Reader beware: this epigram is a bit more on the raunchy side.
Eune, quod uxoris gravidae putria inguina lambis,
festinas glossas non natis tradere natis.
“Eunus, when you’re licking your pregnant wife’s rotten vagina, you’re hurrying to give your unborn children some tongue.”
This one is a bit nasty. It almost raises my opinion of Ausonius!
Fantastic indeed. And another reason I am grateful to receive your fine translations. And you know what? I’m sure this is hard to believe but, if I didn’t know this was by Ausonius, that Aquatanian rhetorician of the fourth century whom almost nobody has heard of and whom even fewer have read, I’d bet on its being a remark blurted out at a dive bar late on a thirsty Friday night in any one of the fifty states. And the fact that it is susceptible to such confusion naturally heightens its literary importance, at least as that particular concept is currently understood. But what am I saying? Confinement to an American radius is, I should realize, unjustifiable. Writing of this stripe is globally relevant. The eminently contemporary tone is dumbfounding. Never mind the face that purist Gibbon must have pulled upon first encountering this little gem. In today’s world where standards have been pushed ever higher by an insatiable desire for profit and where criticism has truly blossomed, fertilized by the better taste and higher integrity of our epoch, it would be deemed worthy of prime time; whence I conclude that the best possible course of action, if not the only course of action that could be proposed by a man of sense at this hour, is to bring it to HBO.