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[Desine]1 de quoquam quicquam bene velle mereri
aut aliquem fieri posse putare pium.
Omnia sunt ingrata, nihil fecisse benigne
immo etiam taedet, taedet obestque magis;
ut mihi, quem nemo gravius nec acerbius urget,
quam modo qui me unum atque unicum amicum habuit.2
About the headline (FAQ)
View text without footnotesConfirmed with Catullus Tibullus and Pervigilium Veneris, London: William Heinemann, 1928, page 152.
1 Orff: "O mea Lesbia! Desine"2 Orff adds
Omnia sunt ingrata. Applaudunt senes dicentes: Senes Placet, placet, placet, optime, optime, optime.
Text Authorship:
- by Gaius Valerius Catullus (c84 BCE - 54 BCE), no title, appears in Carmina, no. 73 [author's text checked 2 times against a primary source]
Musical settings (art songs, Lieder, mélodies, (etc.), choral pieces, and other vocal works set to this text), listed by composer (not necessarily exhaustive):
- by Carl Orff (1895 - 1982), "[VII]. O mea Lesbia!", 1940-43, published 1943 [ chorus and orchestra ], from cantata Catulli Carmina, no. 8 [sung text checked 1 time]
Available translations, adaptations or excerpts, and transliterations (if applicable):
- ENG English (Grant Hicks) , copyright © 2026, (re)printed on this website with kind permission
- SPA Spanish (Español) (Saúl Botero Restrepo) , copyright © 2015, (re)printed on this website with kind permission
Research team for this page: Grant Hicks [Guest Editor] , Saúl Botero Restrepo
This text was added to the website: 2015-10-07
Line count: 6
Word count: 44
[Leave off]1 hoping to deserve well of anyone in any way
or thinking that anyone can be made grateful.
Everything is fruitless; to have acted kindly is nothing —
on the contrary, it is tiresome, tiresome or rather a nuisance;
as it is to me, whom nobody taxes more severely or bitterly
than he who only recently considered me his one and only friend.
About the headline (FAQ)
View text without footnotesTranslations of titles:
"[VII]. O mea Lesbia!" = "[VII]. O my Lesbia!"
2 Orff adds
Everything is fruitless. The old men applaud, saying: Old men Bravo, bravo, bravo, very good, very good, very good.
Text Authorship:
- Translation from Latin to English copyright © 2026 by Grant Hicks, (re)printed on this website with kind permission. To reprint and distribute this author's work for concert programs, CD booklets, etc., you may ask the copyright-holder(s) directly or ask us; we are authorized to grant permission on their behalf. Please provide the translator's name when contacting us.
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Based on:
- a text in Latin by Gaius Valerius Catullus (c84 BCE - 54 BCE), no title, appears in Carmina, no. 73
This text was added to the website: 2026-08-08
Line count: 6
Word count: 65