[9arg] A passage in the Mimiambi of Gnaeus Matius, in which Antonius Iulianus used to delight; and the meaning of Marcus Cato in the speech which he wrote on his own uprightness, when he said: “I have never asked the people for garments.”
ANTONIUS JULIANUS used to say that his ears were soothed and charmed by the newly-coined words of Gnaeus Matius, a man of learning, such as the following, which he said were written by Matius in his Mimiambi: 1
Revive your cold love in your warm embrace,[p. 447] And this also he declared to be charmingly and neatly devised: 2
Close joining lip to lip like amorous dove (columbulatim).
The shorn rugs now are drunken with the dye
With which the shell 3 has drenched and coloured them. . .