Book 1

You whom my earliest Muse named, and whom my last shall name, now that I have been watched enough in the ring and given my discharge, Maecenas, you would shut me again in the old school. My age is not what it was, nor my mind. Veianius, his arms nailed up at Hercules' doorpost, lies hidden away in the country, not to beg the crowd again, time after time, from the arena's edge. There is one who keeps sounding in my well-cleared ear: "Be sensible, and turn the ageing horse out in good time, before he stumbles at the last, a laughing-stock, and breaks his wind." So now I lay aside verses and all my other toys; what is true and fitting is my care, my question, my whole concern; I store and arrange what I may presently bring forth. And in case you ask under what leader, what household-god I shelter: sworn to swear by no master's words, wherever the weather sweeps me, there I am carried as a guest. Now I grow brisk and plunge into the surf of public life, a strict and rigid guardian of true virtue; now I slip back, in secret, to the precepts of Aristippus, and try to bend things to myself, not myself to things. As the night is long for those whose mistress fails them, and the day long for those who owe a day's labour, as the year drags slow for wards held down by their mothers' harsh guardianship; so to me the hours flow slow and thankless that delay the hope and plan of setting briskly about the thing which helps poor and rich alike, and which, neglected, will harm young and old alike. It remains that I should govern and console myself with these first lessons. You may not be able to strain your eye as far as Lynceus, yet for that you would not despise being salved when sore; nor, because you despair of the limbs of unconquered Glyco, would you refuse to keep your body free of knotty gout. There is a point to which one may advance, if no further is given. Your heart is on fire with greed and wretched longing: there are words and spells by which you may soothe that pain and lay aside a great part of the sickness. You swell with love of praise: there are sure rites which can restore you, if the little book is read three times with a clean heart. The envious, the irascible, the slack, the wine-soaked, the lover— no one is so savage that he cannot be tamed, if only he lends a patient ear to schooling. To flee vice is virtue, and the first of wisdom is to have been rid of folly. You see what you believe the greatest of evils—a slender fortune and a shameful rejection at the polls— and with what labour of mind and head you shun them; a tireless trader, you run to the farthest Indies, fleeing poverty over sea, over rocks, through fire: will you not learn, and listen, and trust your better, so as not to care for the things you foolishly admire and crave? What boxer, fighting round the villages and the crossroads, would scorn to be crowned at the great Olympia, when there is hope, when there is the prospect, of the sweet palm without the dust? Silver is worth less than gold, gold less than virtue. "Citizens, citizens, money is to be sought first; virtue after cash!" This is what Janus' colonnade preaches from top to bottom; this the young and old chant by rote, their satchel and ledger slung from the left arm. You have a mind, you have character, you have eloquence and honour, but you fall six or seven thousand short of the four hundred; you will be a commoner. Yet boys at play say, "You will be king, if you do right." Let this be your wall of bronze, to have no guilt on your conscience, to grow pale at no fault. Tell me, please—is the Roscian law the better, or the children's rhyme that offers a kingdom to those who do right, and was sung over by the manly Curii and the Camilli? Does he advise you better who says, "Make money, money, honestly if you can, if not, by any means, money," the better to watch Pupius' tearful tragedies from up close, or he who urges you, present at your side, to stand erect and free, and answer back to proud Fortune? But if the Roman people should chance to ask me why I do not enjoy the same opinions as I do the same colonnades, nor pursue or flee what they themselves love or hate, I would answer as the wary fox once answered the sick lion: "Because the tracks frighten me, all of them pointing toward you, none turned back." You are a beast of many heads; for whom or what should I follow? Some men long to farm the public revenues; there are those who hunt greedy widows with sweets and apples, and net old men to stock their preserves; for many a fortune grows by hidden usury. So be it— that some are gripped by some pursuits, some by others: can the same men last out one hour, approving the same things? "No bay outshines lovely Baiae" — if the rich man has said it, lake and sea feel the love of their hurrying master; but if a faulty whim has given him the omen, "Tomorrow, workmen, you will carry your tools to Teanum!" If a marriage-bed stands in his hall, he says nothing is better, nothing finer than the single life; if not, he swears that only the married are well off. With what knot will you hold this Proteus as he shifts his shape? And the poor man? You laugh: he changes his garrets, his beds, his baths, his barbers; in a hired boat he is just as seasick as the rich man whom his private galley carries. If I meet you with my hair cut by an uneven barber, you laugh; if by chance a worn shirt shows beneath my well-combed tunic, or if my toga sits awry, you laugh: but what when my judgement is at war with itself, spurns what it sought, seeks again what it lately let go, heaves like the tide and is out of step with the whole order of life, pulls down, builds up, swaps round for square? You think my madness is the ordinary kind, and do not laugh, nor believe I need a doctor, or a guardian appointed by the praetor—though you are the warden of my affairs, and lose your temper over a badly cut nail on the friend who hangs on you and looks to you. In sum: the wise man is less only than Jove—rich, free, honoured, handsome, in short a king of kings, above all sound in health, except when the phlegm is troublesome.

While you declaim at Rome, Lollius Maximus, I at Praeneste have reread the writer of the Trojan War; who tells, more plainly and better than Chrysippus and Crantor, what is fair, what foul, what useful, what not. Why I have come to think so, unless something detains you, hear. The story in which, on account of Paris' love, Greece is told to have clashed with the barbarian in a long-drawn war, holds the passions of foolish kings and peoples. Antenor moves to cut away the cause of the war: what of Paris? He denies he can be forced—to reign safe and live happy. Nestor hurries to settle the quarrels between the son of Peleus and the son of Atreus; love inflames the one, but anger inflames them both alike. Whatever folly the kings commit, the Achaeans pay for it. By faction, treachery, crime, lust and rage men sin within the walls of Troy and without. Again, to show what virtue and what wisdom can do, he has set before us in Ulysses a useful example— who, the tamer of Troy, looked with foresight on the cities and the manners of many men, and over the wide sea, while he wrought a homecoming for himself and his comrades, bore many hardships, but was never sunk beneath the waves of misfortune. You know the Sirens' voices and the cup of Circe; had he drunk it, foolish and greedy, with his comrades, he would have lived foul and witless under a harlot mistress, or lived a filthy dog, a sow that loves the mire. We are mere ciphers, born to consume the fruits of the earth, Penelope's worthless suitors, the young men of Alcinous' court, busied beyond measure with the grooming of their skins, who counted it fine to sleep till midday and to lull their cares to rest at the sound of the lyre. To cut a man's throat, robbers rise before dawn; to save your own self, will you not wake? And yet, if you will not run while sound, you will run when dropsical; and unless you call before daybreak for your book and a light, unless you bend your mind to study and to honourable pursuits, you will be racked, sleepless, by envy or by love. For why do you hasten to remove what hurts the eye, while, if anything gnaws at the mind, you put off the time of cure for a year? Half is done by him who has begun: dare to be wise; begin! He who puts off the hour of living rightly waits, like the rustic, for the river to run dry; but it glides on, and will glide on, rolling for all eternity. Money is sought, and a wife blest with bearing of children, and untilled woods are tamed with the ploughshare: let the man to whom enough has fallen wish for nothing more. No house and land, no heap of bronze and gold, has drawn the fevers from the sick body of their owner, nor cares from his mind; the possessor must be well if he means to use his gathered goods aright. The man who craves or fears finds house and wealth as pleasing as paintings to the bleary, poultices to the gouty, the lyre to ears that ache with gathered grime. Unless the vessel is clean, whatever you pour in turns sour. Scorn pleasures; pleasure bought with pain does harm. The greedy man is always in want; set a fixed limit to your desire. The envious grows lean at another's flourishing estate; Sicilian tyrants invented no torment greater than envy. He who will not curb his anger will wish undone what resentment and a wounded mind have urged, while he hastens to feed his unappeased hatred by force. Anger is a brief madness: rule your spirit; unless it obeys it commands; rein it in, hold it back with a chain. The trainer breaks the horse, while its neck is tender, to go docile the way the rider points; the hunting pup, from the time it barked at the deerskin in the hall, campaigns in the woods. Now, while your heart is pure, boy, drink in these words; now offer yourself to your betters. The jar will long keep the scent with which, when new, it was once steeped. But if you lag, or stride ahead too briskly, I neither wait for the slow nor press hard on those ahead.

On what shores of earth Claudius, the stepson of Augustus, is soldiering, I am anxious to know, Julius Florus. Is it Thrace and the Hebrus bound in fetters of snow, or the straits that run between their neighbouring towers, or the rich plains and hills of Asia that detain you? What is the studious staff composing? This too is my care. Who undertakes to write the deeds of Augustus? Who spreads his wars and peaces into a far-off age? What of Titius, soon to be on Roman lips— who did not blanch at draughts from the Pindaric spring, who dared to disdain the open pools and brooks? How does he fare? Does he remember me? Does he strive, with the Muse for his patron, to fit Theban measures to Latin strings, or does he rage and storm in the tragic art? What is my Celsus doing? He was warned, and must be warned again, to seek his own resources and avoid touching whatever writings the Palatine Apollo has received, lest, if some day the flock of birds should come back to reclaim their feathers, the poor crow raise a laugh, stripped of his stolen colours. And you—what do you venture? What thyme do you flit nimbly round? Your talent is not small, not uncultivated, not unbecomingly rough. Whether you whet your tongue for the courts, or prepare to give opinions on the civil law, or compose some lovely song, you will win the first prizes of the conquering ivy. But if you could leave behind the cold poultices of care, you would go wherever heavenly wisdom led you. This is the task, this the pursuit, let us press on, small men and great, if we wish to live dear to our country and to ourselves. You must write back this too: whether Munatius is as dear to you as he should be; or whether the friendship, badly patched, draws together in vain and tears apart again. But you, whether hot blood or ignorance of the world goads you, wild creatures of an unbroken neck, wherever you live, unworthy to break the bond of brotherhood— a votive heifer is being fattened against your return.

Albius, frank judge of my discourses, what shall I say you are doing now in the country of Pedum? Writing what would outdo the little works of Cassius of Parma, or stealing silently through the healthful woods, caring for whatever is worthy of a wise and good man? You were never a body without a mind: the gods gave you beauty, the gods gave you wealth and the art of enjoying it. What more could a fond nurse pray for her sweet ward, than that he should be able to be wise and to say what he feels, and that favour, fame, and health should fall to him in plenty, with a refined living and a purse that never fails? Amid hope and care, amid fears and angers, believe that each day has dawned as your last; welcome will come the hour that was not hoped for. You will visit me sleek and fat, my skin well tended, when you wish for a laugh—a hog from Epicurus' herd.

If you can recline as my guest on Archias' couches, and do not fear to dine on a modest dish of plain greens, I shall await you at home, Torquatus, at the sun's setting. You will drink wine racked off in Taurus' second consulship, between marshy Minturnae and Petrinum near Sinuessa. If you have something better, send for it, or take what I offer. Long since my hearth has shone and my furniture is clean for you. Dismiss your airy hopes, your scramble for riches, and Moschus' case: tomorrow, a festival for Caesar's birthday, the day grants pardon and sleep; we may with impunity spin out the summer night in kindly talk. What use is fortune to me, if I am not allowed to enjoy it? The man who is stingy and too stern through care for his heir sits next door to the madman. I shall begin to drink and scatter flowers, and let myself be thought even reckless. What does drunkenness not unseal? It lays open secrets, bids our hopes be made good, thrusts the coward into battle, lifts the load from anxious minds, teaches arts. Whom have the brimming cups not made eloquent? Whom, in pinching poverty, have they not set free? This is my charge, and I am the man to see to it, and not unwillingly: that no foul coverlet, no dirty napkin wrinkle your nose, that the tankard and the dish show you to yourself, that among trusted friends there be none to carry our words out of doors, that like may meet and be matched with like. I shall bring you Butra and Septicius, and Sabinus, unless an earlier dinner or a better girl keep him away. There is room for several shades too; but goatish crowds press a banquet too closely. Write back how many you would like us to be, and, dropping your business, give the slip by the back door to the client keeping watch at your hall.

To marvel at nothing is almost the one and only thing, Numicius, and the only thing that can make and keep a man happy. This sun, the stars, the seasons withdrawing at their fixed turns—there are those who can look on them with no touch of dread: what then do you think of the gifts of the earth, of the sea that enriches the farthest Arabs and the Indians, of shows, of applause and the favours of a friendly citizen— in what way, with what feeling and face, do you think they should be regarded? He who fears the reverse of these is amazed in much the same way as the man who craves them: in either case the alarm is a torment, and the unforeseen sight terrifies them both alike. Let a man rejoice or grieve, crave or fear—what does it matter, if, whenever he has seen something better or worse than his expectation, he stands stunned, with fixed eyes, numb in mind and body? Let the wise man bear the name of fool, the just of unjust, if he pursues even Virtue herself beyond what is enough. Go now, gaze in wonder at silver and old marble and bronze and arts, admire the Tyrian dyes along with the gems; rejoice that a thousand eyes watch you as you speak; busily seek the forum at dawn and your house at evening, lest Mutus reap more grain from his dowered fields— and it is a shame, since he is of baser birth— let him be a wonder to you, rather than you to him. Whatever is under the earth, time will bring out into the light, will dig down and bury things that shine. When the colonnade of Agrippa, when the Appian Way has well marked you, still it remains to go where Numa and Ancus have gone. If your side or kidneys are tried by sharp disease, seek escape from the disease. You wish to live rightly—who does not? If virtue alone can give this, be a man, drop your delights, and to it. You think virtue mere words, and a sacred grove mere timber: beware lest another seize the harbour first, lest you lose your Cibyran and Bithynian trade; let a round thousand talents be told, as many again, then a third add to them, and a fourth to square off the heap. For of course money the queen bestows a wife with a dowry, and credit, and friends, and birth, and beauty; and Persuasion and Venus grace the well-monied man. The king of Cappadocia, rich in slaves, lacks ready cash: do not be like him. Lucullus, they say, when asked whether he could lend a hundred cloaks for the stage, "How can I have so many?" said he; "yet I will look, and what I have I'll send"; soon afterward he writes that he has five thousand cloaks at home; let them take some, or all. A house is bare where there are not many things to spare that slip past their master and serve the thieves. So then, if wealth alone can make and keep a man happy, be the first to take up this task, the last to lay it down. If high station and influence give a man good fortune, let us buy a slave to whisper names, to nudge our left side and make us reach our right hand across the boundary-stones: "This man has much weight in the Fabian tribe, that one in the Veline; this one will grant the rods to whom he pleases, and snatch the curule ivory, when he is harsh, from whomever he wishes." Add "brother," add "father": as each man's age allows, adopt him with a gracious word. If to dine well is to live well, let us go, when day breaks, where the gullet leads; let us fish and hunt, as once Gargilius did, who in the morning bade his nets, his spears, his slaves cross the crowded forum and the throng of people, that, while the crowd looked on, one mule out of many might bring home a boar he had bought; bloated and undigested, let us bathe, forgetting what is seemly and what not, fit for the Caerites' roll, the worthless crew of Ithacan Ulysses, to whom forbidden pleasure was dearer than their fatherland. If, as Mimnermus holds, without love and jest there is nothing pleasant, then live amid love and jest. Live, farewell! If you know something better than this, share it frankly; if not, use this with me.

Though I promised you I would be in the country for five days, I am missed as a liar through all August. But if you wish me to live sound and in good health, the indulgence you grant me when sick, you will grant me when I fear to be sick, Maecenas—while the first fig and the heat deck the undertaker with his black-clad lictors, while every father and fond mother turns pale for the children, and dutiful zeal and the petty drudgery of the forum bring on fevers and unseal men's wills. But if winter spreads its snows over the Alban fields, your poet will go down to the sea and spare himself, and read, hunched up; you, sweet friend, he will revisit with the Zephyrs, if you allow, and with the first swallow. Not in the way the Calabrian host bids you eat his pears have you made me rich. "Eat, please." "I have had enough." "But take as much as you like." "No, thank you." "You will carry to your little ones gifts they will be glad of." "I am as bound by the gift as if I went off loaded." "As you please; you will leave this for the pigs to eat today." The fool and spendthrift gives away what he despises and hates; this sowing has borne and will bear ingrates in all years. The good and wise man says he is ready for the deserving, yet he is not unaware how counters differ from coin. I shall show myself worthy too, to match the merit of my giver. But if you would never have me leave you anywhere, you will give back my sound flank, my black hair on a narrow brow, you will give back my sweet speech, give back my graceful laughter, and my grief over the bottle for wanton Cinara's flight. A slim little fox had crept by chance through a narrow crack into a bin of grain, and, fed full, was trying again to get out, in vain, its body swollen; to it the weasel said from afar, "If you wish to escape from there, go back lean to the narrow hole you entered lean." If I am charged by this image, I surrender everything; neither do I praise the sleep of the poor while gorged on poultry, nor would I trade my leisure for the richest wealth of Arabia. Often you have praised me as modest; to your face you have been called "king" and "father," nor have I been more sparing of the word in your absence: test whether I can return your gifts and be glad of it. Not badly did Telemachus, son of patient Ulysses, say: "Ithaca is no place for horses, neither stretched out in level plains nor lavish of much grass: Atrides, your gifts suit you better; I shall leave them." Small things befit the small: it is no longer royal Rome, but quiet Tibur that delights me, or peaceful Tarentum. Vigorous and brave Philippus, famous for pleading cases, returning from his duties about the eighth hour, and now far on in years, complaining that the Carinae were too far from the Forum, caught sight, they say, of a man freshly shaved, in a barber's empty shade, quietly cleaning his own nails with a little knife. "Demetrius"—the boy was quick to take in Philippus' orders—"go, find out and report: where is he from, who, of what fortune, who his father or his patron?" He goes, returns, and tells: Volteius by name, Mena, an auctioneer, of slender means, without reproach, known both to bustle in his place, and to take his ease, to earn and to spend, pleased with his small companions, a fixed home, the games, and the Campus when business is done. "I should like to learn from the man himself whatever you report: tell him to come to dinner." Mena can hardly believe it, wonders silently to himself—in short? "No, thank you," he answers. "He refuses me?" "The rogue refuses, and either slights you or stands in awe." Next morning Philippus catches Volteius selling cheap odds and ends to the tunic-clad rabble, and greets him first; the man pleads to Philippus his work and the bonds of hire, that he had not come to pay his respects in the morning, and in short that he had not seen him first. "Consider me forgiven, then," said Philippus, "if you dine with me today." "As you please." "Then you will come after the ninth hour: now go, busily increase your stock." When they had come to dinner, after saying things to be said and unsaid, he is at last sent off to sleep. When, after being often seen darting like a fish to the hidden hook, he had become a morning client and now a sure guest, he is bidden to go as companion to the suburban estate when the Latin Festival is proclaimed. Carried on ponies, the Sabine field and sky he never stops praising. Philippus sees and smiles, and while he seeks rest, and laughter from every quarter, while he gives him seven thousand sesterces, and promises to lend seven more, he persuades him to buy a little farm. He buys it. Not to delay you longer with winding tales than is enough: from the sleek man he becomes a rustic, and prates of nothing but furrows and vineyards; he readies his elms, kills himself over his cares, and grows old in the love of getting. But when his sheep are lost by theft, his she-goats by disease, his crop has cheated his hope, his ox is worn out with ploughing, stung by his losses, in the middle of the night he seizes his nag and angrily makes for Philippus' house. As soon as Philippus saw him, rough and unshaven, "Volteius," said he, "you seem to me too hard a worker, too intent." "By heaven, patron, you would call me 'wretch,' if you wished," said he, "to give me my true name. By your Genius and your right hand and your household gods I beg and implore you: give me back my former life!" Once a man has seen how far the things let go surpass the things sought, let him return in good time and reclaim what he left. It is right that each should measure himself by his own rule and foot.

Muse, since you are asked, carry to Celsus Albinovanus, Nero's companion and secretary, the wish that he do well and prosper. If he asks how I am, say that, for all my fair promises, I live neither rightly nor pleasantly; not because hail has bruised my vines, or heat nipped my olives, nor because my herd sickens in distant fields; but because, less sound in mind than in my whole body, I will hear nothing, learn nothing that might ease the sufferer; I take offence at faithful doctors, am angry with friends for hurrying to drive me from this deadly lethargy; I pursue what has harmed me, flee what I believe will profit, inconstant—at Rome I love Tibur, at Tibur Rome. After this, ask how he is, how he manages his affairs and himself, how he stands with the young prince and with his staff. If he says, "Well," first rejoice, then straightway remember to drop this counsel into his ears: as you bear your fortune, Celsus, so we shall bear you.

Septimius, Claudius, surely understands, alone, how much you value me; for when he asks and presses me with prayers to commend and hand him over to you, as worthy of the mind and house of Nero, who chooses honourable men, when he judges me fit to perform the office of a nearer friend, he sees and knows what I can do better than I do myself. I said much, indeed, to get off excused; but I feared I might be thought to have pretended my powers were less, a dissembler of my own resources, kind only to myself. So, fleeing the reproach of a greater fault, I have come down to the rewards of city-bred assurance. But if you praise the laying-aside of modesty at a friend's bidding, enrol this man among your flock, and believe him brave and good.

We who love the country send greeting to Fuscus, the lover of the city— in this one matter, to be sure, very unlike, but in all else almost twins, of brotherly mind (what one denies, the other denies too), nodding alike, two old and familiar doves. You keep the nest; I praise the brooks of the lovely countryside, the moss-grown rocks and the grove. What more? I live and reign, the moment I have left behind the things you raise to the sky with rumour's applause; and like a priest's runaway slave, I refuse the cakes; I want bread now, more to my taste than honeyed pastries. If we must live in keeping with Nature, and a plot must first be sought to lay our house, do you know a place to be preferred to the blessed country? Is there a place where winters are milder, where a kinder breeze soothes both the Dog's fury and the moments of the Lion, when once it has caught the sharp sun in its rage? Is there a place where less spiteful Care tears our sleep apart? Does the grass smell or shine worse than Libyan mosaics? Is the water purer that struggles to burst the lead pipes in the streets than that which trembles murmuring down its sloping brook? Why, a wood is reared among the varied columns, and that house is praised which looks out over far-stretching fields. Drive out Nature with a pitchfork, yet she will keep coming back, and, victorious, will break stealthily through your wicked disdain. The man who cannot cleverly match the Aquinate fleeces, that drink in their dye, against Sidonian purple will not get a surer loss, or one nearer his marrow, than he who cannot tell false from true. Whom prosperity has delighted overmuch, its change will shake. If you admire anything, you will lay it down against your will: flee great things; under a poor roof one may outrun kings and the friends of kings in life. The stag, better in battle, used to drive the horse from their common pastures, until, the loser in the long contest, he begged the help of man and took the bridle; but after he had parted, fierce conqueror, from his foe, he could not shake the rider from his back nor the bit from his mouth. So he who, fearing poverty, lacks the liberty more precious than metals, will carry a master, base wretch, and serve forever, because he will not know how to use a little. The man whom his fortune does not fit, like a shoe of old, if it is bigger than his foot, will trip him, if smaller, will chafe. You will live wisely, Aristius, content with your lot, nor will you let me off unscolded, when I seem to be heaping up more than enough and not knowing when to stop. Money amassed is each man's master or his slave; it should rather follow than lead the twisted rope. This I was dictating to you behind Vacuna's crumbling shrine, happy in all things save that you were not with me.

What did you think of Chios, Bullatius, and famous Lesbos, of neat Samos, of Croesus' royal Sardis, of Smyrna and Colophon? Greater than their fame, or less? Do they all seem mean beside the Campus and the Tiber's stream? Or does one of Attalus' cities come into your prayers, or do you praise Lebedus, in your loathing of sea and roads? You know what Lebedus is: a village more deserted than Gabii and Fidenae; yet there I should like to live, forgetful of my own, forgotten by them too, to watch from far on land the raging of Neptune. But neither would the man who makes for Rome from Capua, splashed with rain and mud, want to live in a tavern; nor does he who has caught a chill praise furnaces and baths as wholly furnishing a happy life; nor, if a strong South wind has tossed you on the deep, should you for that sell your ship across the Aegean sea. For the man unharmed, Rhodes and beautiful Mytilene do what a cloak does at the solstice, a loincloth in snowy winds, the Tiber in midwinter, a furnace in the month of August. While it is allowed, and Fortune keeps a kindly face, let absent Samos and Chios and Rhodes be praised at Rome. Whatever hour the god has blessed you with, take it with grateful hand, and do not put off sweet things to next year; so that, in whatever place you have been, you may say you have lived gladly. For if it is reason and good sense that banish cares, not a spot commanding the wide sea, they change their sky, not their soul, who race across the sea. A busy idleness keeps us hard at work: with ships and chariots we seek to live well. What you seek is here, is at Ulubrae, if a balanced mind does not fail you.

Of the Sicilian fruits of Agrippa that you gather, Iccius, if you enjoy them rightly, no greater abundance could be granted you by Jove. Have done with complaints: for he is not poor who has the use of things at hand; if your stomach is well, your side, your feet, royal riches can add nothing greater to you. If perhaps, abstemious amid plenty set before you, you live on greens and nettles, you will go on living so, even should Fortune's clear stream suddenly gild you; either because money cannot change a nature, or because you think all things less than virtue alone. We marvel that Democritus' cattle ate his little fields and crops, while his swift mind roamed abroad without his body; when you, amid such itch and contagion of gain, relish nothing petty, and still pursue lofty matters: what causes hold the sea in check, what tempers the year, whether the stars wander and stray of their own will or by command, what darkens the moon's disc, what brings it round again, what means and power lies in the discordant concord of things, whether Empedocles or Stertinius' shrewdness raves. But whether you butcher fish or leeks and onions, make use of Pompeius Grosphus, and if he asks anything, freely give it; Grosphus will beg nothing but the true and the fair. The price of friends is low when good men lack something. Yet, that you may not be ignorant how Roman affairs stand: the Cantabrian has fallen to Agrippa's, the Armenian to the valour of Claudius Nero; Phraates on bended knee has received the law and rule of Caesar; and golden Plenty has poured the fruits of Italy from a full horn.

As I instructed you, often and at length, when you set out, you will deliver the sealed rolls to Augustus, Vinnius, if he is well, if he is cheerful, if in short he asks for them; do not, through zeal for me, blunder and bring odium on my little books by being an over-eager, too-vehement servant. If by chance the burden of my paper galls you, heavy, throw it down rather than dash the pack where you are bidden to carry it, like a brute, and turn your father's surname "Ass" into a joke and make yourself a story. Use your strength over the gods, the rivers, the bogs. Victor of your purpose, as soon as you arrive there, keep your burden so placed that you do not carry the bundle of books under your arm, as a rustic carries a lamb, as drunken Pyrria carries the ball of stolen wool, as a guest from the tribe carries his sandals with his cap. Nor tell the crowd that you sweated carrying poems that may catch the eyes and ears of Caesar. Begged with many a prayer, push on still, go; farewell; take care not to stumble and shatter my charge.

Steward of the woods and of the little farm that gives me back to myself, which you scorn, though it is home to five hearths and used to send five good householders to Varia: let us contend whether I more bravely pluck the thorns from my soul, or you from the field, and whether Horace or his estate is the better. Though the tender love and care for Lamia hold me back, mourning for his brother, grieving inconsolably for the brother snatched away, yet my mind and heart carry me to it, longing to break the barriers that bar the open road. I call the country-dweller happy, you the city-dweller. He who likes another's lot, surely, finds his own hateful. Each fool blames the place undeservingly and unjustly: the fault is in the mind, which never escapes itself. You, a drudge, used to pray silently for the country; now, as steward, you long for the city, the games, the baths. You know I am consistent with myself, and go off sad whenever hateful business drags me to Rome. We do not admire the same things; that is what makes the difference between me and you. For what you think a desert and unwelcoming waste, he calls lovely who feels with me, and hates what you think beautiful. The brothel and the greasy cookshop, I see, stir in you a longing for the city, and the fact that this nook will bear pepper and frankincense sooner than grapes, and that no nearby tavern is at hand to furnish you wine, nor a flute-girl whore, to whose music you might leap, heavy as you are, upon the ground; and yet you toil at fields long untouched by the mattock, and tend the unyoked ox and fill him with stripped leaves; the brook adds work for the lazy man, when rain has fallen, needing to be taught by much barrier-work to spare the sunny meadow. Come now, hear what divides our harmony. The man whom fine togas and glossy hair once became, whom, as you know, I pleased the rapacious Cinara though I gave nothing, who drank clear Falernian from midday on, now likes a brief dinner and a nap by the brook in the grass; nor is he ashamed to have played, but to have not cut short the game. There no one with a sidelong eye files away at my comforts, nor poisons them with secret hatred and biting: my neighbours laugh to see me shifting clods and stones. You would rather gnaw the city dole with the slaves; into their number you rush in your prayers: the sharp errand-boy envies you the use of wood and stock and garden. The ox longs for the trappings, the lazy nag longs to plough. Each, I shall judge, should gladly practise the craft he knows.

What the winter is at Velia, what the climate, Vala, at Salernum, what sort of folk live there, and what the road is like (for Antonius Musa makes Baiae useless to me, and yet makes me hated by the people there, when I am drenched in cold water in the depth of winter. Indeed the village groans that its myrtle-groves are forsaken, and its sulphur-springs, once said to drive out lingering disease from the sinews, are now despised, envious of the sick who dare to put their head and stomach under the Clusine springs, and make for Gabii and the cold country. The place must be changed, and the horse driven on past the well-known inns. "Where are you heading? My road is not to Cumae or Baiae," the rider in a temper will say, tugging the left rein; but a horse's ear is in his bridled mouth); which region feeds the people with a greater store of grain; whether they drink gathered rain or wells of unfailing spring water (for of that coast's wine I care nothing: in my own country I can endure and bear anything; when I come to the sea, I look for something noble and smooth, to drive off cares, to flow with rich hope into my veins and mind, to furnish me words, to commend me, young again, to my Lucanian mistress); which tract breeds more hares, which more boars; which waters hide the more fish and sea-urchins, so that I may come home fat and a Phaeacian— all this you should write to me, and I should trust you for it. Maenius, when he had bravely run through his mother's and father's property, began to be reckoned a city wit, a vagabond buffoon, not one to keep a fixed stall, who, unfed, could not tell a fellow-citizen from a foe, savage to invent any slander against any man, the bane and storm and bottomless pit of the meat-market, gave whatever he got to his greedy belly. When from the patrons and the timid of his folly he had taken little or nothing, he would dine on dishes of tripe, cheap and of lamb, enough for three bears; so that, like a reformed Bestius, he would say the bellies of spendthrifts ought to be branded with white-hot iron. The same man, whenever he had got hold of larger plunder, when he had turned all to smoke and ash, would say, "By heaven, I do not wonder that some eat up their fortunes, since there is nothing better than a fat thrush, nothing finer than a roomy sow's-paunch." No doubt I am this man. For I praise the safe and small, when means run short, brave enough among cheap fare; but when something better and richer falls to me, I say that you alone are wise and live well, you whose money is seen invested solid in shining villas.

That you may not ask, my excellent Quinctius, whether my farm feeds its master with corn-land, or enriches him with the olive's berry, with apples or with meadows or with vines that clothe the elm, the shape and site of the land shall be talkatively described to you. Continuous hills, but for the shady valley that parts them, yet so that the sun, as it comes, looks upon the right flank, and warms the left with its fleeing chariot as it departs. You would praise the climate; what then if the friendly brambles bear ruddy cornels and plums? If oak and ilex delight the cattle with abundant mast, the master with abundant shade? You would say Tarentum's green had been brought nearer to leaf. A spring too, fit to give its name to a stream, so that not the Hebrus is colder or purer as it winds through Thrace, flows useful for an aching head, useful for the bowels. This sweet retreat, even—if you believe me—delightful, keeps me safe and sound for you in September's hours. You live rightly, if you are careful to be what you are called. We at Rome have long called you happy; but I fear you may trust someone about yourself more than yourself, or think anyone happy but the wise and good man, or, if the people declare you sound and in good health, conceal a hidden fever about dinnertime, until the tremor falls on your greasy hands. A bad shame hides the untended sores of fools. If someone should tell you of wars you have fought by land and sea, and stroke your idle ears with words like these: "Whether the people wish you safe more, or you the people, may he keep it in doubt who takes counsel both for you and the city, Jupiter"—you could recognize these as the praises of Augustus. When you let yourself be called wise and faultless, do you answer, please, to your own name? "Why, surely I delight to be called a good and prudent man, just as you do." He who gave this today, will tomorrow, if he pleases, take it away, as if, having bestowed the rods on an unworthy man, the same will withdraw them. "Put it down, it is mine," he says: I put it down, and sadly withdraw. If the same man should shout "Thief!", deny that I am chaste, maintain that I had pressed a noose round my father's neck, should I be stung by false reproaches and change colour? False honour delights, and lying disgrace alarms— whom but the flawed man who needs a cure? Who is the good man? "He who keeps the senate's decrees, the laws, the courts, by whose verdict many great suits are settled, by whose surety property and by whose witness cases are upheld." But the whole household and all the neighbourhood sees this man foul within, fair in his comely skin. "I have committed no theft, I have not run away," if a slave should say to me, "you have your reward: you are not flogged with the lash," I reply, "You have not killed a man." "You will not feed the crows on the cross." "I am good and honest": the Sabine farmer shakes his head and denies it. For the wary wolf fears the pit, the hawk the suspected snares, the kite the hidden hook. The good hate to sin from love of virtue; you will commit nothing wrong from fear of punishment: let there be hope of escaping, and you will mix the sacred with the profane. For when from a thousand bushels of beans you steal one, the loss to me is lighter under that bargain, not the crime. The "good man" whom every forum and every tribunal regards, whenever he appeases the gods with a pig or an ox, when he has loudly cried "Father Janus!", loudly "Apollo!", moves his lips in fear of being heard: "Fair Laverna, grant me to deceive, grant that I seem just and holy, throw night over my sins and a cloud over my frauds." How the miser is better than a slave, or freer, when he stoops in the crossroads for a coin stuck fast, I do not see; for he who craves will fear as well; and further, he who lives in fear will never be free in my eyes. He has lost his arms, deserted Virtue's post, who ever hastens to heap up wealth and is buried under it. When you can sell a captive, do not kill him; he will serve to advantage; let him, hardy, graze and plough, sail and winter, a trader, in the midst of the waves, help the corn-supply, carry grain and provisions. The good and wise man will dare to say: "Pentheus, ruler of Thebes, what unworthy thing will you force me to bear and suffer?" "I will take your goods." "My cattle, you mean, my wealth, my couches, my silver: you may take them." "In manacles and fetters I will hold you under a savage warder." "The god himself, the moment I wish, will set me free." I think he means this: "I shall die." Death is the final line of all things.

Although, Scaeva, you take counsel well enough for yourself, and know in what manner one should deal with one's betters, learn what your little friend, himself still to be taught, thinks—as if a blind man should wish to point the way; yet see whether even I have something to say that you would care to make your own. If pleasant rest and sleep till the first hour delight you, if dust and the din of wheels, if the tavern offend you, I shall bid you go to Ferentinum. For joys do not fall to the rich alone, nor has he lived ill who, born and dying, has passed unnoticed. If you wish to do your people good, and to treat yourself a little more kindly, you, the dry man, will draw near the rich man's table. "If Aristippus could dine on greens with patience, he would not care to deal with kings." "If he who carps at me knew how to deal with kings, he would scorn the greens." Which of these two you approve, in word and deed, instruct me; or, being younger, hear why Aristippus' opinion is the better. For thus, they say, he used to baffle the biting Cynic: "I play the fool for myself, you for the public; this is more correct and far more splendid. That a horse should carry me, a king feed me, I do my service; you beg for cheap stuff, yet are less than the giver, though you boast you need no one." Every complexion, station, and circumstance became Aristippus, who aimed at greater things, yet was content, as a rule, with the present. The man whom patience clothes in a double rag, on the other hand, I shall be amazed if the changed way of life will suit him. The one will not wait for a purple cloak, but, dressed in anything, will go through the most crowded places, and play either part not unbecomingly; the other will shun a Milesian-woven mantle worse than dog or snake, will die of cold, if you do not give him back his rag. Give it back, and let the booby live. To wage affairs and show captured foes to the citizens touches the throne of Jove and reaches for the heavens: to have pleased the leading men is no slight praise. It is not granted to every man to reach Corinth. He sat still who feared he might not succeed. "So be it. What of the man who arrived—did he act like a man?" Why, here or nowhere is the thing we seek. This man dreads the burden as too great for a small spirit and a small body; that man takes it up and carries it through—or virtue is an empty name, or the man of trial rightly seeks reward and renown. Those who keep silent before a king about their poverty will carry off more than the asker: it makes a difference whether you take with modesty or snatch; yet here was the heart of the matter, here the source. "My sister is undowered, my mother poor, and my farm neither saleable nor strong enough to feed me," he who says this cries out, "Give me food!"; another chimes in, "And me!"; and the loaf will be split in shares. But if the crow could feed in silence, it would have more food and far less of brawling and of envy. The man who, led to Brundisium or to lovely Surrentum, complains of the ruts and the bitter cold and the rains, or weeps over a broken chest and pilfered travelling-money, recalls the tricks of a well-known harlot, who often weeps for a necklace, often a garter snatched from her, so that soon no faith is given to her real losses and griefs, nor does the man, once mocked, care to lift up at the crossroads the mountebank with the broken leg, though many a tear stand in his eyes and he swear by holy Osiris: "Believe me, I am not playing; cruel men, lift the lame!" "Look for a stranger," the hoarse neighbourhood cries back.

If I know you well, you will fear, most frank-spoken Lollius, to wear the look of a parasite when you have professed to be a friend. As a matron will differ from a harlot and be of another hue, so a friend will stand apart from a faithless parasite. There is a vice opposite to this, almost a greater one, a boorish harshness, ungraceful and oppressive, which commends itself with close-cropped skin and black teeth, while it would be called sheer liberty and true virtue. Virtue is the mean between vices, set back equally from each. The one, bent more than is right on compliance, the mocker of the lowest couch, so dreads the rich man's nod, so echoes his words and catches his falling phrases, that you would think a boy was repeating his lesson to a savage master, or an actor playing second parts. The other wrangles often over goat's wool, and fights, armed, for trifles: "What, am I not to be believed first, and not to bark out fiercely what truly pleases me? A second life would not be worth the price." And what is the dispute about? Whether Castor knows more, or Dolichos; whether the road to Brundisium by Minucius or by Appius is better. The man whom ruinous Venus, whom headlong dice strip bare, whom vainglory dresses and anoints beyond his means, whom a relentless thirst and hunger for silver holds, whom shame and flight from poverty hold—the rich friend, often furnished with ten times the vices, hates and shudders at him, or, if he does not hate, governs him, and like a kindly mother wishes him to be wiser than himself and his better in virtue, and says, near to the truth: "My means (do not try to compete) can bear my folly; yours is a slender estate. A close-fitting toga befits the sane companion: stop contending with me." Eutrapelus, whomever he wished to harm, would give costly garments: "for now, happy, with fine tunics he will take up new schemes and hopes, will sleep till daylight, set a wench above honourable duty, feed others' debts, and at the last turn gladiator or drive a market-gardener's nag for hire." You will never pry into his secret, and you will keep his trust, even racked by wine and anger. You will not praise your own pursuits or blame another's, nor, when he wishes to hunt, will you compose poems. So the friendship of the twin brothers, Amphion and Zethus, broke apart, until the lyre, suspected by the stern one, fell silent. Amphion is thought to have yielded to his brother's ways: do you give way to a powerful friend's mild commands, and whenever he leads out into the fields beasts of burden and dogs laden with Aetolian nets, rise, and lay aside the moroseness of the unsociable Muse, that you may dine alike on dainties earned by toil: a sport familiar to Roman men, useful to reputation, to life and to the limbs; especially as you are sound, and could outrun a hound in the race, or outmatch a boar in strength. Add that no one handles a man's weapons more gracefully; you know with what shout of the ring you bear the contests of the Campus; and, in short, the savage warfare and the Cantabrian wars you bore as a boy under a leader who now takes the standards down from the Parthian temples, and, if anything is still wanting, claims it for Italian arms. And lest you draw back and be inexcusably absent, though you take care to do nothing out of measure or rhythm, yet now and then you trifle in your father's country: the army divides the boats; the battle of Actium, with you for leader, is re-enacted by the boys in mock hostility; your brother is the enemy, the lake your Adriatic, until swift Victory crowns one or other of you with the leaf. He who believes you to agree with his pursuits will praise your sport, a backer with both thumbs in your favour. And, to advise you straightway (if you need any adviser): mind often what you say of each man, and to whom; flee the questioner: for he is also a chatterer, and ears thrown open do not keep things faithfully entrusted, and a word once let go flies past beyond recall. Let no maidservant or page wound your liver within the marble threshold of an honoured friend, lest the master of the pretty boy or dear girl gladden you with a small gift, or vex you, an awkward burden. Look again and again at whom you commend, lest soon another's sins bring shame upon you. We are deceived, and sometimes hand on the unworthy: therefore, him whom his own fault weighs down, once disappointed, forbear to shield; that so, when you know a man through and through, if charges assail him, you may keep him, and protect him as he trusts in your defence; the man who is gnawed all round by Theon's tooth— do you not feel that perils, presently, are coming to you? For your own affair is at stake when the wall next door is ablaze, and fires neglected are wont to gather strength. Sweet to the inexperienced is the cultivation of a powerful friend; the experienced man dreads it. While your ship is on the deep, attend to it, lest a shifted breeze carry you back astern. The sad hate the cheerful, the jesters the sad, the quick the sedate, the slack the brisk and busy; the drinkers hate the man who refuses the cups held out, however much you swear you fear the night-fevers. Take the cloud from your brow: the reserved man often puts on the look of the secretive, the silent of the sour. Among all things, you should read and question the learned, by what method you may pass your life smoothly, whether craving, ever needy, will harass and vex you, whether fear and hope of things of middling use, whether teaching breeds virtue or Nature bestows it, what lessens cares, what restores you to friendship with yourself, what gives you pure calm—honour, or sweet little gain, or a secluded path and the track of a hidden life. Whenever the cool Digentia refreshes me—the brook that Mandela drinks, a village wrinkled with cold— what do you think I feel? What do you think, my friend, I pray for? "May I have what I now have, even less, and live for myself what is left of life, if the gods will any to be left; may I have a good supply of books and provision laid in for the year, nor drift, swaying in suspense on the hope of an uncertain hour." But it is enough to pray to Jove, who gives and takes away, that he grant life, grant means; I will provide myself a balanced mind.

If you trust ancient Cratinus, learned Maecenas, no poems can please long or live that are written by drinkers of water. From the moment Liber enrolled mad poets among the Satyrs and Fauns, the sweet Muses have commonly smelt of wine in the morning. By his praises of wine, Homer is convicted of being wine-soaked; Father Ennius himself never sprang forth to tell of arms unless he had been drinking. "The Forum and Libo's Well I shall consign to the sober; I forbid the grave to sing": no sooner had I proclaimed this than the poets did not cease to compete in wine by night, to reek of it by day. What? If a man, fierce of face and bare of foot, and aping a scanty toga's weave, should counterfeit Cato, would he reproduce the virtue and the morals of Cato? The tongue of Iarbitas, rivalling Timagenes', burst him, while he strove to be thought witty and eloquent in the city's way. A model deceives by faults that can be copied: so if by chance I were pale, they would drink bloodless cumin. O imitators, you slavish herd, how often your stir has roused my anger, how often my laughter! I was the first to set free footsteps over open ground, treading where no one had gone; I did not press another's track. He who trusts himself will lead the swarm as its chief. I first showed Parian iambs to Latium, following the measures and the spirit of Archilochus, not his matter and the words that drove Lycambes. And, that you may not garland me with sparer leaves for this, because I feared to change the measures and the art of his song: manly Sappho tempers Archilochus' Muse with her foot, Alcaeus tempers it, but differs in matter and arrangement; he seeks no father-in-law to smear with black verses, nor weaves a noose for a bride with a defaming song. This poet, spoken by no other mouth before, I, the Latin lyrist, made known. It pleases me, bringing things unrecorded, to be read by noble eyes and held in noble hands. Would you know why the ungrateful reader praises and loves my little works at home, but unfairly belittles them out of doors? I do not hunt the votes of the fickle crowd with the cost of dinners and the gift of cast-off clothing; I, a hearer and champion of noble writers, do not deign to court the schoolmasters' tribes and their platforms. Hence those tears. "I am ashamed to recite to crowded theatres writings unworthy of them, and to give weight to trifles," if I have said this, "you laugh," he says, "and keep these things for Jove's ears: for you trust that you alone distil poetic honey, fair in your own eyes." At this I am afraid to turn up my nose, and, lest I be cut by his sharp nail as we wrestle, I cry "I dislike this place," and call for an adjournment; for sport breeds anxious rivalry and anger, anger fierce enmities and deadly war.

You seem, my book, to be eyeing Vertumnus and Janus, that you may stand for sale, neatly smoothed with the Sosii's pumice. You hate the keys and seals that the modest love; you groan at being shown to few, and praise the public view, though not so reared. Off, then, where you itch to go down. There will be no return for you, once sent forth. "What have I done, wretch? What did I want?" you will say, when someone has hurt you, and you know you are folded up tight, when the sated lover grows slack. But if the seer does not lose his wits through loathing of the sinner, you will be dear at Rome, until your youth forsakes you; when, thumbed by the hands of the crowd, you have begun to grow soiled, either you will silently feed the slothful bookworms, or run off to Utica, or be sent bound to Ilerda. The adviser, unheard, will laugh, like the man who in anger pushed his balky ass over the cliff: for who would labour to save one against his will? This too awaits you: that, while you teach boys their letters, stammering old age will overtake you in the outlying lanes. When the warmer sun has brought you more ears, you will tell that I, born of a freedman father and in slender means, spread wings too large for my nest, so that what you take from my birth you may add to my worth; that I pleased the foremost men of the city in war and peace, small of body, prematurely grey, fond of the sun, quick to anger, yet such that I could be appeased. If by chance anyone shall ask you about my age, let him know that I had completed eleven times four Decembers in the year that Lollius brought Lepidus to be his colleague.