Catullus, Poems 60

num te leaena montibus Libystinis
aut Scylla latrans infima inguinum parte
tam mente dura procreauit ac taetra,
ut supplicis vocem in novissimo casu
contemptam haberes, a nimis fero corde?

Was it a lioness from the Libystinian mountains or barking Scylla who produced you from the lowest part of her groin, you with your mind so harsh and foul that you hold in contempt the voice of a suppliant in the very final misfortune, from a heart too savage?

Roman poets often played with acrostics, but GP Goold seems to have been the first modern reader to notice that in this poem reading the first and last letters of each line anti-clockwise gives the hidden message ‘natu ceu aes’ (‘by birth like bronze’), a pithy summary of the whole poem.

Catullus, 26

Furi, villula nostra non ad Austri
flatus oppositast neque ad Favoni
nec saevi Boreae aut Apheliotae,
verum ad milia quindecim et ducentos.
o ventum horribilem atque pestilentem!

Furius, our little farmhouse is not exposed to the blasts of the South Wind, nor the West Wind, nor the fierce North Wind or the East Wind, but to 15,200 sesterces. O what a fearful and pestilential wind!

Catullus, 52

quid est, Catulle? quid moraris emori?
sella in curuli Struma Nonius sedet,
per consulatum peierat Vatinius:
quid est, Catulle? quid moraris emori?

What is it, Catullus? Why are you putting off dying? Nonius Struma is sitting in the curule chair, Vatinius is perjuring himself by the consulship. What is it, Catullus? Why are you putting off dying?

There’s word-play in moraris emori, and the name Stroma also means ‘tumour’.