Carmen X (Cornish)

My dear Varus had taken me from the Forum, where I was idling, to pay a visit to his mistress, a little thing, as I thought at a first glance, not at all amiss in manner or looks. When we got there, we fell talking of this and that, and amongst other things, what sort of place Bithynia was now, how its affairs were going on, whether I had made any money there. I answered (what was true) that as things now are, neither praetors themselves nor their staff can find any means of coming back fatter than they went, especially as they had such a beast for a praetor, a fellow who did not care a straw for his subalterns.

" Well, but at any rate" say they, "you must have got some bearers for your chair. I am told that is the country where they are bred." I, to make myself out to the girl as specially fortunate above the rest, say, " Things did not go so unkindly with me—bad as the province was which fell to my chance—as to prevent my getting eight straight-backed fellows." Now I had not a single one, here or there, strong enough to hoist on his shoulder the broken leg of an old sofa. Says she (just like her shamelessness), Ct I beg you, my dear Catullus, do lend me those slaves you speak of for a moment; I want just now to be taken to the temple of Serapis." " Stop" say I to the girl, "what I said just now about those slaves, that they were mine, it was a slip; there is a friend of mine—Gaius Cinna it is —; it was he who bought them for his own use; but it is all one to me whether they are his or mine, I use them just as if I had bought them for myself: but you are a stupid, tiresome thing, who will never let one be off one's guard."