"Quisquis amat valeat, pereat qui nescit amare,"

represented by the first couplet of the English rendering, calls to mind
the swinging refrain which we find a century or two later in the
_Pervigilium Veneris_, that last lyrical outburst of the pagan world,
written for the eve of the spring festival of Venus:

"Cras amet qui nunquam amavit quique amavit eras amet."

(To-morrow he shall love who ne'er has loved
And who has loved, to-morrow he shall love.)

An interesting study might be made of the favorite types of feminine
beauty in the Roman poets. Horace sings of the "golden-haired" Pyrrhas,
and Phyllises, and Chloes, and seems to have had an admiration for
blondes, but a poet of the common people, who has recorded his opinion on
this subject in the atrium of a Pompeian house, shows a more catholic
taste, although his freedom of judgment is held in some constraint:

"My fair girl has taught me to hate
Brunettes with their tresses of black.
I will hate if I can, but if not,
'Gainst my will I must love them also."[70]

On the other hand, one Pompeian had such an inborn dread of brunettes
that, whenever he met one, he found it necessary to take an appropriate
antidote, or prophylactic:

"Whoever loves a maiden dark
By charcoal dark is he consumed.