At the beginning of the Christian Era, Roman Literature writers had begun to come into their own, and the first century A.D. saw many of the greatest Romans of them all in the paths of Literature.
Catullus, the blithe poet who left us some hundred or so of his poems, frequently wrote lines more lyrical than chaste. Yet he himself bids us remember that if a poet’s life be chaste, his lines need not necessarily be so, too.
As Herrick later put it, “Jocund his muse was, but his life was chaste.”
But the self-revelations of Catullus are probably no more improper to read than those of many later and lesser poets.
Catullus
THE ROMAN COCKNEY
Stipends Anius even on opportunity shtipends,
Ambush as hambush still Anius used to declaim;
Then, hoped fondly the words were a marvel of articulation,
While with an h immense hambush arose from his heart.
So his mother of old, so e’en spoke Liber his uncle,