Whose shall they call thee, false one, whose?
Who shall thy darted kisses sip,
While thy keen love-bites scar his lip?
But thou, Catullus, scorn to feel:
Persist—and let thy heart be steel.”
Plautus alludes to this biting;[4] and Horace says (Ode XIII.), as already quoted:
“Or on thy lips the fierce fond boy
Marks with his teeth the furious joy.”
Plutarch tells us that Flora, the mistress of Cn. Pompey, used to say, in commendation of her lover, that she could never quit his arms without giving him a bite. And Tibullus, in his confession of his illicit love for Delia, the wife of another, and of his devices for covering his tracks, says, among other things, “I gave her juices and herbs for removing the livid marks which mutual Venus makes by the impress of the teeth.”
