Ave atque vale

Ave atque vale ( Latin for "Greetings and goodbye!") Are the closing words of the poem 101 by Catullus . The poem, which is written in elegiac distiches , is a monologue of the poet's self at the grave of the deceased brother.

Catullus' brother had died and been buried in Troas ; Catullus apparently visited the tomb for the first and last time when he was 57 BC. Was in the wake of Gaius Memmius on the way to Bithynia .

Catullus's Roman conception of the afterlife excluded the possibility of communicating with the dead. The fact that he does it anyway, knowing full well that it will happen in vain ( nequiquam ), creates the tension of the poem. The poet's weak but only consolation is to perform the traditional sacrifice for the dead.

Well-known allusions to the work can be found in Algernon Swinburne , whose poem on the death of Charles Baudelaire is entitled Ave atque vale , and in Alfred Tennyson , who wrote the words Frater ave atque vale in the poem of the same name (written in 1883, in the collection in 1885 Tiresias, and other poems published) quoted in Latin.

Latin text

Multas per gentes et multa per aequora vectus

advenio has miseras, frater, ad inferias,

ut te postremo donarem munere mortis

et mutam nequiquam alloquerer cinerem.

quandoquidem fortuna mihi tete abstulit ipsum.

hay miser indigne frater adempte mihi,

nunc tamen interea haec, prisco quae more parentum

tradita sunt tristi munere ad inferias,

accipe fraterno multum manantia fletu,

atque in perpetuum, frater, ave atque vale.

Metric translation

I have now passed through many of the countries and many of the seas

The goal of my journey is this, brother: the sad cult,

That last of all I give you the gift of the dead

And, how futile it is, speak to dumb ashes,

Since fate has now snatched the real you from me,

oh, poor brother, how shamefully you were stolen from me!

For the time being, however, this is what the old fathers did

Left to us, sad present from the dead,

You accept it, it is already very wet from the tears of your brother,

And greetings and goodbye for ever, my brother.