Urbi et Orbi (1): The Forum to the Serapeum ... Varus me meus ...

"This is how it happened. Me in the Forum. Totally at a loose end. My chum Varus carted me off to see his Significant Other; a dear little bimbo - it stuck out a mile - amusing, sexy, fashionable. She steered the conversation round to Bithynia. 'What's it like there? I bet you made lots of like money while you were on the Governor's like staff.' I told her the truth: that the Governor was an absolute ** ** ** ** ** ** **; so that not one of us had made brass quadrans. 'But' says she, 'you must have got hold of some like slaves to carry your litter. Everybody knows that Bithynia's the place they like come from'. 

"I wanted to look good ... it's the sort of effect a girl has on a chap ... so I said: 'Well, obviously it wasn't so terrible that I couldn't at least get hold of eight upright blokes.' (Fact is, neither there nor here could I lay my hands on a single bloke to put a single stick of broken bedstead anywhere near his shoulder.)

"Depraved is too good a word for that sort of girl. Her true character showed up in what she said next. 'Darling Catullus, please ... dearest Catullus', says she, 'just for a teensy weensy moment, please lend them to me ... I want to go like down to the Temple of Serapis just like soooo badly ...'"

I will leave you to find out for yourselves, if you don't already know, how Catullus struggled to wriggle out of that social dilemma. You are, I expect, put in mind of Nanny's apophthegm about What a tangled web we weave ...

I should make clear, by the way, that the above rendering is my humble attempt to translate Catullus following ad litteram the principles of the infamous Vatican document Comme le prevoit which enjoined 'dynamic equivalence' upon 1960s translators of liturgical books. It was one of the Enemy's most skilfully organised strategies, and it worked abysmally well. Its methodology managed to ensure that any disiecta membra, any distant echoes, of Tradition that survived into the Novus Ordo would be frog-marched out of it at the Vernacular stage, through the process of 'translating' them into non-existence ... a bit like Marshal Stalin's approach to the art of photography.

But I think it's absolutely made for the sort of literature I've used it on above.

Back to Catullus, and 'his' litter, Deo volente, tomorrow. Believe me, this is important stuff with significant doctrinal implications. Give it another chance!