare litus insulasue Cycladas

Rhodumque nobilem horridamque Thracia

Propontida trucemue Ponticum sinum,

ubi iste post phaselus antea fuit

comata silua; nam Cytorio in iugo

loquente saepe sibilum edidit coma.

Amastri Pontica et Cytore buxifer,

tibi haec fuisse et esse cognitissima

ait phaselus: ultima ex origine

tuo stetisse dicit in cacumine,

tuo imbuisse palmulas in aequore,

et inde tot per impotentia freta

erum tulisse, laeua siue dextera

uocaret aura, siue utrumque Iuppiter

simul secundus incidisset in pedem;

neque ulla uota litoralibus deis

sibi esse facta, cum ueniret a mari

nouissime hune ad usque limpidum lacum.

sed haec prius fuere: nunc recondita

senet quiete seque dedict tibi.