Carmina

O Caelius, our Lesbia, that Lesbia, the self-same Lesbia whom Catullus loved more than himself and all his own, now at the cross-roads and in the alleyways husks off the high-spirited descendants of Remus.

Not if I were molded into the Cretan guard, not if I were born with Pegasean wing, or I Ladas, or Perseus with winged foot, or Rhesus' swift and snowy team: add to these the feathery-footed and winged ones, ask at the same time the course of the winds: which bound up, Camerius, you name as mine; yet exhausted in my every marrow and with many a faintness consumed, I would be in my quest for you, my friend.

Rufa of Bononia blows Rufulus, she the wife of Menenius. Often you have seen her among the tombs, snatching her meal from the funeral pyre. When she chases after the bread which has rolled from the fire, she is buffeted by the half-shaven cremator.

Did a lioness of the Libyan mountains beget you, or Scylla yelping from her lowmost groin with mind so harsh and loathsome, that you have contempt for a suppliant's voice in his last calamity? ah, heart overgreatly cruel.