First then, the virgin (so they called her!) who was handed to us was spurious. Her husband was not the first to touch her, he whose little dagger, hanging more limply than the tender beet, never raised itself to the middle of his tunic: but his father is said to have violated his son's bed and to have polluted the unhappy house, either because his lewd mind blazed with blind lust, or because his impotent son was sprung from sterile seed, and therefore one greater of nerve than he was needed, who could unloose the virgin's zone.
Catullus.
Thou tellest of an excellent parent marvellous in piety, who himself urined in the womb of his son!
Door.
But not this alone is Brixia said to have knowledge of, placed 'neath the Cycnean peak, through which the golden-hued Mella flows with its gentle current, Brixia, beloved mother of my Verona. For it talks of the loves of Postumius and of Cornelius, with whom she committed foul adultery.
Catullus.
Folk might say here: "How knowest thou these things, O door? thou who art never allowed absence from thy lord's threshold, nor mayst hear
the folk's gossip, but fixed to this beam art wont only to open or to shut the house!"
Door.
Often have I heard her talking with hushed voice, when alone with her handmaids, about her iniquities, quoting by name those whom we have spoken of, for she did not expect me to be gifted with either tongue or ear. Moreover she added a certain one whose name I'm unwilling to speak, lest he uplift his red eyebrows. A lanky fellow, against whom some time ago was brought a grave law-suit anent the spurious child-birth of a lying belly.