Book VII, Epigram 95 (Ker)

'Tis winter, and rough December is stiff' with frost, yet you dare with icy kiss, as you go here and there, to stop all you meet, and to kiss all Rome, Linus. What more severe and more cruel revenge could you take if you had been assaulted and beaten? In this cold not even my wife should kiss me, nor my innocent daughter with her wheedling lips; but you are more pleasant and refined, from whose dog-like nostrils a livid icicle hangs, whose beard is as stiff as that which, with up-turned scissors, a Cilician barber reaps off' a Cinyphian he-goat. I would sooner run across a hundred lewd rascals, and I fear less a priest of Cybele fresh from his vices. So, if you have any feeling and shame, I ask you, Linus, to put off your wintry osculations till the month of April.