This text is part of:
Search the Perseus Catalog for:
Table of Contents:
Egnatius, who has shiny, white teeth, grins forever everywhere. If he is in
court, when counsel excites tears, he grins. If he be at funeral pyre where one
mourns a son devoted, where a bereft mother's tears stream for her only son, he
grins. Whatever it may be, wherever he is, whatever may happen, he grins. Such
an ill habit has he—neither in good taste, I suppose, nor refined.
Therefore take note from me, my good Egnatius. Whether you are from the city or
Sabine or Tiburtine, or a thrifty
Umbrian or a fat Etruscan, or a dark, toothy Lanuvian, or Transpadine (to touch
upon my own folk also), or whoever of those who cleanly wash their teeth, still
I wish you wouldn't grin forever everywhere; for nothing is more senseless than
senseless giggling. Now you're a Celtiberian: and in the Celtiberian land early
in the morning they piss and scrub their teeth and pinky gums with it, so that
the higher the polish on your teeth, the more it proclaims that you have drunk
your piss.
Catullus. The Carmina of Gaius Valerius Catullus. Leonard C. Smithers. London. Smithers. 1894.
The National Endowment for the Humanities provided support for entering this text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.