Coincidentally, I picked this movie the other day (Ides of March) after noticing that Elizabeth Taylor’s bathing scene might contain a nip slip. There was a slight disappointment on my part when it turned out it was just a shadow from an artifact she was holding in her hand.
Nonetheless, I enjoyed this spectacle of the movie which covers about twenty years of Cleopatra’s life, from meeting Julius Caesar in Egypt, her moving to Rome with their son, moving back to Egypt when Caesar got assassinated, to the bitter end of her romance with the Roman general Mark Anthony.
As often with these kinds of movies the most mundane things would catch my attention that then led me down a rabbit hole.
There were a couple of scenes in which Julius Caesar and Cleopatra talk about the Roman poet Catullus. Apparently, Catullus wasn’t too fond of Caesar, and it was said that he wrote a poem in which he criticized Caesar.
AI identified Poem 93 by Catullus and a translation of it goes something like this:
“I do not care much, Caesar, to try to please you, nor do I care whether you are a good man or a bad one.”
Yes, one liner. Apparently, that’s considered a poem. I figured there must be more to this Catullus guy so I asked AI to list his famous poems. It gave me a list of six poems. The description for Poem 16 stood out as it said Famous (or infamous) for its extremely explicit opening. Ok, let’s read that one then. It goes like this in my Delphi Classics version:
XVI (a fragment)
... who have supposed me to be immodest, on account of my verses, because these are rather voluptuous. For the sacred poet ought to be chaste himself, his verses need not be so.
AI’s answer to my follow up question what is so explicit in Poem 16
Gaius Valerius Catullus’ Poem 16 is famous because it begins with extremely explicit sexual threats. It is one of the most shocking openings in classical literature.
Opening lines (Latin)
Pedicabo ego vos et irrumabo, Aureli pathice et cinaede Furi…
Literal meaning
“I will anally penetrate you and force oral sex on you Aurelius and Furius…”
Well AI, mine translation of the poem doesn’t say that!
“What you have is a censored 19th-century translation of **Gaius Valerius Catullus’ Poem 16 (XVI). Many Victorian editions removed the obscene opening and printed only a fragment starting with the argument about poetry and morality.”
But the Delphi book was released in 2015? What gives?
Even in modern editions, including something as recent as The Complete Works of Catullus, editors sometimes censor or abbreviate Poem 16 because it starts with lines that are extremely sexually explicit by modern standards, even though the rest of the poem is about literary defense.
So, I get my hands on another translation of Catullus’ poems, from Penguin Books. Slightly better, at least it has what it seems like the complete poem, but the beginning and the end of the poem are not translated, left in latin Pedicabo et irrumabo.
Third time's a charm, they say. The first few lines of Poem 16 from Catullus shorter poems published by ARIS & PHILLIPS CLASSICAL TEXTS:
I will bugger you and fuck your mouths,
Aurelius the pansy and Furius the pervert,
for you thought from the evidence of my little poems
that I was not modest enough because they are slightly unmanly.
I could end the story here, but why not check out this side tunnel quest. I will bugger you… sounds oddly familiar to a line from Black Adder by General Melchett (played by Stephen Fry) "
Well bugger me with a fish fork"...
Here are two Elizabeth Taylor’s scene from Cleopatra. You can find her other movie scenes at
Mr. Skin.
Elizabeth Taylor in sheer dress from Cleopatra [
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Elizabeth Taylor in a bath tub from Cleopatra [
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