Catullus 17

O Colonia, you who wish to have a long bridge for your games,
and are quite ready to dance, but fear the ill-jointed
legs of your little bridge, standing as it does on old posts done up again,
lest it should fall sprawling and sink down in the depths of the mire;
may you have a good bridge made for you according to your desire,
one in which the rites of Salisubsilus himself may be undertaken,
on condition that you grant me this gift, Colonia, to make me laugh my loudest.
There is a townsman of mine whom I wish to go headlong from your bridge
over head and heels into the mud
only let it be where is the blackest and deepest pit
of the whole bog with its stinking morass.
The fellow is a perfect blockhead, and has not as much sense as a little baby
two years old sleeping in the rocking arms of his father.
He has for a wife a girl in the freshest flower of youth,
a girl too, more exquisite than a tender kidling,
one who ought to be guarded more diligently than the ripest grapes,
and he lets her play as she will, and does not care one straw,
and for his part does not stir himself, but lies like an alder
in a ditch hamstrung by a Ligurian axe,
with just as much perception of everything as if it did not exist anywhere.
Like this, my booby sees nothing, hears nothing;
what he himself is, whether he is or is not, he does not know so much as this.
He it is whom I want now to send head foremost from your bridge,
whether he can all in a moment wake up his lethargy,
and leave his sluggish mind there in the nasty sludge,
as a mule leaves her iron shoe in the stick mire.