This well-known elegiac poem, in which the Roman poet Catullus mourns the death of his brother, has been translated by everyone from Aubrey Beardsley to Anne Carson. Catullus addresses his words directly to his brother’s ashes during a ceremony after the funeral. Before reading the poem itself, take a look at this eighteenth-century description of the inferiae, the sacrificial rites that it mentions:
After the funeral, we are to take notice of the several rites performed in honour of the dead, at the festivals instituted with that design. […] The sacrifices (which were called inferiae) consisted of liquors, victims, and garlands. The liquors were water, wine, milk, blood, and liquid balsam. […] The blood was taken from the victims offered to the Manes, which were usually of the smaller cattle, though in ancient times it was customary to use captives or slaves in this inhuman manner.
Basil Kennett, Romae Antiquae Notitia
Catullus 101:
Multās per gentēs et multa per aequora vectus
adveniō hās miserās, frāter, ad īnferiās,
ut tē postrēmō dōnārem mūnere mortis
et mūtam nēquīquam alloquerer cinerem
quandoquidem fortūna mihi tētē abstulit ipsum
heu miser indignē frāter adēmpte mihī
nunc tamen intereā haec, prīscō quae mōre parentum
trādita sunt tristī mūnere ad īnferiās,
accipe frāternō multum mānantia flētū.
Atque in perpetuum, frāter, avē atque valē.
Over many oceans, many nations borne,
brother, I come to these somber funeral rites
that at the end I might give you a gift, of death,
that I might speak in vain to mute ash
now swept away by fate—you, your self, from me.
Yet oh! poor brother, cruelly carried off from me, accept
what are for now and by the ancient customs of our kin
confided in this sorrowed gift, in honour of the dead,
poured out with so many brotherly tears.
Hail, brother, and farewell, forever.
