“Often a purple patch or two is tacked on to a serious work of high promise, to give an effect of colour.”

—  Horace , Ars Poetica

Inceptis gravibus plerumque et magna professis
purpureus, late qui splendeat, unus et alter
adsuitur pannus.
Source: Ars Poetica, or The Epistle to the Pisones (c. 18 BC), Line 14

Original

Inceptis gravibus plerumque et magna professis purpureus, late qui splendeat, unus et alter adsuitur pannus.

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Horace 92
Roman lyric poet -65–-8 BC

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