Book I, Epigram 96 (Ker)

If it is not a burden nor irksome to you, my verse, I beg you speak a few words into Maternus' ear, just so, that he alone may hear. Admirer as he is of sad-coloured cloaks, and clad in Baetic wool and in grey, one who thinks that men in scarlet are not men at all, and styles violet mantles the vesture of women, although he praises native colours and always affects sober hues, grass-green are his morals. He will ask you whence springs my suspicion of his effeminacy. We bathe together; he never lifts his gaze, but with eyes devouring the catamites he looks on and surveys their members with no untwitching lips. Do you enquire who this man is? The name has dropped from me.