Believe it or Not ...

I always take some reading material along on a trip mainly for the waiting periods between planes, trains and automobiles. I brought a copy of "Narrow Road to the Deep North" by Richard Flanagan. It's not the cheeriest holiday reading. Nevertheless this is an award winning book about the horrible treatment of Australian POWs in building the Burma railway.
How's this for coincidence. Early on, the main character Dorrigo Evans is perusing a bookshop when the love interest walks in. He picks a book off the shelf to hide behind because she is looking at him.
She sidles over and asks "What's the book?" He says "Catullus - A Roman poet".

 I can't believe I was about to visit Gaius Valerius Catullus' Villa in Sirmione and the book I am reading is quoting some of his stuff.

Let us live and love

And not care tuppence for old men

Who sermonise and disapprove

Suns when they sink can rise again

But we, when our brief light has shone,

Must sleep the long night on and on.

 

 

Catullus Mega Villa

 

Makes you wonder how much a Roman poet can earn when he can build a house 400 m long by 200m wide. But if his book is still around after 2000 yar then .. Believe it or Not.