C. lxxxxiiii. v. 1. There is a double meaning in the original, and the translator can give but half of it. Mentula, synonymous with penis, is a nickname applied by Catullus to Mamurra, of whom he says (cxv.) that he is not a man, but a great thundering mentula. Mahérault has happily rendered the meaning of the epigram in French, in which language there is an equivalent for Mentula, that is to say, a man's name which is also a popular synonym for what characterizes the god Priapus. "Jean Chouard fornique; eh! sans doute, c'est bien Jean Chouard. C'est ainsi qu'on peut dire que c'est la marmite qui cueille les choux." Achilles Statius interprets this distich thus, "It is the flesh that is guilty, and not I who am guilty; so is it the pot that robs the garden, and not the thief that robs the pot-herbs."
v. 2. Ipsa olera olla legat. This may have been a cant proverb of the day containing a meaning which is now unknown to us. Parthenius interprets it "A libidinous man is apt in adultery, as a vessel is suited to hold its contents."
C. lxxxxvii. v. 1. There is in the Greek Anthology a similar epigram by Nicarchus, which has thus been translated by Grotius:
Non culo, Theodore, minus tibi foetida bucca est
Noscera discrimen sit sapientis opus.
Scribere debueras hîc podex est meus, hic os;
Nunc tu cum pedas atque loquare simul,
Discere non valeo, quid venerit inde vel inde;
Vipera namque infra sibilat atque supra.
v. 7. Few are ignorant of what Scaliger here gravely tells us: fessi muli strigare solent, ut meiant. Vossius reads defissus, in a different sense.