Carmina

Alfenus, unmindful and unfaithful to your comrades true, is there now no pity in you, hard of heart, for your sweet loving friend? Do you betray me now, and not hesitate to play me false now, dishonourable one? Yet the irreverent deeds of traitorous men do not please the dwellers in heaven: this you take no heed of, leaving me wretched among my ills. Tell me, ah, what may men do, or in whom may they have their trust? Surely you used to bid me entrust my soul to you, unfair, drawing my affections to yourself, as though all were safely mine. Yet now you withdraw yourself, and all your purposeless words and deeds you suffer the winds and airy clouds to bear away. If you have forgotten, yet the gods remember, Faith remembers, and in time to come will make you regret your doing.

Sirmio! Eyelet of islands and peninsulas, which each Neptune holds whether in limpid lakes or on the wide sea, how gladly and how happily do I see you again, scarcely believing that I've left behind Thynia and the Bithynian plains, and that I gaze on you safe and sound. O what greater blessing than cares released, when the mind casts down its burden, and when wearied with the toil of travel we reach our hearth, and rest in the long-for bed. This and only this repays our numerous labors. Hail, lovely Sirmio, and rejoice in your master; and rejoice, you waves of the Lybian lake; laugh, you laughters echoing from my home.

Please, my sweet Ipsithilla, my delight, my charmer: order me to come to you at noon. And if you should order this, it will be useful if no one makes fast the outer door [against me], and don't be minded to go out, but stay at home and prepare for us nine continuous love-makings. In truth if you are minded, give the order at once: for breakfast over, I lie supine and ripe, poking through both tunic and cloak.

0 best of the thieves of the baths, Vibennius the father, and his sexually submissive son (for the father is the filthier with the right hand, the son is the greedier with the backside), why don't you go into exile and to hellish shores, seeing that the father's plunder is known to the people, and that, son, you cannot sell your hairy butt for one cent?