This is a poem written by the Roman poet Catullus, who was born somewhere around 82 B.C.E. If ancient Rome had a party guy, Catullus was it! He also happened to be one of the finest classical Latin poets we know of.
This verse is known as Catullus 5, and is a love song to a woman called Lesbia. Catullus was crazy about her, although we’re not sure that Lesbia was equally crazy about Catullus. We do know that “Lesbia” was not the woman’s real name. Catullus changed it to protect her because she was married to another man. That’s Catullus for you!
For Latin scholars, there are a couple of things I’d like to say about my pronunciation of certain letters. I have deliberately chosen to use a later, Italian flavored pronunciation because it sounds better that the classical Latin pronunciation I learned when I studied the language years ago. For example, in this song I say “chen-tum” instead of “ken-tum”, “shee-at” instead of “ski-at” and “vee-vah-mus” rather than “wee-wah-mus”. I find this to be softer and more musical, although I suspect my old Latin teachers would probably have a fit!
The Romans had an organ called a “hydraulis”, similar to what you see in this video, except that it used the pressure of water running out of a container to draw wind into the pipes of the instrument. The water apparatus was later replaced with a bellows operated by the left hand of the player, but the organ in the video uses a pump to supply air to the pipes, which frees both hands of the musician to play the keyboard just as a hydraulis player would have done.
21 окт 2024
