Are you preparing to get married, Postumus, in this day and age, when you could just commit suicide or sleep with a boy
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Are you preparing to get married, Postumus, in this day and age, when you could just commit suicide or sleep with a boy? --lines 6.25-37 of Satire VI
The author sets the frame for his satire with a hyperbolic presentation of the options available to the Roman male – marriage, suicide, or a boy lover:
- Are you even in this day and age preparing both a prenup
- and an engagement, and getting a trim from a master
- barber, and you have even perchance given the pledge to her finger?
- You certainly used to be healthy. Postumus, are you getting married?
- Tell me by what Fury and by what vipers you are goaded.
- Can you endure any Master-ess when there are so many good strong ropes,
- When high, vertiginous windows are wide open,
- when the Aemilian bridge offers itself to you – just right next door?
- Or if from so many options no mode of death strikes your fancy,
- Surely you think it better that a supple boy sleep with you?
- A boy, who does not conduct a nocturnal lawsuit at you, who wheedles
- no little gifts from you as he lies there, and neither complains because
- you are going easy on him, nor because you don’t gasp as much as he demands.
- conuentum tamen et pactum et sponsalia nostra
- tempestate paras iamque a tonsore magistro
- pecteris et digito pignus fortasse dedisti?
- certe sanus eras. uxorem, Postume, ducis?
- dic qua Tisiphone, quibus exagitere colubris.
- ferre potes dominam saluis tot restibus ullam,
- cum pateant altae caligantesque fenestrae,
- cum tibi uicinum se praebeat Aemilius pons?
- aut si de multis nullus placet exitus, illud
- nonne putas melius, quod tecum pusio dormit?
- pusio, qui noctu non litigat, exigit a te
- nulla iacens illic munuscula, nec queritur quod
- et lateri parcas nec quantum iussit anheles.
- (6.25-37)
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