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Once you used to say you knew only Catullus, Lesbia, that you would not hold Jove before me. I loved you
then, not only as a fellow his mistress, but as a father loves his own sons and
sons-in-law. Now I do know you: so if I burn at greater cost, you are
nevertheless to me far viler and of lighter thought. How can this be? you ask.
Because such wrongs drive a lover to love the more, but less to respect.
Catullus. The Carmina of Gaius Valerius Catullus. Leonard C. Smithers. London. Smithers. 1894.
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