simplicis ignem_.

But long after the rapture had passed away the enthralment remained.
Lesbia's first infidelities only riveted her lover's chains--

_Amantem iniuria talis
Cogit amare magis;_

then he hangs between love and hatred, in the poise of soul immortalised
by him in the famous verse--

_Odi et amo: quare id faciam fortasse requiris;
Nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior._

There were ruptures and reconciliations, and renewed ruptures and
repeated returns, but through them all, while his love hardly lessens,
his hatred continually grows, and the lyrical cry becomes one of the
sharpest agony: through protestations of fidelity, through wails over
ingratitude, he sinks at last into a stupor only broken by moans of pain.
Then at last youth reasserts itself, and he is stung into new life by the
knowledge that he has simply dropped out of Lesbia's existence. His final
renunciation is no longer addressed to her deaf ears, but flung at her in
studied insult through two of the associates of their old revels in Rome.

_Cum suis vivat valeatque moechis
Quos simul complexa tenet trecentos
Nullum amans vere, sed identidem[2] omnium
Ilia rumpens--_

so the hard clear verse flashes out, to melt away in the dying fall, the