Page:The Satyricon of Petronius Arbiter (1922), vol. 1.djvu/126

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
 
THE SATYRICON OF

and cheating me out of the night you promised me? But you won’t get off unpunished! You and that lover of yours are going to find out that I am a man!” At the soldier’s orders, his companion bound Quartilla and myself together, mouth to mouth, breast to breast, and thigh to thigh; and not without a great deal of laughter. Then the catamite, also at the soldier’s order, began to beslaver me all over with the fetid kisses of his stinking mouth, a treatment I could neither fly from, nor in any other way avoid. Finally, he ravished me, and worked his entire pleasure upon me. In the meantime, the satyrion which I had drunk only a little while before spurred every nerve to lust and I began to gore Quartilla impetuously, and she, burning with the same passion, reciprocated in the game. The rowdies laughed themselves sick, so moved were they by that ludicrous scene, for here was I, mounted by the stalest of catamites, involuntarily and almost unconsciously responding with as rapid a cadence

60