Substantive, "mistress"

Mourn, Oh Venuses and Cupids, and however many there are of great men! The sparrow of my girl has died, The sparrow, the delight/joy of my girl, Whom she loved more than her own eyes; For he was honey-sweet, and he knew her As well as a girl knew her mother, Nor would he move from her lap, But hopping now here, now there, To his mistress alone he would continually twitter. He who now goes through the way of shadows To that place whence they say no one returns. But a curse upon you, evil shadows Of Hell, who devours all wonderful things; You have carried off such a beautiful sparrow from me O vile deed! O wretched little sparrow! Now by your work, my girls Little eyes are swollen and red from weeping.

This is a gerundive, it modifies "ocelli."

I really really love these first two lines. We start off with this really fancy address to higher power beings, the Venuses and Cupids, and then we have a total shift to a rather colloquial sounding phrase. It reminds me of the poems we went over on Friday, where Catullus speaks of the endless stars in the sky, and the uncountable grains of sand. Although the two do not exactly correlate with one another, I think it is easy to see the fondness Catullus has for creating tension and comparison between different groups.

syncopated form of "noverat." 3rd person singular pluperfect active indicative. Syconpated forms are pretty common, and especially in poetry they allow for more options with line structure.

As we see with pipiabat in the next line, the Latin words being used here mimic the sounds they describe. "modo huc modo illuc" might remind us of popular nursery songs (Old McDonald comes to mind).

I love this word. It means "to chirp, to twitter." This word mimics the actual sound it describes, which is something we see a lot in English poetry. Certainly, not all Latin needs to be serious and weighty.

"Orcus (Latin: Orcus) was a god of the underworld, punisher of broken oaths in Italic and Roman mythology." Please see here for further reading. It is just a wiki page, but it gives a good overview. In this case, the "malae tenebrae Orci" are the "evil shadows of Death." According to our notes, this phrase signals what Catullus thinks about death: he thinks of it as nothing but shadows (notes).

Final diminutive form

Third diminutive form

The second diminutive form

The first diminutive form!

This is the only place in the poem where a full stop punctuation is placed in the middle of a line. This is noteworthy because Catullus is leading up to the final message he wants to get across. He addresses the sparrow, now dead, and blames his girls desolate state on its spirit. Having a pause in the middle of this line serves to emphasize the coming point.

Welcome to Catullus 3! This is a satirical poem about the death of Lesbia's pet sparrow, who she cared for quite a bit. At this point, Catullus and Lesbia are still in a relationship. It is written in hendecasyllabics just like the other poems we have read. The poem has a really nice flow to it, and there is some pretty interesting stuff to talk about in it. Fun fact: it was "written in the tradition of Hellenistic epigrams lamenting the death of a pet" (notes on Catullus). Some of the pets that received such an epigram included a cricket, a parrot, and of course, Lesbia's sparrow. Hellenistic epigrams were typically more serious than Roman ones, but they would often end unexpectedly, including humour or obscene language. Interestingly, the last five lines of Catullus 3 contain four diminutives. So many in such a condensed space really drives home the almost patronizing and ridiculing feel of the poem.