Page:Catullus, Tibullus and Propertius.djvu/84

72 vent, by publicity, all such irregular proceedings. But now the youths wax bold in their retort, and wickedly insinuate that the fair combatants are not really so very wroth with Hesper for his slackness. After a couplet which seems to imply, though its sense is obscure and ambiguous, that the sort of thieves whom these maidens revile, and whose ill name is not confined to Roman literature (for in the Russian songs, as we learn from Mr Ralston's entertaining volumes, the bridegroom is familiarly regarded as the "enemy," "that evil-thief," and "the Tartar"), speedily find their offences condoned, and are received into favour, they add a pretty plain charge against the complainants that—

This is such a home-thrust that the virgins change their tactics, and adduce an argument ad misericordiam, which is one of the most admired passages of Catullus, on the score of a simile often imitated from it. The following version will be found tolerably literal:—