Page:The poems of Gaius Valerius Catullus - Francis Warre Cornish.djvu/151



Lesbia says many hard things to me in the presence of her husband, a great joy to the fool. You understand nothing, dull mule. If she forgot me and were silent, she would be heart-whole. But as it is, her snarling and railing means this: she not only remembers but — a much more serious thing — she is angry; that is, she is burning all the while she is talking.

Arrius if he wanted to say ' honours ' used to say ' honours ' and for ' ambush,' ' /'ambush '; and thought he had spoken marvellous well, whenever he said '//ambush' with as much emphasis as possible. So, no doubt, his mother had said, so Liber his uncle, so his grandfather and grandmother on the mother's side. When he was sent into Syria, all our ears had a holiday; they heard the same syllables pronounced quietly and lightly, and had no fear of such words for the future: when on a sudden ic a dreadful message arrives, that the Ionian waves, ever since Arrius went there, are henceforth not Ionian, but //ionian.

I hate and love. Why I do so, perhaps you ask. I know not, but I feel it, and I am in torment.