v. 10. Scorpionibus. Indecent inscriptions scribbled on the walls and door with burnt sticks.
v. 11. Catullus's mistress had, it seems, run away from him to a common brothel, in front of which it was the custom, not only for women but even for men, to sit down and offer themselves for prostitution.
v. 16. Semitarii moechi. Whoremongers who take up with common women who offer themselves at every corner of the streets for a mere trifle.
v. 20. Hibera Urina. We are assured by Strabo, Lib. 3, that this filthy custom prevailed greatly in Spain: teeth were not only washed in stale urine, the acid of which must necessarily render them white, but they were also rubbed with a powder of calcined human excrement. Persons sometimes even bathed their whole bodies in urine.
C. xxxxi. v. 3. Turpiculo naso. The kind of nose alluded to is such as sheep or goats have. Cf. Lucretius, lib. iv. v. 1152.
C. xxxxvii. v. 6. In trivio, i.e., in the most public places, in hopes of finding some host.
v. 7. This hunting for invitations does not, according to modern notions, place the two friends of Catullus in a respectable light; but it was a common and avowed practice at Rome.
C. liii. v. 5. Salaputium. A pet name for the male virile member. This word has been the subject of much debate among the learned. Some read solopachium, meaning a "mannikin eighteen inches high"; Saumasius proposes salopygium, a "wagtail"; several editors have salaputium, an indelicate word nurses used to children when they fondled them, so that the exclamation would mean, "what a learned little puppet!" Thus Augustus called Horace purissimum penem.
C. liiii. I find it an impossibility to make any sense out of this poem.