Book 3

I This, whatever it is, is sent to you from a far-off shore By the Gaul called by the name of the Roman toga. You read this book, and perhaps you praise the earlier one: Both that and this are mine—choose which you think the better. Of course the one born in our mistress city should please more: A home-bred book must surely surpass a Gallic one.

II Whose gift do you wish to become, little book? Make haste to provide yourself a protector, Lest, snatched off quickly to a sooty kitchen, You wrap young tunny-fish in your soggy paper, Or be a wrapper for incense or pepper. You flee into the bosom of Faustinus? You are wise. Now you may walk anointed with cedar oil, And, handsome with the twofold honour of your front, Revel in your painted bosses, And let delicate purple clothe you, And your proud title blush with scarlet. With him for protector, fear not even Probus.

III [You hide your lovely face with a black cosmetic, But you spoil the water with your unlovely body. Believe the goddess herself tells you in our words: "Either uncover your face, or bathe in your tunic."]

IV Go to Rome, my book: if anyone asks where you have come from, Say from the region of the Aemilian Way. If he asks in what land, in what city we are, You may answer that I am at Cornelius's Forum. He will ask why I am away: confess much briefly: "He could not bear the tedium of the empty toga." "When is he coming?" he will say: you answer: "A poet He went out; he will come when he is a lyre-player."

V Do you wish to be recommended, little book, since you will run Into the city without me, to many, or will one suffice? One will suffice, believe me, to whom you will be no stranger, Julius, a name forever on my lips. You will seek him at once at the threshold of the first Covered Way: The home that Daphnis held, he now holds. He has a wife, who will receive you in her hands and lap, Though you come all dusty. Whether you see them together, or her, or him first, You will say this: "Marcus bids you good day," And that is enough: let a letter recommend others: he errs Who thinks he must be recommended to his own friends.

VI The third day after the Ides of May is counted to you, Marcellinus, to be twice celebrated by your rites. This day reckons up the heavenly birth of your father, This day first sips your own blooming cheeks. Though it gave great gifts of a pleasant life, That day never granted more to a father.

VII Farewell now, you wretched hundred farthings, The dole of a weary client who walks before the patron, Which the boiled bath-attendant used to share out. What are you thinking, O hunger of friends? The doles of the proud patron have been withdrawn. "There are no more tricks: now a salary must be paid."

VIII "Quintus loves Thais." What Thais? "One-eyed Thais." Thais lacks one eye, he both.

IX Cinna is said to write little verses against me. He does not write, whose poems no one reads.

X Your father, Philomusus, settled two thousand a month on you, And paid it out to you every day, Since each tomorrow's want forever cramped your luxury, And your daily allowance had to feed your vices. The same man, dying, left you his sole heir. He disinherited you, Philomusus, your father did.

XI If your girl, Quintus, is neither Thais nor one-eyed, Why do you think the couplet was aimed at you? But is there some likeness? Did I say Thais for Lais? Tell me, what is alike in Thais and Hermione? Yet you are Quintus: let us change the lover's name: If Quintus does not want her, let Sextus love Thais.

XII You gave your guests good perfume yesterday, I admit—but you carved nothing. It is a fine joke, to smell sweet and go hungry. The man who does not dine, Fabullus, but is anointed, That man seems to me truly dead.

XIII While you will not have the fish, will not carve the fowl, And spare the boar, Naevia, that is more than rotten, You accuse and storm at the cook, as if he had brought Everything raw. I shall never be so raw as that.

XIV Starving Tuccius was making for Rome, Having set out from Spain. The tale of the doles met him on the way: He turned back from the Mulvian Bridge.

XV No one in the whole city gives more credit than Cordus. "Though he is so poor, how?" Blind, he loves.

XVI You give a show of gladiators, Cerdo, you princeling of cobblers, And what the awl bestows on you, the sword snatches away. You are drunk: for never would you do this sober— To wish to play, Cerdo, with your own hide. You have played with hide: but, believe me, remember Now to keep, Cerdo, within your own skin.

XVII A tart, long carried round at the second course, Burned the hands cruelly with too much heat; But Sabidius's gullet burned more: so at once He puffed at it three and four times with his cheeks. It did indeed grow cool, and seemed to let the fingers in, But no one could touch it: it had become a turd.

XVIII Your preface complained that your throat had caught a chill. Since you have made your excuse, Maximus, why recite?

XIX Near the Hundred Columns a she-bear is shown, Where sculpted beasts adorn the plane-tree grove. While, playing, the handsome Hylas tried its gaping jaws And thrust his tender hand into its mouth, But a wicked viper lurked in the dark bronze And lived with a worse life than the beast. The boy did not feel the trap, until the fang sank in, While he died. O the crime, that the bear was false!

XX Tell me, Muse, what my friend Canius Rufus is doing: Is he committing to immortal pages The deeds of Claudian times, to be read hereafter? Or what a lying historian fastens on Nero? Or does he rival the tales of wicked Phaedrus? Is he wanton in elegy, or severe in epic? Or grim in the buskins of Sophocles? Or, at leisure in the school of poets, Does he tell jokes dipped in Attic charm? If he has left there, is he treading the portico of the temple, Or strolling slowly through the spaces of the Argonauts? Or in the sun of delicate Europa again, Among the warm box-trees, after midday, Does he sit or walk, free of biting cares? Does he bathe in the baths of Titus or Agrippa, Or in the bath of shameless Tigellinus? Does he enjoy the country place of Tullus and Lucanus? Does he run to Pollio's sweet fourth milestone? Or, set out now for seething Baiae, Does he sail, lazy, on the Lucrine pool? "Do you want to know what your Canius is doing? He is laughing."

XXI A slave, his brow branded, saved his proscribed master. This was not the master's life, but his disgrace.

XXII You had given, Apicius, sixty million to your belly, And still there remained ten million loose to you. Burdened by this, as if you could not bear hunger and thirst, You drained off poison in a final draught. Nothing you ever did, Apicius, was more gluttonous.

XXIII Since you hand all the courses back to your slaves, Why is the table not set for you at your feet?

XXIV Harmful to the vine and the rose, a he-goat stood at the altar, Ready to die, a welcome victim, Bacchus, for your hearth. When a Tuscan soothsayer wished to slay him to the god, He had told by chance a rough and uncouth man To cut quickly the testicles with a sharp sickle, That the foul stench of the unclean flesh might depart. While, bending over the green altar, he cut with his knife The struggling neck and pressed it down with his hand, A huge rupture appeared at the angry rites. The countryman seized it with the iron and cut it off, Thinking that the ancient rites of sacrifice required this And that the old gods were worshipped with such entrails. So you, who lately were a Tuscan, now a Gallic soothsayer, While you cut the goat's throat, became a gelding yourself.

XXV If you wish, Faustinus, to cool a boiling bath That Julianus himself would scarcely enter, Ask the rhetorician Sabineius to bathe. He chills the Neronian hot baths.

XXVI You alone have estates, and you alone, Candidus, have cash, You alone have gold plate, you alone the murrine ware, You alone the Massic, you alone the Caecuban of Opimius, And you alone have wit, you alone genius. You alone have everything—imagine my wanting to deny it!— But your wife, Candidus, you have in common with the public.

XXVII You never invite me back, though you often come when invited: I forgive you, Gallus, if only you invite no one. But you invite others: the fault is on both sides. "What?" you ask. I have no sense, and you, Gallus, have no shame.

XXVIII You marvel that Marius's little ear smells foul. You do this, Nestor: you chatter into his little ear.

XXIX These chains, with their twin fetter, Zoilus dedicates To you, Saturn—the rings he wore before.

XXX No dole is given; you recline as a guest for free: Tell me, Gargilianus, what do you do at Rome? Whence comes your shabby toga and the rent of your dark cell? Whence the farthing? Whence the means to keep Chione? Though you may say you live by the highest reason, That you live at all you do with no reason at all.

XXXI You have, I confess, acres of wide-spreading field, And your town house holds many estates, And many a debtor serves your money-chest's mistress, And a mass of gold sustains your feasts. Yet do not look down, Rufinus, on lesser men: Didymus had more, Philomelus has more.

XXXII I cannot do an old woman. You complain, Matrinia? I can Do even an old woman, but you are dead, not old. I can do Hecuba, I can do Niobe, Matrinia, but only If the one is not yet a dog, the other not yet a stone.

XXXIII I prefer a freeborn girl, but if she is denied me, A freedwoman is my next condition: A slave-girl comes last: but she will beat them both, If, in face, she seems to me freeborn.

XXXIV Why you both deserve and do not deserve your name, I will tell. You are cold and you are black: you are not, and you are, Chione—Snow.

XXXV You behold the fish, a famous masterpiece of Phidian art: Add water, and they will swim.

XXXVI What a new and lately made friend does for you, This you bid me do for you, Fabianus: That, unkempt, I should always greet you at first light, And your sedan drag me through the middle of the mud, That, weary, at the tenth hour or later, I should follow you to Agrippa's baths, when I bathe at Titus's. Have I earned this, Fabianus, through thirty Decembers, That I be always a raw recruit to your friendship? Have I earned this, Fabianus, with a toga worn and my own, That you do not yet believe I have earned my discharge?

XXXVII You prosperous friends know only how to take offence. You do not act prettily, but it pleases you: go on, do it.

XXXVIII What cause draws you, or what confidence, to Rome, Sextus? What do you hope or seek from it? Tell me. "I will plead cases," you say, "more eloquent than Cicero himself, And in the three forums none will be my equal." Atestinus pleaded cases, and Civis—you knew them both— But neither earned even his rent in full. "If nothing comes of this, I will compose poems: When you hear them, you will say they are the work of Maro." You are mad: all who are there in chilly cloaks You see are Nasos and Virgils. "I will haunt the great halls." That trade has barely fed Three or four; the rest of the crowd is pale with hunger. "What shall I do? Advise me: for I am resolved to live at Rome." If you are an honest man, Sextus, you can live—by chance.

XXXIX A boy like the Trojan cup-bearer, Faustinus, One-eyed Lycoris loves. How well the one-eyed girl sees!

XL A lizard, drawn by the hand of Mentor, set into the bowl, Lives, and the silver is feared.

XLI Because you lent me thrice fifty thousand Out of such great wealth as your heavy chest weighs down, You think yourself, Telesinus, a great friend to me. You great, because you give? No—I, because you get it back.

XLII Because you try to bury the wrinkles of your belly with bean-meal, Polla, you smear your stomach, not my lips. Let the flaw, perhaps a trifling one, lie simply open: What is concealed is believed to be a great evil.

XLIII You counterfeit youth, Laetinus, with dyed hair, So suddenly a raven, you who were lately a swan. You do not fool everyone: Proserpina knows you are grey: She will tear the mask from your head.

XLIV That no one meets you gladly, That, wherever you come, there is flight and a vast Solitude around you, Ligurinus, Do you wish to know what it is? You are too much a poet. This is a fault exceedingly dangerous. No tigress roused, her cubs torn from her, No viper scorched by the noonday sun, Nor the wicked scorpion is so feared. For who, I ask, could bear such ordeals? You read to me standing, you read to me sitting, You read to me running, you read to me on the privy. I flee to the hot baths: you buzz in my ear. I seek the swimming-pool: I am not allowed to swim. I hurry to dinner: you hold me as I go. I come to dinner: you put me to flight as I sit. Weary, I sleep: you rouse me as I lie. Do you want to see how much harm you do? A man just, upright, innocent—you are feared.

XLV Whether Phoebus fled the table and dinner of Thyestes, I do not know: we, Ligurinus, flee yours. That is indeed splendid and furnished with proud dishes, But nothing at all pleases while you recite. I do not want you to set before me turbot or a two-pound mullet, Nor do I want mushrooms, nor oysters: be silent.

XLVI You demand of me endless service in the toga: I do not go, but I send you my freedman. "It is not the same," you say. I will prove it is much more: I should scarcely keep up with your litter; he will carry it. If you fall into a crowd, he will thrust them all back with his shoulder: My side is weak and freeborn. Whatever you say in your case, I myself shall be silent: But he will bellow you a triple "Bravo!" There is a lawsuit: he will hurl abuse in a mighty voice: Shame forbids me to use strong words. "So you will do nothing for me as a friend?" you say. Whatever, Candidus, my freedman cannot do.

XLVII Where the Capene Gate drips with its great drops And the Almo washes the Phrygian iron of the Mother, Where the sacred field of the Horatii is green And the little shrine of Hercules seethes with crowds, Faustinus, Bassus was riding in a loaded wagon, Hauling all the riches of a blessed countryside. There you would see cabbages of noble stalk And both kinds of leek and low-growing lettuce And beets not useless to a sluggish belly, There a wreath heavy with fat thrushes And a hare mauled by a Gallic hound's tooth And a milk-fed pig fed on beans not yet shelled. Nor did the runner go idle before the carriage, But the courier carried eggs safe in hay. Was Bassus making for the city? No—he was going to the country.

XLVIII Olus built a poor man's cell, but sold his Estates: now Olus has a poor man's cell.

XLIX You mix Veientan for me, while you drink Massic: I would rather smell these cups than drink them.

L This, and no other, is your reason for inviting me to dinner, That you may recite, Ligurinus, your little verses. I have taken off my sandals; at once a huge book is brought Among the lettuces and the fish-sauce: A second is read through, while the first courses are delayed: There is a third, and the second course has not yet come: And you recite a fourth and a fifth book at last. It is rank, if you serve me a boar so many times over. But if you do not give your wicked poems to the mackerel, You will dine alone now, Ligurinus, at home.

LI When I praise your face, when I admire your legs and hands, You are wont to say, Galla, "Naked, I shall please more," And you always avoid the baths we share. Surely, Galla, you are not afraid I shall not please you?

LII You had bought a house, Tongilianus, for two hundred thousand: A mishap too frequent in the city carried it off. Ten times that was collected. I ask: can you not seem yourself To have set fire, Tongilianus, to your own house?

LIII I could do without your face, And your neck and hands and legs, And your breasts and buttocks and hips, And, not to labour through them one by one, I could do without you whole, Chloe.

LIV Since I cannot give what you demand, Galla, when you ask, You could much more simply, Galla, say no.

LV Because wherever you come, we think Cosmus is moving house And cinnamon pours, spilled from a shaken bottle, I would not have you please yourself, Gellia, with foreign trifles. You know, I suppose, my dog could smell as sweet that way.

LVI I would rather have a cistern than a vineyard at Ravenna, Where I could sell water for so much more.

LVII A cunning tavern-keeper cheated me lately at Ravenna: When I asked for it mixed, he sold me wine neat.

LVIII Our Faustinus's villa at Baiae, Bassus, Is not laid out in idle myrtle-groves And barren plane and clipped box, holding the wide field's ungrateful spaces, But rejoices in a real and rough countryside. Here Ceres is crammed and pressed into every corner, And many a jar is fragrant with the wine of old autumns; Here, after November, with winter already at hand, The rough pruner brings back the late grapes. Fierce bulls bellow in the deep valley, And the calf, with hornless brow, itches for a fight. The whole flock of the dirty farmyard roams about, The shrill goose and the jewelled peacocks And the bird that owes its name to its reddening feathers, The painted partridge and the spotted Numidian hens And the pheasant of the impious Colchians; Proud cocks tread the Rhodian hens; The cotes resound with the clapping of doves, Here moans the wood-pigeon, there the waxen turtle-dove. The greedy pigs follow the bailiff's wife's lap, And the soft lamb awaits its full-uddered mother. The milk-white home-born slaves ring the bright hearth, And the festive household gods are lit by a great heap of wood. No idle tavern-keeper grows pale with white leisure, Nor does the slippery wrestling-master waste his oil, But he sets a sly net for the greedy thrushes Or draws up the caught fish on a quivering line Or brings back a doe entangled in the toils; The kindly garden gives the cheerful townsmen exercise, And, with no schoolmaster bidding them, the long-haired Wanton boys gladly obey the bailiff, And the dainty eunuch enjoys the work. Nor does the rustic caller come empty-handed: One brings pale honey with its own combs And a cone of cheese from the Sassinate wood; One offers up drowsy dormice, This one a bleating kid from its bristly mother, Another capons forced to be chaste. And the strapping daughters of honest tenants Offer their mothers' gifts in woven wicker. When the work is done, the glad neighbour is invited; Nor does a greedy table keep back tomorrow's feast, All eat, and the well-fed servant does not know How to envy the drunken guest. But you, near the city, possess an elegant famine, And from a high tower you survey nothing but laurels, Secure, with Priapus fearing no thief; And you feed your vine-dresser on town-bought grain And, at your leisure, carry to your painted villa Greens, eggs, fowl, fruit, cheese, new wine. Ought this to be called a country place, or a town house far off?

LIX The cobbler Cerdo gave you a show, well-dressed Bologna, The fuller gave one at Modena: now where will the tavern-keeper give one?

LX Since I am invited to dinner, no longer for sale as before, Why is not the same dinner given me as is given you? You take oysters fattened in the Lucrine pool, I suck a mussel through a slit shell: You have mushrooms, I take pig-fungus: You deal with turbot, but I with a bream: A golden turtle-dove fills you with its huge rump, A magpie dead in its cage is set before me. Why do I dine without you, Ponticus, when I dine with you? Let it profit me that the dole is gone: let us eat the same.

LXI You say whatever you ask is nothing, you shameless Cinna: If you ask nothing, Cinna, I refuse you nothing, Cinna.

LXII Because you buy boys for a hundred thousand, often two hundred, Because you drink wines laid up under King Numa, Because not very spacious furniture costs you a million, Because a pound of wrought silver carries off five thousand, Because a golden carriage is got for the price of a farm, Because your mule cost more than the house you bought: Do you believe, Quintus, you provide all this with a great soul? You are wrong: a petty soul, Quintus, buys these things.

LXIII Cotilus, you are a fine fellow: many say this, Cotilus. I hear it: but what is a fine fellow? Tell me. "A fine fellow is one who arranges his curled locks in order, Who always smells of balsam, always of cinnamon; Who hums the songs of the Nile, the songs of Gades, Who waves his smooth-plucked arms to various measures; Who lounges all day long among the women's chairs And always whispers something in someone's ear, Who reads notes sent from here and there and writes them; Who shrinks from the cloak of his neighbour's elbow; Who knows who loves whom, who flits through the dinner-parties, Who knows well the old pedigrees of Hirpinus the horse." What are you saying? Is this, is this a fine fellow, Cotilus? A fine fellow, Cotilus, is a very fiddling thing.

LXIV The Sirens, the merry bane of sailors, The coaxing deaths and the cruel joy, Whom once no man left, once he had heard them, Wily Ulysses is said to have left behind. I do not wonder: this, Cassianus, I would wonder at, If he had left Canius in mid-story.

LXV The fragrance an apple breathes, bitten by a tender girl, The breeze that comes from Corycian saffron; The scent of the grey vine when it flowers with its first clusters, Of the grass that the sheep has just cropped; Of myrtle, of the Arab harvester, of rubbed amber, The smell of a pale fire of eastern incense; Of the clod when it is lightly sprinkled with a summer shower, Of the garland that has rested on hair dripping with nard: Of all these your kisses smell, cruel boy Diadumenus. What if you gave them whole, without grudging?

LXVI Antony committed an equal crime with the swords of Egypt: Each sword cut off sacred faces. That one, Rome, was your head, when, joyful, You drove your laurelled triumphs; this one, when you spoke. Yet Antony's cause is worse than that of Pothinus: The latter did the deed for his master, the former for himself.

LXVII You idle, boys, and you know nothing, Lazier than the Vaternus and the Rasina, Through whose sluggish shallows sailing You dip your slow oars to the time-call. Already, as Phaethon sinks, Aethon sweats And the day blazes, and the noonday hour Unyokes the wearied horses. But you, wandering over such peaceful waves, Idly play at leisure in your safe boat. I think you no sailors—but Argo-nauts.

LXVIII Thus far the book is written for you, matron. For whom are the inner pages written, you ask? For me. The gymnasium, the baths, the racetrack are in this part: withdraw. We are stripping: spare to see naked men. From here, with modesty laid aside after the wine and roses, Tipsy Terpsichore knows not what she says: With no doubtful figure, but openly she names that thing Which proud Venus receives in the sixth month, Which the bailiff sets as guard in the middle of the garden, Which the chaste maiden looks at with her hand held against it. If I know you well, you were laying down the long book, Wearied; now, eager, you will read it whole.

LXIX Because you write all your epigrams in chaste words And in your poems there is no prick, I marvel, I praise: there is nothing more saintly than you alone: But no page of mine is free of wantonness. So let naughty youths and easy girls read these, And let the older man read them too, if a mistress torments him. But your venerable and saintly words, Cosconius, Ought to be read by boys and virgins.

LXX You are the lover of Aufidia, Scaevinus, whose husband you once were; He who was your rival is now her husband. Why does another's wife please you, when your own did not? Can you not get it up unless you feel insecure?

LXXI When the boy's prick hurts and yours, Naevolus, your arse, I am no prophet, but I know what you do.

LXXII You want to be had, but you will not bathe with me, Saufeia. I suspect some great defect. Either your flabby breasts hang from your chest, Or, naked, you fear to betray the furrows of your belly, Or your torn groin gapes with an endless cleft, Or something of your cunt juts out at its mouth. But none of these is so, I believe; naked, you are most beautiful. If that is true, you have a worse fault: you are a fool.

LXXIII You sleep with well-endowed boys, And what stands for them, Gallus, does not stand for you. What, I ask you, Phoebus, do you want me to suspect? I wanted to believe you a soft man, But rumour denies that you are a catamite.

LXXIV You smooth your face with depilatory and your bald head with pitch-paste. Are you afraid, Gargilianus, of the barber? What will you do about your nails? For surely you cannot Pare them with resin or with Venetian clay. Stop, if you have any shame, parading your wretched baldness: This, Gargilianus, is usually done to a cunt.

LXXV Your prick, Lupercus, long ago ceased to stand, Yet, madman, you struggle to get it up. But rocket and lecherous bulbs do nothing, And shameless savory now profits you nothing. You have begun to corrupt pure mouths with bribes: Even so, your Venus, urged on, does not come alive. Could anyone marvel enough at this, or believe it— That what does not stand stands you, Lupercus, at a great price?

LXXVI You get it up for old women, Bassus, you spurn girls, And not the beautiful, but the dying, please you. Is this not madness, I ask, is this not a crazed prick? When you could have Hecuba, you cannot do Andromache!

LXXVII Neither mullet nor thrush delights you, Baeticus, Nor is hare ever, nor boar, agreeable to you, Nor do cakes please you, nor a slice of cut pastry, Nor does Libya send, nor Phasis, birds to you: You devour capers and onions swimming in rotten fish-sauce And the flesh of a doubtful gammon, And gurnards delight you and tunny-chunks with grey skin, You drink resined wines, you flee Falernian. I suspect there is some more secret fault of the stomach: For why else, Baeticus, do you eat putrid things?

LXXVIII You pissed once with the keel running, Paulinus. Do you want to piss again? Then you will be a Palinurus.

LXXIX Sertorius finishes nothing, begins everything. This man, when he has a woman, I do not think he completes the act.

LXXX You speak ill of no one, you slander no one, Apicius: Yet rumour says that your tongue is a foul one.

LXXXI What have you to do, Baeticus the Gaul, with a woman's pit? That tongue of yours ought to lick men's middles. Why was your prick cut off with a Samian sherd, If a cunt, Baeticus, was so welcome to you? Your head must be gelded: for though you are a eunuch in the groin, Yet you cheat the rites of Cybele: in the mouth you are a man.

LXXXII Whoever can be a guest of Zoilus, Let him dine among the whores of Summemmius And drink sober from the chipped jar of Leda: This, I maintain, is lighter and cleaner. He lies, dressed in pale green, on a couch he fills, And shoves his guests aside with his elbows on either hand, Propped on purple and silken cushions. A worn-out catamite stands by and supplies him, as he belches, Red feathers and toothpicks of mastic, And, as he sweats, a reclining concubine fans A faint coolness with a green fan, And a boy drives off the flies with a myrtle branch. A masseuse runs over his body with nimble art And spreads her skilled hand on all his limbs; A eunuch knows the signal of his snapping finger And, the inquirer into his dainty bladder, Guides the drunken member of his drinking master. But he himself, turned back to the crowd at his feet, Among the lapdogs licking the entrails of geese, Divides the boar's sweetbreads among the wrestlers And gives the turtle-doves' rumps to his catbamite; And while Ligurian rock-wine is served to us Or must boiled in Massilian smoke, He toasts his fools with Opimian nectar In crystal and in murrine cups. And himself, dark with Cosmus's flasks, He does not blush to share out among us, in golden-purple flagons, A poor adulteress's pomade. Then, undone by many a half-pint, he snores: We recline, and, bidden to keep silence for his snorts, We pledge each other with nods. Such insolence of shameless Malchio we endure, Nor can we be avenged, Rufus: he sucks cocks.

LXXXIII You advise me, Cordus, to make my epigrams shorter. "Do for me what Chione does": I could not be briefer.

LXXXIV What does your adulteress say? I did not say a girl, Gongylion. What then? Your tongue.

LXXXV Who persuaded you to cut off the adulterer's nose? It was not with this part, husband, that you were wronged. Fool, what have you done? Your wife has lost nothing here, Since the prick of your Deiphobus is safe.

LXXXVI That you should not, chaste lady, read the wanton part of the book, I foretold and warned you: yet, look, you are reading it. But if you watch Panniculus and Latinus, chaste lady,— These things are no more shameless than the mimes—read on.

LXXXVII Rumour reports, Chione, that you have never been had And that nothing is purer than your cunt. Yet you bathe covered, not in the part you should: If you have any shame, move your loincloth to your face.

LXXXVIII They are twin brothers, but lick different parts. Tell me, are they more unlike, or more alike?

LXXXIX Eat lettuce and eat soft mallows: For you have the face, Phoebus, of a man straining at stool.

XC Galla wants, does not want, to give to me, and I cannot say, Since she wants and does not want, what Galla wants for herself.

XCI When a discharged soldier was seeking the fields of his native Ravenna, He joined his journey with the half-man troop of Cybele. A boy clung to him as companion, Achillas, runaway from his master, Remarkable for his beauty and his wantonness. The barren men perceived this: they ask in what part He would sleep. But he too perceived their silent treachery: He lies; they believe. After the wine, sleep is sought: At once the wicked crew seize the iron And geld the old man, who lay on the edge of the couch; For the boy was safe, guarded by the bedstead. There is a story that once a hind was substituted for a virgin, But now a prick was substituted for a hind.

XCII My wife asks me to allow her an adulterer, Gallus—but one. Shall I not gouge out, Gallus, this fellow's two eyes?

XCIII Since you have outlived three hundred consuls, Vetustilla, And have three hairs and four teeth, The breast of a grasshopper, the leg and colour of an ant; Since you wear a brow more wrinkled than your gown And breasts like the webs of spiders; Since, compared with your jaws, The Nile crocodile has a narrow gape, And the frogs of Ravenna croak more sweetly, And the gnat of Adria sings more tunefully, And you see about as much as owls see at morning, And you smell like a billy-goat, And you have the rump of a scrawny duck, And your bony cunt outdoes a Cynic graybeard; Since the bath-keeper admits you, with the lamp put out, Only among the whores of the graveyard; Since for you winter falls in the month of August, And not even the plague can thaw you out: You dare, after two hundred deaths, to want to marry And, mad, you seek a man to itch for your ashes. What if Sattia's tombstone wanted to wed? Who will call you spouse, who wife, You whom Philomelus lately called grandmother? But if you demand that your corpse be tickled, Let a couch be spread from Acorus's funeral parlour— The only one that suits your wedding, And let the corpse-burner carry torches before the new bride: Only a funeral brand can enter that cunt.

XCIV You say the hare is not cooked and call for the whip. You would rather, Rufus, carve up the cook than the hare.

XCV You never say "good day," but always return it, Naevolus, A thing the raven too often is wont to say first. Why, I ask you, Naevolus, do you expect me to say it: For I think, Naevolus, you are neither my better nor my elder. Each Caesar bestowed rewards on me, the praised, And gave the paternal rights of three children. I am read by many a mouth, and fame, without waiting for the pyre, Gives my name, known throughout the towns. There is something in this too: Rome has seen me a tribune, And I sit where Oceanus rouses you. As many as have been made citizens by Caesar's gift to me, I do not think you have so many slaves. But you are buggered, and prettily, Naevolus, you wag your rump. Now, now you are the better, Naevolus, you win: good day.

XCVI You lick my girl, you do not have her, And you boast like an adulterer and a fornicator. If I catch you, Gargilius, you will hold your tongue.

XCVII Lest Chione read this book, I commission you, Rufus. She was hurt by my poem, and she can hurt back.

XCVIII You ask how scrawny your arse is? You can sodomize, Sabellus, with your arse.

XCIX You ought not to be angry, Cerdo, at my little book. It is your trade, not your life, that my poem has wounded. Allow my harmless wit. Why should I not be allowed To jest, if you were allowed to cut throats?

C I sent the courier back to you, Rufus, at the sixth hour, And I think he carried my poems soaked through: For by chance the sky was crashing down with measureless rains. No otherwise ought that book to have been sent.