First you must often grieve, at your mistress’s wrongs towards you, often requesting something, often being rejected. And often chew your helpless fingernails between your teeth, and tap the ground nervously with your foot, in anger!
My hair was drenched with scent: no use: nor my departing feet, delaying, with measured step. Magic roots are worth nothing here, nor Colchian witch of night, nor herbs distilled by Perimede’s hand, since we see no cause or visible blow anywhere: still, it’s a dark path such evils come by.
The patient needs no doctor, no soft bed: it’s not the wind or weather hurts him. He walks about – yet suddenly his funeral startles his friends. Whatever love is, it’s unforeseen like this. What deceitful fortune-teller have I not been victim of, what old woman has not pondered my dreams ten times?
If anyone wants to be my enemy, let him desire girls: yet delight in boys if he wants to be my friend. You slide down the tranquil stream in a boat in safety: how can such tiny waves from the bank hurt you? Often his mood alters with a single word: she will scarcely be satisfied with your blood.
—Sextus Propertius
Propertius 2.4, translated by A. S. Kline
