C. Valerius Catullus, Carmina
Leonard C. Smithers, Ed.

Who can see this, who can stand it, save the shameless, the glutton, and gambler, that Mamurra Mentula should possess what long-haired Gaul had and remotest Britain had before? You sodomite Romulus, will you see this and bear it? Then you are shameless, a glutton and a gambler. And will he now, proud and overflowing, saunter over each one's bed, like a little white dove or an Adonis? You sodomite Romulus, will you see this and bear it? Then you are shameless, a glutton and a gambler. For such a name, Generalissimo, have you been to the furthest island of the west, that this love-weary Mentula of yours should squander twenty or thirty million? What is it but a skewed liberality? Perhaps he spent too little, or perhaps he was washed clean? First he wasted his patrimony; second the loot from Pontus; then third the loot from Spain, which even the goldbearing Tagus knows. Now he is feared by Gauls and Britain. Why do you indulge this scoundrel? What can he do but devour well-fattened inheritances? Was it for such a name, † most wealthy father-in-law and son-in-law, that you have destroyed everything?