halamium of Manilius and Julia, or Vibia, as
later editors have it.

"Wife, away, or conform to my habits. I am no Curius, Numa, or Tatius.
I like to have the hours of night prolonged in luscious cups. You drink
water and are ever for hurrying from the table with a sombre mien; you
like the dark, I like a lamp to witness my pleasures, and to tire my
loins in the light of dawn. Drawers and night gowns and long robes cover
you, but for me no girl can be too naked. For me be kisses like the
cooing doves; your kisses are like those you give your grandmother in
the morning. You do not condescend to assist in the performance by your
movements or your sighs or your hand; (you behave) as if you were taking
the sacrament. The Phrygian slaves masturbated themselves behind the
couch whenever Hector's wife rode St. George; and, however much Ulysses
snored, the chaste Penelope always had her hand there. You forbid my
sodomising you. Cornelia granted this favor to Gracchus; Julia to
Pompey, Porcia to Brutus. Juno was Jupiter's Ganymede before the Dardan
boy mixed the luscious cup. If you are so devoted to propriety--be a
Lucretia to your heart's content all day, I want a Lais at night." xi,
105.

"Since your husband's mode of life and his fidelity are known to you, and
no woman usurps your rights, why are you so foolish as to be annoyed by
his boys, (as if they were his mistresses), with whom love is a transient
and fleeting affair? I will prove to you that you gain more by the boys
than your lord: they make your husband keep to one woman. They give what
a wife will not give. 'I grant that favor,' you say, 'sooner than that
my husband's love should wander from my bed.' It is not the same thing.
I want the fig of Chios, not a flavorless fig; and in you this Chian fig
is flavorless. A woman of sense and a wife ought to know her place. Let
the boys have what concerns them, and confine yourself to what concerns
you." xii, 97.

"Wife, you scold me with a harsh voice when I'm caught with a boy, and
inform me that you too have a bottom. How often has Juno said the same
to the lustful Thunderer? And yet he sleeps with the tall Ganymede. The
Tirynthian Hero put down his bow and sodomised Hylas. Do you think that
Megaera had no buttocks? Daphne inspired Phoebus with love as she fled,
but that flame was quenched by the OEbalian boy. However much Briseis
lay with her bottom turned toward him, the son of AEacus found his