Beyond

Poem 4 [beanpod boat]

Kristina Chew translates from the Latin. Original by Catullus.

Poem 4 [beanpod boat]

Translated from the Latin by Kristina Chew

That beanpod boat which you my guests behold says it

of ships the swiftest was, and the thrust of any

floating timber beat it—couldn’t happen! whether

sea conditions were calling for its pint-sized oars

to fly or for its sail. And the boat says no way,

menacing Adriatic’s shore denies this fact,

or the isles of the Cyclades and renowned Rhodes,

and the uncouth Thracian Sea of Marmora,

or the pitiless Black Sea bay where what was

later on the beanpod boat’d beforetimes been

a leafy forest. For up on Kidros Dağ’s ridge

often whispers it emitted, leaves a-chatter.

Samastro on the Black Sea and Kidros’ boxwood,

to you these things have been and are most noted,

says our beanpod boat: From the early days long long

ago it says it stood upon your peak, it dipped

pint-sized oars into your waters, and thence on

over so many uncorralled seas it carried

its keeper, whether a breeze called to the left side

or the right, or onto either sheet Jupiter

had at the selfsame moment landed with godspeed;

and to the gods who mind the shores not any prayers

were made by the boat what time it made its way

from the most remote of seas right up to this lake,

clear like glass. But these are the stuff of days gone past.

Now moored fast in rest and peace it’s old and consigns

itself to you, twin Castor and twin Castor’s twin.

Catullus 4

By Catullus

Phaselus ille, quem videtis, hospites,

ait fuisse navium celerrimus,

neque ullius natantis impetum trabis

nequisse praeterire, sive palmulis

opus foret volare sive linteo.

et hoc negat minacis Hadriatici

negare litus insulasve Cycladas

Rhodumque nobilem horridamque Thraciam

Propontida trucemve Ponticum sinum,

ubi iste post phasellus antea fuit

comata silva: 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, laeva sive dextera

vocaret aura, sive utrumque Iuppiter

simul secundus incidisset in pedem;

neque ulla vota litoralibus diis

sibi esse facta, cum veniret a mari

novissimo hunc ad usque limpidum lacum.

sed haec prius fuere: nunc recondita

senet quiete seque dedicat tibi,

gemelle Castor et gemelle Castoris.

Translator’s Note

In translating the Roman poet Catullus’ poem 4, I have sought to evoke the plucky character of the phaselus, the beanpod-shaped boat that the poem’s speaker points out to his guests in the first line. The boat itself then speaks, listing the places it has traveled through from west (the Adriatic Sea) to east (the Black Sea). Mention of a mountain, Kidros Dağ, reveals this to be the boat’s birthplace, where the wood for its hull and oars was once a “leafy forest” and from where it first set sail. The poem closes with the boat “now moored fast in rest and peace” and dedicating itself to Castor and Pollux, the twin brothers also known as the Dioscuri, deities to whom ancient sailors prayed.


The Latin text is composed in the iambic trimeter, a 12-beat meter that was used for dialogue in Greek and Latin drama and an apt choice for a poem about a talking ship.  My translation uses an iambic line that generally, though not strictly, replicates the syllable count of the Latin original and strives to convey the conversational rhythms of the boat’s speech. The boat itself uses colloquial language (“couldn’t happen!”; “the boat says no way”) and is so eager to tell its story that its sentences run over the line ends.


Catullus’ Latin also reminds us that this is a boat speaking by recalling the splish and splash of its oars plying the water via repeated  s-sounds (fuisse nequisse, saepe sibilum, fuisse et esse cognitissima). I likewise use alliteration of s (“of ships the swiftest was”) as well as of other letters (“the beanpod boat’d beforetimes been”). And, just as line 12 of the Latin (loquente saepe sibilum edidit coma) repeats three sounds (s, i, t) to mimic the rustling leaves of the trees that became the boat, so does my translation (“often whispers it emitted, leaves a-chatter”).


I have rendered phaselus as “beanpod boat” to capture the two meanings of this Latin word. Phaselus refers both to a type of bean (possibly a snow pea, Pisum sativum, or the eye-bean, Dolichos melanophthalmus) and to an Egyptian boat that resembles it (Olck 1894; Mynors 1990: 53). According to the 1st century BCE Greek geographer Strabo, the boat-phaselus was an ὀστράκινα πορθμεία/ostrakina porthmeia, a “means of conveyance made of earthenware,” unlike the wooden ship in Catullus’ poem (17.1.4). Could the poet have used the word phaselus because he liked both the sound and double sense of it? This is a question that we cannot answer along with others that scholars have asked about whether Catullus may have owned such a boat or been to the places mentioned in the poem (Quinn 1973: 100). 


The poem recalls epigrams from the Greek Anthology that were engraved on objects and that pretended to be the utterance of those objects (a shield in 6.125, a bronze cock in 6.149).  The poem also recalls other epigrams (6.69, 6.70) that seem to be ex voto inscriptions on miniature ships. These were replicas of actual ships and were dedicated to a god after a successful voyage, just as, in the final two lines of Catullus’ poem, the beanpod boat dedicates itself to Castor and his twin. One scholar has even suggested that Catullus’ boat is actually a model one (Griffith 1983); the boat’s small size is indicated by the use of palmulas, a Latin diminutive word that I have rendered as “pint-sized oars.” 


Aside from speculations about whether Catullus owned such a small craft or how small it was, his use of a Latin word that also refers to a vegetable creates a lasting image in the mind’s eye of readers of any time. It is my hope that my version of the beanpod boat’s story leaves something of the same.

Bibliography

Conte, Gian Biagio, Latin Literature: A History. translated by Joseph B. Solodow, revised by Don Fowler and Glenn W. Most. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press 1994.

Griffith, John G. “Catullus, Poem 4: A Neglected Interpretation Revived.” Phoenix (Toronto) 37, no. 2 (1983): 123–128.

Mynors, R.A.B. Virgil: Georgics, edited with a commentary. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990.

Olck, F. In Paulys Real-Encyclopädie des classischen Altertumswissenschaft, rev. G. Wissowa et al. Stuttgart and Munich, 1894-1978: 3.622-7.

Quinn, Kenneth, ed. Catullus: the poems / edited with introduction, revised text and commentary. 2nd ed. London: Macmillan, 1973.

  • Gaius Valerius Catullus was born around 84 BCE to an aristocratic family in Verona. Like other young men of his social class, Catullus went to Rome where he became acquainted with the “neoteric” or “new poets” (poetae novi), so-called for their experimentation with Greek meters and poetic genres. In 57 BCE Catullus served under the governor of Bithynia, a Roman province in northwest Turkey just to the west of Paphlagonia, the region where some of the places mentioned in poem 4  (Samastro [Amastri Pontica], Kidros Dağ [Cytorio in iugo]) are located. While the Roman historian Suetonius writes that Catullus died at the age of thirty, Gian Biagio Conte observes that, were it not for this comment, “we must suppose that he lived several years more” (1994: 143).

    Bio by Kristina Chew

  • Kristina Chew is Associate Teaching Professor in the Department of Classics at Rutgers University and also teaches at the University of California at Berkeley and at Santa Cruz. She is the editor of Teaching Classical Languages and has published articles about classical reception, translation, disability studies, and the pedagogy of ancient Greek and Latin. Her translation of Vergil’s Georgics was published in 2002. She is working on a translation of all of Catullus’ poetry and of archaic Greek lyric and elegiac poetry; an ancient Greek textbook based on Sappho’s fragments; and Poetry in Motion, a book about classical literature and life with her autistic son.