Noctes Atticae

Gellius, Aulus

Gellius, Aulus. The Attic Nights of Aulus Gellius. Rolfe, John C., translator. Cambridge, Mass.; London: Harvard University Press; William Heinemann, 1927 (printing).

A passage in the Mimiambi of Gnaeus Matius, in which Antonius Iulianus used to delight; and the meaning of Marcus Cato in the speech which he wrote on his own uprightness, when he said:

I have never asked the people for garments.

ANTONIUS JULIANUS used to say that his ears were soothed and charmed by the newly-coined words of Gnaeus Matius, a man of learning, such as the following, which he said were written by Matius in his Mimiambi: [*](Frag. 12, Bahrens (F.P.R. p. 282).)

  1. Revive your cold love in your warm embrace,
  2. Close joining lip to lip like amorous dove (columbulatim).
v3.p.447
And this also he declared to be charmingly and neatly devised: [*](Id. 13.)
  1. The shorn rugs now are drunken with the dye
  2. With which the shell [*](That is, the murex or purple-fish.) has drenched and coloured them. . .