Book 2
Imperial Marcus Valerius Martialis Latinpr. Valerius Martial to his friend Decianus, greetings.
"What have we to do," you say, "with a preface? Are we not doing enough for you if we read your epigrams? Besides, what are you going to say here that you could not say in verse? I can see why tragedy or comedy should be given a preface, since they may not speak for themselves: epigrams have no need of a herald, and are content with their own tongue—that is, a wicked one: on whatever page it pleases them, they make a preface. Do not, then, if you please, do a ridiculous thing and bring on a character dancing in a toga. In short, consider whether it pleases you to face the net-fighter with a ferule. I sit among those who shout you down at once."
By Hercules, Decianus, I think you speak the truth. What if you knew with how long a letter, and what sort, you would have had to deal? So let it be done as you require. Whoever falls upon this book will owe it to you that they reach the first page not yet wearied.
I You could indeed have carried three hundred epigrams, But who would carry you, and read you through, my book? Now learn what merits a tight little volume has. This is the first: that less paper is wasted on me; Next, that the copyist will finish it in a single hour, And will not be a slave only to my trifles; The third point is this: that if by chance someone reads you, Bad though you may be throughout, you will not be tiresome. A guest will read you over his mixed five-measures, but Before the cup, once set down, has had time to grow cool. Do you think yourself made safe by such brevity? Alas for me—to how many even so you will seem long!
II Crete gave a great name, Africa a greater, Which Scipio as victor holds, and Metellus too; A nobler one Germany bestowed for the Rhine subdued, And even as a boy, Caesar, you were worthy of this name. Your brother earned the Idumaean triumphs with your father, But the laurel that comes from the Chatti is all your own.
III Sextus, you owe nothing, you owe nothing, Sextus—we admit it. For a man owes, Sextus, only if he can pay.
IV O how coaxing you are, Ammianus, to your mother! How coaxing your mother is to you, Ammianus! She calls you brother and is called sister. Why do such naughty names attract you both? Why does it not please you to be what you are? Do you think this a game and a joke? It is not: A mother who longs to be called a sister Is happy to be neither mother nor sister.
V May I lose my health, Decianus, if I would not be glad To be with you all day and all night long. But there are two miles that keep us apart: These become four, when I go to come back again. Often you are not at home, even when you are; often you are denied: Often you have time only for your cases, or for yourself. Still, to see you, I do not mind going the two miles: Not to see you, I do mind going the four.
VI Go now, bid me publish my little books. With scarcely two pages read, you, Severus, look to the colophon at the end, And draw out long yawns. These are the very things which, when I read them over, You used to snatch and copy down—but on Vitellian tablets; These are the things you carried, one by one, in your bosom Through all the dinners, through the theatres; These are they, or anything better you may not know of. What good is so lean a little book to me, That it is no thicker than its boss, If it takes you three days to read it whole? Never was idleness more supine. So soon, weary traveller, do you give out, And when you ought to run to Bovillae, Do you seek to change horses at the Camenae? Go now, bid me publish my little books.
VII You declaim prettily, Atticus, plead cases prettily, Write pretty histories, pretty poems, Compose mimes prettily, epigrams prettily, A pretty grammarian, a pretty astrologer you are, And you sing prettily and dance, Atticus, prettily, You are pretty at the art of the lyre, pretty at the art of ball. Since you do nothing well, yet do everything prettily, Do you want me to say what you are? You are a great busybody.
VIII If anything seems to you, reader, in these pages Either too obscure or too poor in Latin, The fault is not mine: the copyist spoiled them, While he hurried to reckon up the verses for you. But if you think it was not he but I who erred, Then I shall believe you have no understanding at all. "Yet these things are bad." As if we denied the obvious: These things are bad, but you make nothing better.
IX I wrote; Naevia wrote nothing back. She will not give, then. But I suppose she had read what I wrote: she will give, then.
X Because you give me kisses, Postumus, with half a lip, I praise you: you may take away half of this too. Do you wish to give a still greater and unspeakable gift? Keep this half whole for yourself, Postumus.
XI That you see Selius with clouded brow, Rufus, That, walking, he wears down the portico till late, That his dull face keeps something mournfully silent, That his ugly nose nearly touches the ground, That he beats his breast with his right hand and tears his hair: He is not mourning the death of friend or brother; Both his sons are alive—and may they live, I pray— His wife is safe, and his goods and his slaves, His tenant and his bailiff have squandered nothing. What, then, is the cause of his grief? He dines at home.
XII What am I to call this, that your kisses smell of myrrh, And that you never have a scent that is your own? This makes me suspicious, Postumus, that you always smell good: Postumus, he does not smell good who always smells good.
XIII Both the judge demands his fee, and the advocate demands his. I advise you, Sextus, to pay the creditor.
XIV Selius leaves nothing untried, nothing unattempted, Whenever he sees he must dine at home. He runs to the Europa colonnade, and praises you, Paulinus, and your Achillean feet—without end. If Europa has done nothing, then the Saepta are sought, To see if the son of Phillyra or of Aeson can do anything. Cheated here too, he haunts the Memphitic temples, And sits by your seats, you sorrowful heifer. Thence he makes for the roofs hung on a hundred columns, And thence the gifts of Pompey and the double grove. He scorns neither the baths of Fortunatus nor of Faustus, Nor the dark of Gryllus and the Aeolia of Lupus: For he bathes in the hot baths again and again and again. When he has done everything, but the god refusing, Washed, he hurries back to the box-thickets of warm Europa, In case some friend there is taking a late walk. By you, you wanton bull, and by your girl, Invite Selius to dinner, I beg you.
XV That you toast your cup to no one, You do a kind thing, Hormus, not a proud one.
XVI Zoilus is ill: it is his bedclothes that bring on this fever. If he were well, what would his scarlet covers do? What the couch from the Nile, what the cloth dyed with stinking Sidon? What does sickness display but foolish wealth? What have you to do with doctors? Dismiss all your Machaons. Do you want to get well? Take my bedclothes.
XVII A barber-woman sits at the first entrance of the Subura, Where the bloody scourges of the torturers hang And many a cobbler besets the Argiletum. But that barber-woman, Ammianus, does not shave, Does not shave, I say. What does she do, then? She fleeces.
XVIII I angle for your dinner—shame on me, but I angle for it, Maximus— You angle for another's: so now we are equals. I come in the morning to pay my respects; you are said to have gone To pay yours before me: so now we are equals. I am your own attendant and walk before the swollen king; You attend another: so now we are equals. It is enough to be a slave; I will not be an underling's underling. He who is a king, Maximus, should have no king.
XIX Do you believe you make me happy, Zoilus, by a dinner? Happy by a dinner, Zoilus—and then by yours? The guest must recline on the Arician slope to beg, Whom your dinner, Zoilus, makes happy.
XX Paulus buys his poems; Paulus recites his own poems. For what you buy you may rightly call your own.
XXI You give kisses to some, to others, Postumus, you give your right hand. You say, "Which do you prefer? Choose." I prefer the hand.
XXII What have I to do with you, O Phoebus and you nine sisters? See, the merry Muse harms her own poet. Postumus used to give me half his kisses before; Now he has begun to give them with both lips.
XXIII I will not tell, though you keep asking me, Who the Postumus in my little book is, I will not tell: for what need is there To offend these kissings, Which can avenge themselves so well?
XXIV If unjust fortune should bring you a sad charge in court, Pale, squalid, I will cling beside you, paler than the accused: If she should bid you, condemned, leave your native land, Over seas, over crags I will go, the exile's comrade. She gives you riches: are these things shared between two? Do you give me a part? Is it much? Candidus, do you give anything? With me, then, you will be wretched: but if the god with serene face Should nod assent, happy, Candidus, you will be alone.
XXV You never give, Galla, you always promise to the man who asks. If you always deceive, then now, Galla, I ask you—say no.
XXVI That Naevia breathes a querulous, bitter cough, And keeps spitting into your lap, Do you now think, Bithynicus, that you have the matter settled? You are wrong: Naevia is flattering you, not dying.
XXVII When Selius, praising you, spreads his nets for a dinner, Take him along, whether you read aloud or plead as advocate: "Perfect! weighty! quick! cleverly! bravo! divine!" "That is what I wanted! Now your dinner is earned—be quiet."
XXVIII Laugh heartily at whoever calls you, Sextillus, a catamite, And give him the middle finger. But you are no sodomite, Sextillus, nor a fornicator, Nor does the hot mouth of Vetustina please you. You are none of these, I admit, Sextillus: what are you then? I do not know, but you know there are two things left.
XXIX Rufus, you see that man wearing down the front benches, Whose hand even from here gleams with its sardonyx, And whose cloaks have drained off Tyrian dye so many times, And whose toga is bidden to outdo untouched snows, Whose oiled hair reeks of all the Marcellan colonnade, And whose smooth arms gleam with the hair plucked out, On whose foot sits no day-old crescent-marked strap, And scarlet leather paints his unblemished foot, And many plasters cover his star-spangled brow. You do not know what it is? Take off the plasters: you will read it.
XXX By chance I was asking for a loan of twenty thousand sesterces, Which would have been no heavy gift even to a giver. For the man I asked was a prosperous old comrade, And one whose money-chest scourges its loose-flowing wealth. He said to me, "You will be rich, if you plead cases." Give me what I ask, Gaius: I do not ask for advice.
XXXI Often I have had Chrestina. You ask how good she is? There is nothing, Marianus, that can surpass it.
XXXII I have a quarrel with Balbus; you do not want to offend Balbus, Ponticus: I have one with Licinus—here too is a great man. Patrobas, my neighbour, often harasses my little field; You are afraid to go against a freedman of Caesar. Laronia refuses and keeps back my slave; You answer, "She is childless, rich, old, a widow." A friend who is a slave, believe me, is poorly served: Let him be free who wants to be my master.
XXXIII Why do I not kiss you, Philaenis? You are bald. Why do I not kiss you, Philaenis? You are red-haired. Why do I not kiss you, Philaenis? You are one-eyed. The man who kisses these, O Philaenis, sucks cocks.
XXXIV Though Phileros pleases you, ransomed at the cost of your whole dowry, You suffer your three sons, Galla, to die of hunger. Such indulgence is shown to a grey cunt, Which not even chaste Venus could now become. May the gods make you the everlasting mistress of Phileros, O mother, no worse than Pontia herself.
XXXV Since your legs are like the horns of the moon, You could, Phoebus, wash your feet in a drinking-horn.
XXXVI I would not have you curl, but neither tousle, your hair; I would not have your skin gleaming, nor would I have it dirty; Let there be no beard of the mitred, nor the beard of the accused: I want a man, Pannychus, neither too much so nor too little. Now your legs are bristly with hairs, and your chest With shaggy bristles, but your mind, Pannychus, is plucked smooth.
XXXVII Whatever is set down, you sweep up from here and there, The teats of a sow's udder and a rib of pork And a moor-hen meant to be shared by two, Half a mullet and a whole bass And the side of a lamprey and the thigh of a fowl And a wood-pigeon dripping with its own gravy. When these are stowed in your dripping napkin, They are handed to a slave to be carried home: We recline, an idle company. If you have any shame, put back the dinner: I did not invite you, Caecilianus, for tomorrow.
XXXVIII You ask, Linus, what my Nomentan farm yields me? This my farm yields me: that I do not see you, Linus.
XXXIX You give scarlet and violet robes to a notorious whore: Do you wish to give the gift she has earned? Send her a toga.
XL Tongilius is said to be badly burned with semi-tertian fever. I know the man's tricks: he is hungry and thirsty. Now sly nets are spread for the fat thrushes, And the hook is cast for mullet and bass. Let the Caecuban be strained, and what the year of Opimius ripened, Let dark Falernian be stored in a thrifty glass. All the doctors have ordered Tongilius to bathe: O fools, you believe it is a fever? It is gluttony.
XLI "Laugh if you are wise, O girl, laugh," The Paelignian poet, I think, had said. But he had not said it to all girls. Yet, granted that he said it to all girls, He did not say it to you: you are no girl, And you have three teeth, Maximina, And those plainly pitch-black and box-yellow. So, if you trust your mirror and me, You ought to dread laughter no otherwise Than Spanius the wind, or Priscus a hand, Than chalked Fabulla dreads the rain-cloud, Than white-leaded Sabella dreads the sun. Put on a look more severe Than the wife of Priam or his elder daughter-in-law. Avoid the mimes of comic Philistion And livelier dinner-parties And whatever, with witty impudence, Loosens the lips in clear laughter. It becomes you to sit beside a grieving mother Or one mourning her husband or her loyal brother, And to have time only for the tragic Muses. But you, following our advice, Weep, if you are wise, O girl, weep.
XLII Zoilus, why do you spoil the bath-water with your washed backside? To make it filthier, Zoilus, plunge in your head.
XLIII "Friends share all in common"—these things are yours, Candidus, "in common," Which you, grandiloquent, harp on night and day: A toga washed in Spartan Galaesus clothes you, Or one Parma gave from a choice flock: But me a hide clothes that bore the rages and horns of the bull, One the first ball would not have called its own. The land of Cadmus sent you Agenorean cloaks: You would not sell my scarlet for three coins. You hang up Libyan disks on Indian tusks: A table of beech is propped up with a potsherd for me. Huge mullets adorn your gold-inlaid dishes: Of one colour in my plate, you blush, my little crab. Your troop could vie with the Trojan catamite: But for a Ganymede my own hand comes to my aid. Out of such wealth, to an old and faithful comrade You give nothing, and you say, Candidus, "Friends share all in common"?
XLIV If I have bought a boy, or a well-combed toga, Or three, say, or four pounds of silver, That Sextus, the moneylender at once, Whom you know as my old comrade, Fears and takes care that I may not chance to ask for something, And whispers to himself, but so that I may hear: "I owe seven thousand to Secundus, Four to Phoebus, eleven to Phyletus, And there is not a farthing in my chest." O the great wit of my comrade! It is hard, Sextus, to refuse when you are asked, How much harder before you are asked!
XLV The cock that would not stand for you has been cut off, Glyptus. Madman, what had you to do with the knife? You were already a eunuch.
XLVI As flowery Hybla is painted in various colours When the bees plunder the brief Sicilian spring, So your presses glow with the cloaks laid up beneath them, So your chest sparkles with countless festal robes, And your whites could clothe a whole tribe, Which the Apulian land bore with more than one flock. You watch, unmoved, the winter of your scantily clad friend —what a crime!—and fear the worn cold of his side. What would it have cost you, hard-hearted man, to defraud two rags —what do you fear?—not yourself, Naevolus, but the moths?
XLVII I warn you, flee the sly nets of a notorious adulteress, You who are smoother, Gallus, than the shells of Cythera. Do you trust to your backside? The husband is no sodomite: There are two things he does: he forces the mouth, or he forces the front.
XLVIII A tavern-keeper and a butcher and a bath, A barber and a board and gaming-pieces And a few books—but for me to choose them: One comrade not too unpolished, And a tall slave-boy long kept smooth, And a girl dear to my boy: Grant me these, Rufus, even at Butunti, And keep the Baths of Nero for yourself.
XLIX I do not want to marry Telesina: why? She is an adulteress. But Telesina gives to boys. I do.
L That you suck cocks and drink water, Lesbia—you do no wrong. You take water, Lesbia, where you have need of it.
LI Though there is often but a single denarius in your whole chest, And that, Hyllus, more worn than your own arse, Still the baker will not take it from you, nor the tavern-keeper, But anyone proud of an excessive prick. Your unhappy belly watches the feastings of your backside, And the one is forever starving, wretch, while the other gorges.
LII Dasius knows how to count those about to bathe: he charged Big-breasted Spatale for three: she paid.
LIII Do you wish to become free? You lie, Maximus, you do not wish it: But if you do wish to become so, this is the way you can. You will be free, Maximus, if you refuse to dine out, If the Veientan grape masters your thirst, If you can laugh at the gold dishes of wretched Cinna, If you can be content with a toga like mine, If plebeian Venus is bought for you with a couple of asses, If you cannot enter your own house without stooping. If you have this strength, if such power of mind is yours, You can live more free than the Parthian king.
LIV What your wife suspects about you, Linus, And in what part she wants you more chaste, She has proved well enough by sure tokens, She who has given you a eunuch for a guard. There is nothing keener than she, nor more malicious.
LV You want to be courted, Sextus: I wanted to love. I must obey you: as you command, you shall be courted: But if I court you, Sextus, I shall not love.
LVI Among the peoples of Libya, your wife, Gallus, is ill spoken of On the foul charge of immoderate greed. But these are sheer lies: she is not at all in the habit Of taking. What is she in the habit of, then? Of giving.
LVII This man you see strolling with idle steps, Who in amethyst-purple cuts through the middle of the Saepta, Whom my Publius does not surpass in cloaks, Nor Cordus himself, the alpha of cloak-wearers, Whom a toga-clad and long-haired troop follows, And a fresh sedan with its linen and its straps: Just now, just now he pawned at Cladus's counter For scarcely eight coins a ring, to get himself a dinner.
LVIII Sleekly combed, you laugh at my threadbare clothes, Zoilus. They are threadbare indeed, Zoilus, but they are mine.
LIX I am called Mica: you see what I am, a little dining-room: From me, look, you behold the Caesarean dome. Break the couches, call for wine, take roses, anoint yourself with nard: The god himself bids you remember death.
LX You bed the wife, boy Hyllus, of an armed tribune, While you fear only a boy's punishment. Woe to you—while you play, you will be gelded. Now you will tell me, "That is not allowed." What? Is what you do, Hyllus, allowed?
LXI When your cheeks bloomed with their first doubtful down, Your shameless tongue licked men's middles. Now that your foul head has earned the loathing of undertakers And the disgust of the wretched hangman, You use your mouth otherwise, and, seized by excessive spite, You bark at every name there is. Better that so harmful a tongue should cling to the groin: For when it sucked cocks, it was cleaner.
LXII That you pluck your chest, your legs, your arms, That your shaved prick is girt with short hairs: This you do, Labienus—who does not know it?—for your mistress. For whom do you do it, Labienus, that you depilate your arse?
LXIII You had a hundred thousand sesterces, your sole fortune, Milichus, Which you spent to buy Leda on the Sacred Way. Milichus, it is extravagance, if you, a rich man, loved at such a price. "I do not love," you will now say: this too is extravagance.
LXIV While you fashion yourself now an advocate, now a rhetorician, And cannot decide, Laurus, what you want to be, The age of Peleus and Priam and Nestor has passed by, And it would now be late for you even to stop. Begin: three rhetoricians died in a single year, If you have any spirit, if you have any worth in the art. If the school is condemned, all the forums seethe with lawsuits, Even Marsyas himself could become an advocate. Come, away with you, break off delay: how long shall we go on hoping for you? While you doubt what you are, you can already be nothing.
LXV Why do we see Saleianus sadder than usual? "Is it a slight cause?" you ask. "I have buried my wife." O grievous crime of fate! O heavy blow! Is she, is that rich Secundilla dead, Who gave you a million for her dowry? I would not have had this happen to you, Saleianus.
LXVI Of the whole world of her hair, one curl alone had gone wrong, Not well fixed with an unsteady pin. This crime Lalage avenged with the mirror in which she had seen it, And Plecusa fell, struck by the cruel curls. Cease now, Lalage, to dress those sorry locks, And let no girl touch that mad head. Let a salamander brand it, or the savage razor lay it bare, That your image may become worthy of the mirror.
LXVII Wherever you meet me, Postumus, you shout out At once, and your first word is this: "How are you doing?" This, even if you meet me ten times in one hour, You say: I think, Postumus, you have nothing to do.
LXVIII That I now greet you by your own name, Whom before I used to call king and lord, Do not say that I am insolent: I bought back my freedman's cap with all my baggage. A man must have kings and lords Who has not himself and covets What kings and lords covet. If you can do without a slave, Olus, You can also do without a king, Olus.
LXIX You say, Classicus, that you dine out unwillingly: If you are not lying, Classicus, may I perish. Apicius himself was glad to go to dinner: When he dined at home, he was gloomier. Yet if you go unwillingly, why, Classicus, do you go? "I am compelled," you say: true; Selius too is compelled. See, Melior invites you, Classicus, to a proper dinner. Where are your grand words? If you are a man, look—say no.
LXX You do not want anyone to bathe in the tub before you, Cotilus: what is the reason, unless it is this, That you may not be soaked in befouled waters? You may wash first: yet here, of necessity, The prick is washed before the head.
LXXI Nothing is more candid than you, Caecilianus. I have noticed: Whenever I read a few couplets of mine, You at once recite the writings of Marsus or of Catullus. Do you do me this favour, as though you read worse stuff, That mine may please more by comparison? I believe it: Yet I would rather, Caecilianus, you recited your own.
LXXII At yesterday's dinner, Postumus, a thing is said to have been done That I should not wish—for who would approve such deeds?— Your mouth was so battered that not even Latinus himself Strikes the cheap face of Panniculus with such a sound: And what is more wondrous, rumour through the whole city Names Caecilius as the author of this crime. You deny it was done: do you want me to believe this? I believe it. But what of it, Postumus, that Caecilius has witnesses?
LXXIII Lyris wants to know what she does: what she does sober—she sucks cocks.
LXXIV Saufeius girt about, before and behind, with a toga-clad crowd, As great a throng as Regulus has when he returns, When he sent his shaven client, acquitted, to the lofty temples— Maternus, do you see him? Do not envy him. May such an escort, I pray, never be yours. These friends and these troops of toga-wearers Fuficulenus and Faventinus furnish him.
LXXV A lion, wont to bear unmoved the blows of its master And to suffer, gently, a hand thrust into its mouth, Suddenly unlearned its peace, its savagery returning, As great as ought not to have been even on the slopes of Libya. For two of the boyish band, of tender body, Who were renewing the bloody sand with rakes, The cruel beast destroyed, ill-starred, with its raging tooth: The arena of Mars saw no greater outrage. One wants to cry out: "Cruel, treacherous robber, Learn from our she-wolf to spare children!"
LXXVI Marius left you five pounds of silver, You to whom he gave nothing himself: did he keep his word to you?
LXXVII Cosconius, you who think our epigrams too long, You might be useful for greasing axles. By that reasoning you would think the colossus long, And call the boy of Brutus short. Learn what you do not know: of Marsus and learned Pedo Often a double page treats a single subject. Those are not long from which you can take nothing away, But you, Cosconius, make even couplets long.
LXXVIII You ask where, in summertime, you may keep your fish? Keep it, Caecilianus, in your hot baths.
LXXIX You invite me, Nasica, just when you know I have invited guests. I beg you, hold me excused: I dine at home.
LXXX While fleeing the foe, Fannius slew himself. Is this not madness, I ask—to die that you may not die?
LXXXI Though your litter may be roomier than a six-bearer chair: Yet, since it is yours, Zoilus, it is a pauper's bier.
LXXXII Why, Ponticus, do you crucify your slave with his tongue cut out? Do you not know that the people speak the very thing he keeps silent?
LXXXIII You disfigured the wretched adulterer, husband, And the maimed features, robbed of nose and ears, Seek for what they were before. Do you believe you are sufficiently avenged? You are wrong: that man can still force the mouth.
LXXXIV Soft and yielding to men was the Poeantian hero: So Venus is said to have avenged the wounds of Paris. Why Sicilian Sertorius licks the cunt, this is the reason: . . . By him, Rufus, Eryx seems to have been slain.
LXXXV A guard of snow-white cooled drink, enclosed in light wicker, This shall be your gift at the season of Saturn. Because I sent you the gifts of summer in the month of December, If you complain, send me back a threadbare toga.
LXXXVI That I do not glory in verse read backwards, Nor read in reverse the catamite Sotades, That no Greekish echo anywhere chimes back, Nor does the brilliant Attis dictate to me A galliambic soft with its enfeebling: I am not, Classicus, so bad a poet for that. What if you bade Ladas, against his will, Take to the slender paths of the spring-board? It is base to have trifles that are hard to make, And foolish is the labour of silly things. Let Palaemon write poems for the schoolboy rings; It pleases me to please a few choice ears.
LXXXVII You say, Sextus, that pretty girls burn with love of you, You who have the face of a man swimming under water.
LXXXVIII You recite nothing, and yet you wish, Mamercus, to seem a poet. Be whatever you wish—provided you recite nothing.
LXXXIX That you delight in drawing out the night with too much wine, I pardon you: you have the vice, Gaurus, of Cato. That you write poems with no Muse and no Apollo, You ought to be praised: you have this from Cicero. That you vomit, is Antony's vice; that you live in luxury, Apicius's. But that you suck cocks—tell me, whose vice is that?
XC Quintilian, supreme guide of wandering youth, Glory, Quintilian, of the Roman toga, That I hasten to live, poor and not useless in my years, Forgive me: no one hastens enough to live. Let him put it off who longs to outdo his father's fortune And crowds his halls with too many ancestral busts. A hearth, and a roof that does not resent the black smoke, Delight me, and a living spring and untouched grass. Let me have a well-fed home-born slave, a wife not too learned, A night with sleep, a day without litigation.
XCI Sure salvation of all things, glory of the earth, Caesar, By whose safety we believe the great gods exist, If the poems of mine, so often read in hasty little books, Have held your eyes a while, Permit it to seem—what fortune forbids to be— That I be thought the father of three children. These shall be my consolation, if I have displeased you; These shall be my reward, if I have pleased.
XCII The right of three children, which I asked for, He alone who could granted me, As the reward of my Muses. Farewell, wife. The gift of the master must not be wasted.
XCIII "Where is the first," you say, "since this book is the second?" What am I to do, if that one has more modesty? Yet if you would rather, Regulus, that this become the first, You can take one iota from the title.