/lit/ - Literature

>>23305348
12th Epode (Quid tibi vis), by Horace

‘What’s up, lady most apt for elephantine niggers?
Why send me presents and letters, although
I am no strapping youth, have no distended nose –
yet I sniff out the polyp or goat that beds
in your armpits’ bushes more shrewdly
than does the keenest hound where the boar lies hid.’
– The cock gone slack, what sweat, what evil stench,
envelops all her withered limbs
as she hastes to placate her invincible madness;
foundation cream tinted with crocodile crap,
damp powdered chalk, will not adhere; her lust
makes the overtaxed bedding and canopy split.
Or else she mocks my revulsion with these fierce jibes:
‘You flag with Inachia less than with me:
you manage Inachia thrice in one night, to me
you are nice and make the effort just once.
An ill death may that Lesbia die who discovered
your impotence when I looked for a bull,
when Amyntas of Cos was mine for the taking,
in whose invincible groin is stuck a member
more resolute than a burgeoning mountain tree.
For whom are those woollens hurriedly dyed
again and again in Tyrian purples? For you,
of course, in case in your age-group
there should be found a guest whose mistress values him
more highly than you. Oh! I am so unhappy;
you flee me as lambs fear wolves, as deer fear lions.’