Catullus XCIII, or 93...

Catullus (84 to 54 BC) is my favourite Latin poet. Julius Caesar is my favourite Roman of all time. Catullus, who knew Caesar, wrote about him:

Nil nimium studeo, Caesar, tibi velle placere,
nec scire utrum sis albus an ater homo.

My favourite translation of this - and I'm sorry, I have forgotten the translator's name -

Julius Caesar, you’re a snot,
I don’t care if you like it or not.
Maybe you’re good luck, maybe you’re bad,
I don’t care, now go on, and be mad.

This translation can be found online, but it seems nobody has included the translator's name. Drat. Here's the James Michie translation:

Caesar, I have no great desire
To stand in your good graves,
Nor can I bother to inquire
How fair or dark your face is.

And Guy Lee:

I am none too keen to wish to please you, Caesar,
Nor to know if you're a white man or a black.

Or Charles Martin's version:

I am not too terribly anxious to please you, Caesar,
Nor even to learn the very first thing about you.

And so it goes, into increasingly boring versions of the same thing.

Later on, Caesar charmed Catullus and Catullus got over his snit, so they became friends and poet-cronies. I love seeing one of two contemporaries who fascinate me, describing the other through his own eyes.

Rope magic...

Kings Firecrackers.

So how many impossible things can you do before breakfast?

Info on them.