'I would excuse the saucy truth of words—that is, the language of epigrams—if the precedent were my own; (but) thus did Catullus write, thus Marsus, thus Pedo, thus Gaetulicus, thus whosoever is perused.'

The asyndeton of this protasis is patently adversative, the actual use of a strong adversative conjunction such as ‘at’ or ‘attamen’ being precluded by the exigencies of the metre. All the poets mentioned were epigrammatists of the 1st centuries BCE and CE and are all notable for their sometimes loose or actually pornographic content, although Catullus is the only one whose work survives in anything like a complete form. For the scanty remains of their poetry, cf. Fragmenta Poetarum Latinorum Epicorum et Lyricorum, ed. Jürgen Blänsdorf, Teubner, 1995. pp. 278ff., 290ff., 307f.