Senum Severiorum @senumseveriorum - Tumblr Blog

Just as it is that a flower, unknown to the livestock, is born secluded within gardens enclosed, by no plow uprooted, a flower which the breezes caress, the sun strengthens, the rain nurtures: many boys and many girls have desired it.

So it is that a young woman, as long as she remains untouched, so long she is dear to her people; but when she has lost her chaste flower, her body besmirched, she remains neither pleasant for boys nor dear to girls.

-Catullus, Poems 62

#Ancient Rome #Cranky Old Men #Senum Severiorum #tagamemnon #catullus #Poems 62 #Satyr being rejected by Hermaphrodite #Pompeii #Fresco #National Archaeological Museum of Naples #Secret Cabinet

There’s nothing a woman doesn’t allow herself, nothing she considers disgusting, once she has put an emerald choker around her neck and has fastened giant pearls to her elongated ears. Meanwhile her face is a hideous sight, quite ludicrous, all swollen with layers of dough and reeking of rich Poppean creams that get glued to her miserable husband’s lips.

-Juvenal, Satire 6

#Ancient Rome #Cranky Old Men #Senum Severiorum #Juvenal #Satire 6 #john william Godward #A Fair Reflection #tagamemnon

She must be fair and straight, and only so far arranged that she will not wish to seem taller or fairer than nature allows.

- Horace, Satires

#Ancient Rome #Cranky Old Men #Senum Severiorium #tagamemnon #Horace #Satires #Naturally sexy to my exact specifications #Athena #Parthenon #Statue of Athena in the Parthenon

If the reason for the danger is right and honourable, women are afraid. Their hearts are frozen with terror and they can’t stand on their trembling feet. But they are feisty in matters of daring and disgrace. If it’s her husband who tells her to, it’s hard to board a ship. That’s when the bilge water is sickening, that’s when the sky wheels round and round. But the woman who’s accompanying her lover has a strong stomach. The other one pukes all over her husband, but this one takes her food with the sailors and wanders all over the deck and enjoys handling the rough ropes. -Juvenal, Satire 6

#Ancient Rome #Cranky old men #Senum Severiorum #tagamemnon #lawrence alma-tadema #The Meeting of Antony and Cleopatra #Gotta get that nautical side piece

Ameana, the well-worn prostitute, demanded the whole 10,000 from me this girl with the ugly nose, friend of the indebted man of Formianus. Relatives, to whom the girl is of concern, call together doctors and friends: the girl is not sane, nor is she accustomed to ask for bronze reflective of her looks.

-Catullus, Poems 41

#Ancient rome #Cranky Old Men #Senum Severiorum #You're not even that hot #Bust of Cleopatra #Altes Museum #tagamemnon

Again there are two types of beauty, of which one is charm, and the other is dignity, we should think charm to be feminine, dignity masculine. Therefore all ornamentation that is not befitting a man should be removed from his appearance, and he should be made wary of similar faults in gesture and movement. For the movements of the palaestra are often unpleasant and some of the gestures of actors are not free from absurdities, and in either case those things that are upright and artless are praised. Additionally, the dignity of one’s appearance must be preserved by a wholesome complexion, a colour from the exercise of the body. To this must be added a simple elegance, neither obnoxious nor overly excessive, but just enough to avoid a countrified and uncivilized neglect. The same rationale is to be enacted with clothing, in which instance, as with most things, moderation is best.

-Cicero, On Duties

#Cicero #On Duties #Fellas is it gay #Ancient Rome #Cranky old men #Senum Severiorum #Anselm Feuerbach #The Symposium #tagamemnon

There’s almost no lawsuit where a woman didn’t start the dispute.

- Juvenal, Satire 6

#Juvenal #Satire 6 #Ancient Rome #Cranky Old Men #Senum Severiorum #Law #Jean-Léon Gérôme #Phryne before the Areopagus #tagamemnon

I have seen Lollia Paulina, who became the consort of Gaius, not at some considerable or solemn ceremonial celebration but actually at an ordinary betrothal banquet, covered with emeralds and pearls interlaced alternately and shining all over her head, hair, ears, neck and fingers, the sum total amounting to the value of 40,000,000 sesterces, she herself being ready at a moment’s notice to give documentary proof of her title to them; nor had they been presents from an extravagant emperor, but ancestral possessions, acquired in fact with the spoil of the provinces. This is the final outcome of plunder, it was for this that Marcus Lollius disgraced himself by taking gifts from kings in the whole of the East, and was cut out of his list of friends by Gaius Caesar son of Augustus and drank poison—that his granddaughter should be on show in the lamplight covered with 40,000,000 sesterces! Now let some one reckon up on one side of the account how much Curius or Fabricius carried in their triumphs, and picture to himself the spoils they displayed, and on the other side Lollia, a single little lady reclining at the Emperor’s side—and would he not think it better that they should have been dragged from their chariots than have won their victories with this result?

- Pliny the Elder, Natural History

#Pliny the Elder #Natural History #Ancient Rome #Cranky old men #Senum Severiorum #Put a mirror in her hand and call it Vanity #fayum mummy portraits #Mummy Portrait of a Woman #Isidora Master #The Getty #tagamemnon

Goodbye, sweetheart. Catullus now stands fast: he will not look for you or court you against your will. But you will be sorry when you are not courted at all. Wretch, pity on you! What life lies in store for you! Who will come to you now? Who will think you pretty? Whom will you love now? Who will people say you are? Whom will you kiss? Whose lips will you bite?

-Catullus, Poems 8

#Bitter Boy #Gals being Pals #Catullus #Poem 62 #Ancient Rome #Cranky Old Men #Senum Severiorum #Simeon Solomon #Sappho and Erinna in a Garden at Mytilene #tagamemnon

Can you put up with any woman as your boss with so many ropes available, when those dizzily high windows are wide open, when the Aemilian bridge offers itself to you so conveniently? Alternatively, if you don’t like any of these many ways out, don’t you think it would be better to have a boyfriend sleep with you? A boyfriend won’t enter into nocturnal disputes, won’t demand little presents from you as he lies there, and won’t complain that you’re not exerting yourself or that you’re not panting as much as you’re told to.

-Juvenal, Satire 6

#Girl Cooties #Juvenal #Satire 6 #Ancient Rome #Cranky Old Men #Senum Severiorum #Henri Regnault #Thetis bringing the Arms forged by Vulcan to Achilles #tagamemnon

…which is not unnecessarily lavish, but only in such degree as would suffice a modest and beautiful woman to set off her beauty—a delicate chain round her neck, a light ring on her finger, pendants in her ears, a buckle, a band that confines the luxuriance of her hair and adds as much to her good looks as a purple border adds to a gown. It is courtesans, especially the less attractive of them, who have clothing all purple and necks all gold, trying to secure seductiveness by extravagance and to make up for their lack of beauty by the addition of extraneous charms; they think that their arms will look whiter when they are bright with gold, and that the unshapeliness of their feet will escape notice in golden sandals, and that their very faces will be lovelier when seen together with something very bright. This is the course they follow; but a modest girl uses only what gold is sufficient and necessary, and would not be ashamed of her beauty, I am sure, if she were to show it unadorned. -Lucian, The Hall

#Be Hot #But like Effortlessly Hot #Naturally sexy to my exact specifications #Lucian #The Hall #Ancient Rome #Cranky Old Men #Senum Severiorum #Venus #Statuette of Venus untying her sandal #Pompeii #National Archaeological Museum of Naples #Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli #tagamemnon

But at least these women undergo the dangers of childbirth and put up with all the work of nursing that their position in life forces on them. By contrast, hardly any woman lies in labour on a gilded bed. So powerful are the skills and drugs of the woman who manufactures sterility and takes contracts to kill humans inside the belly. Celebrate, you poor wretch. Offer your wife whatever she has to drink yourself. After all, if she were prepared to stretch and torture her womb with jumping baby boys, you’d perhaps turn out to be father of an Ethiopian. Soon your will would be monopolised by your discoloured heir—whom you’d never want to see in the morning light.

-Juvenal, Satire 6

#juvenal #satire 6 #Ancient Rome #Cranky Old Men #Senum Severiorum #Reproductive Rights #John William Waterhouse #Jason and Medea Study #That racism and misogyny combo is such a good look #tagamemnon

Oh mad one, do you now even imitate the dyed Britons, and play the coquette with a foreign tint on a dyed head? Looks as nature bestowed them are always most becoming; Belgian colour on a Roman face is ugly. Let many evils come to that girl in the underworld, who in her stupidity cheated and altered her tresses.

-Propertius, Elegies

#I will dye my hair however I want and you can die mad about it #Propertius #Elegies #Ancient Rome #Cranky Old Men #Senum Severiorum #Cosmetics #Dante Gabriel Rossetti #Proserpine #Persephone #tagamemnon

But maidens like to carp at you with disingenuous complaint. Why then, if they complain, do they silently seek you out?

- Catullus, Poems 62

#Catullus #Poem 62 #Ancient Rome #Cranky old men #Senum Severiorum #Alma Tadema #My Sister Is Not In #tagamemnon

Yet let no lover find the boxes set out upon the table; your looks are aided by dissembled art. Who would not be offended by paint smeared over all the face, when by its weight it glides and falls into your warm bosom? How strong is the smell of oil of wool, though from Athens be sent the juices drawn from a sheep’s unwashed fleece! Nor should I approve your openly taking the mixed marrow of a hind, or cleaning your teeth for all to see; such things will give beauty, but they will be unseemly to look on…

- Ovid, Ars Amatoria

#Ovid #Ars Amatoria #Ancient Rome #Cranky Old Men #Senum Severiorum #Cosmetics #Grave Naiskos of an Enthroned Woman with an Attendant #Getty Museum #Be sexy ladies but don't let us see you get sexy because that's gross #tagamemnon

Don’t let the lady reclining next to you have her own rhetorical style or brandish phrases before hurling her rounded syllogism at you. Don’t let her know the whole of history. Let there be a few things in books that she doesn’t even understand. I loathe the woman who is forever referring to Palaemon’s Grammar 95 and thumbing through it, observing all the laws and rules of speech, or who quotes lines I’ve never heard, a female scholar.

-Juvenal, Satire 6

#Juvenal #Satire 6 #Ancient Rome #Cranky Old Men #Senum Severiorum #Smart Women #Pompeii #Fresco #Terentius Neo and his wife #National Archaeological Museum of Naples

Caelius, our Lesbia, that Lesbia, that same Lesbia, whom Catullus loved more than himself and more than all his own, now loiters at the cross-roads and in the backstreets ready to toss-off the grandsons of the brave Remus.

Catullus, Poems 58

Catullus (1st century BCE) wrote both some beautiful love poetry and then a pile of this nonsense when the girl dumped him. It’s mostly hilariously bitter, sour grapes slut shaming.

He is also the author of the infamous “I will sodomize and face-fuck you” poem. Dude had some emotion management issues, but knew how to turn a phrase.

#Catullus #Poem 58 #Ancient Rome #Cranky old men #Senum Severiorum #Sad because he got dumped #theodore chasseriau #Yes I know he's not technically an old man but being a cranky old man is in the heart #Apollo and Daphne #tagamemnon

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