April 3, 692

Lately I've been getting dirty looks from all of the senators while I walk in the street. It's because of my relationship with Catullus. They just don't understand that I don't love Quintus, my husband. I didn't choose to marry him and I feel trapped in our relationship. Catullus makes me feel alive, as free as a bird. When I'm with him I feel like I'm soaring above the world, but when I leave, I crash back into reality and doubt why I ever wandered from my monotonous life as a house wife.

Catullus wrote me a poem that eased my anxious feelings. Here it is:

VIVAMUS mea Lesbia, atque amemus,
rumoresque senum seueriorum
omnes unius aestimemus assis!
soles occidere et redire possunt:
nobis cum semel occidit breuis lux,
nox est perpetua una dormienda.
da mi basia mille, deinde centum,
dein mille altera, dein secunda centum,
deinde usque altera mille, deinde centum.
dein, cum milia multa fecerimus,
conturbabimus illa, ne sciamus,
aut ne quis malus inuidere possit,
cum tantum sciat esse basiorum.

Let us live, my Lesbia, and let us love
and value at one penny
the talk of all the old men
the sun may set and then be able to rise
For us, when the dim light set
remains to be slept the sleep of an unbroken night
Give me a thousand kisses, and then a hundred,
Then another thousand, then a second hundred
then another thousand, then a hundred
Then, when we have made many thousands
we will mix them all up so that we don't know,
and so that no one can be jealous of us when he finds out
how many kisses we have shared.