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[139] I moved uneasily over the bed again and again, as if I sought for the ghost of my love . . . .

'I am not the only one whom God and an inexorable doom pursues. Before me the son of Tiryns was driven from the Inachian shore and bore the burden of heaven, and Laomedon before me satisfied the ominous wrath of two gods.1 Pelias felt Juno's power, Telephus2 fought in ignorance, and Ulysses was in awe of Neptune's kingdom.3 And me too the heavy wrath of Hellespontine Priapus follows over the earth and over the waters of hoary Nereus.' . . .

I began to inquire of Giton whether anyone had asked for me. “No one to-day,” he said, “but yesterday a rather pretty woman came in at the door, and talked to me for a long while, till I was tired of her forced conversation, and then began to say that you deserved to be hurt and would have the tortures of a slave, if your adversary persisted with his complaint.”. . .

[p. 317] I had not finished grumbling, when Chrysis came in, ran up and warmly embraced me, and said, “Now I have you as I hoped; you are my desire, my pleasure, you will never put out this flame unless you quench it in my blood.” . . .

One of the new slaves suddenly ran up and said that my master was furious with me because I had now been away from work two days. The best thing I could do would be to get ready some suitable excuse. It was hardly possible that his savage wrath would abate without a flogging for me . . .

1 He cheated Apollo and Neptune of their wages for building Troy. See Homer, Iliad xxiii, 442: Horace, Odes, iii. 3.

2 He was king of Mysia and fought the Greeks who were driven ashore in his country on their way to Troy. Achilles wounded him with the miraculous spear of Chiron. (Murray,Euripides, p. 345.)

3 The Odyssey is the record of the wanderings of Ulysses by sea.

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    • E. T. Merrill, Commentary on Catullus, 2
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