...no mercy from beautiful women (philosophically)
I was sitting in a slightly too comfortable chair on the third floor of a smart library in the centre of Cardiff, one of the biggest ports of the British Empire.
There were two books on my lap. Cicero kept making me drowsy, Catullus kept waking me up. But I thought per aspera ad insignia and persevered with Cicero. I didn't understand much, but how edifying Latin is to look at! And I drowsed off.
Soon, during my ramble in slumber, I seemed to hear "... mere dormientes?", so I opened my eyes and saw one of the librarians accompanied by a security guy approaching Cicero, Catullus, Claudia Pulchra Prima et me - and then solum me, when I woke up a bit more. I smiled at the absurd pair to reassure them that I was indeed just asleep and not, say, taxed to death like a few other civilisations before me and I wondered: an empire in which you need to grab hold of a security man to wake up a reader of Cicero* - is it going to survive?
Then I woke up completely.
PS And yes, I did give them back all the books from my bag... - just kidding.
*or could it be Marcus Antonius that sent them and it wasn't at all about waking me up? I was reading... well, looking at ... (well, sleeping over, actually) the 2nd Philippic.
Illustration: Lesbia by John Reinhart Weguelin (1880-1850)
