The Defense

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 as Catullus says, after the filthy fashion in vogue among the Iberians.

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 What is there so lascivious in all my verses compared with that one line? I will say nothing of the writings of Diogenes the Cynic, of Zeno the founde

 Now let me read you the others also which they read last as being the most intemperate in expression.

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 There is another poem by Plato dealing conjointly with the boys Alexis and Phaedrus:

 Without citing any further examples I will conclude by quoting a line addressed by Plato to Dion of Syracuse:

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 The divine Hadrian, when he honoured the tomb of his friend the poet Voconius with an inscription in verse from his own pen, wrote thus:

 words which he would never have written had he regarded verse of somewhat too lively a wit as proving their author to be a man of immoral life. I reme

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 The lines which follow are so wonderful, that had you read them you would envy me my wallet even more than you envy me my marriage with Pudentilla.

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 But you who take such exception to fish attribute far different instruments to magicians, charms not to be torn from new-born foreheads, but to be cut

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 Similarly in another passage he says:

 But never in the works of Homer did Proteus anoint his face nor Ulysses his magic trench, nor Aeolus his windbags, nor Helen her mixing bowl, nor Circ

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 He glorified many fish in other verses, stating where each was to be found and whether they were best fried or stewed, and yet he is not blamed for it

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 These words, which I have quoted in Greek, have been selected by Rufinus and separated from their context. He has taken them round as a confession on

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They began by reading one of my jeux d'esprit, a brief letter in verse, addressed to a certain Calpurnianus on the subject of a tooth-powder. When Calpurnianus produced my letter as evidence against me, his desire to do me a hurt blinded him to the fact that if anything in the letter could be urged as a reproach against me, he shared in that reproach. For the verses testify to the fact that he had asked me to send him the wherewithal to clean his teeth:

Good morrow! Friend Calpurnianus, take

the salutation these swift verses make.

Wherewith I send, responsive to thy call,

a powder rare to cleans thy teeth withal.

This delicate dust of Arab spices fine,

shall smooth the swollen gums and sweep away

the relics of the feast of yesterday.

So shall no foulness, no dark smirch be seen,

if laughter shown thy teeth their lips between.

I ask you, what is there in these verses that is disgusting in point either of matter or of manner? What is there that a philosopher should be ashamed to own? Unless indeed I am to blame for sending a powder made of Arabian spices to Calpurnianus, for whom it would be more suitable that he should

Polish his teeth and ruddy gums,