Messius: Accipio; caput et movet. O, tua cornu
Ni foret exsecto frons, inquit, quid faceres, cum
Sic mutilus miniteris? At illi foeda cicatrix
Setosam laevi frontem turpaverat oris.
Campanum in morbum, in faciem permulta iocatus
Pastorem saltaret uti Cyclopa, rogabat;
Nil illi larva aut tragicis opus esse cothurnis.
Multa Cicirrus ad haec.
(Messius was sprung of the renowned race of the Oscans, Sarmentus’mistress is yet living; from these ancestors derived, they came to the fray. First begins Sarmentus: “I declare you are just like an unbroken horse.” At this sally we laugh, and Messius himself says: “I accept the likeness,” and tosses his head. “Oh! if your horn had not been amputated from your brow,” says he then, “what would you do, since you threaten us so fiercely, mutilated as you are?” Now an ugly scar disfigured the left side of his shaggy brow. After making a number of jibes at his Campanian disease, and his face, he asked him to dance the shepherd Cyclops; saying there needed no mask and tragic buskins. Many jests Cicirrus added as well).
Messius who is chiefly spoken of in the above passage, is in the first place represented as an Oscan by birth. Now the whole race of the Oscans was, as Festus informs us, notorious for its unnatural excesses in matters of Love; we read in him, p. 191: “Obscum duas diversas et contrarias significationes habet. Nam Cloatius putat eo vocabulo significari sacrum, quo etiam leges sacrae Oscae dicuntur, et in omnibus fere antiquis commentariis scribitur Opicum pro Obsco, ut in Titini fabula quinta: Qui Obsce et Volsce fabulantur, nam Latine nesciunt. A quo etiam verba impudentia, et elata appellantur obscena, quia frequentissimus fuit usus Oscis libidinum spurcarum.” (Obscum has two different and contrary meanings. For Cloatius considers sacred to be signified by the word, in which sense sacred laws are spoken of as leges Oscae (Oscan laws), and in almost all the old commentaries Opicum is written for Obscum, as in the fifth Fable of Titinius: “Who converse in Obscan and Volscian, because they know not how in Latin.” Whence also indecent words, and swelling ones, are called obscene, because the practice of unclean lusts was most frequent among the Oscans[120].)