Book 5

I This I send you, Caesar—whether you enjoy the hills of Palladian Alba and look from there toward Trivia, from there toward Thetis, or whether the truth-telling sisters learn your responses where the smooth wave of the suburban strait lies still, or whether Aeneas's nurse pleases you, or the Sun's daughter, or white Anxur with its health-giving waters— this I send, O happy guardian and safety of the world, while you are safe we believe Jove is kind. Only accept it: I'll think that you have read it and indulge, swollen with Gallic credulity.

II Matrons and boys and maidens, to you our page is dedicated. You, whom too-saucy naughtiness and naked wit delight too much, read the four wanton little books: the fifth book jokes with our lord; which Germanicus may read, his cheek unblushing, before the Cecropian maiden.

III Degis, now a dweller on our bank, Germanicus, who came to you from the servant waters of the Hister, glad and amazed at having just seen the world's protector, is said to have spoken thus to his companions: "How much better is my lot than my brother's, who is allowed so near to behold the god whom from afar he worships."

IV Myrtale tends to reek of much wine, but to fool us she gobbles laurel leaves and, careful, mixes her neat wine with foliage, not water. Whenever you see her coming toward you, Paulus, flushed, with bulging veins, you may well say, "Myrtale has been drinking laurel."

V Sextus, eloquent attendant of Palatine Minerva, who enjoy the nearer genius of the god— for you are allowed to know our lord's nascent cares and the leader's secret heart—: let there be a place, even in some corner, for my little books too, where Pedo, where Marsus, where Catullus will be. Beside the heavenly songs of the Capitoline war set the great work of buskined Maro.

VI If it is not too burdensome or too troublesome, Muses, ask your Parthenius: so may a later and once-blessed old age end your days with Caesar safe, and may you be happy with envy in your favour, so may Burrus soon feel himself a parent: admit my timid and brief page within the threshold of the holier court. You know the times of Jove serene, when he shines with his own calm face, with which he is wont to deny suppliants nothing. There's no cause to fear unjust prayers: my page never asks for great or troublesome things, which, adorned with cedar oil and purple, has grown up with black end-knobs. Don't hold it out, but keep it as if you offered and did nothing. If I know the lord of the nine sisters, he'll ask of his own accord for the purple little book.

VII As fires renew the Assyrian nests each time the one bird has lived ten generations, so new Rome has shed her old age and herself taken on the face of her protector. Now, I pray, forgetting the well-known complaint, Vulcan, spare us: we are the throng of Mars, but of Venus too: spare us, father: so may your wanton wife forgive the Lemnian chains and patiently love.

VIII The edict of our lord and god, by which the seating is made more certain and the knight has recovered his unmixed rows, while Phasis just now was praising it in the theatre, Phasis, red in his purple cloak, and boasting, proud, with swollen mouth: "At last one may sit more comfortably, now the equestrian dignity is restored, we're not crowded by the mob nor soiled": while he reclined and reported such things, Leitus ordered those purple and arrogant cloaks to get up.

IX I was ill: but you came at once to me, Symmachus, attended by a hundred students. A hundred hands chilled by the north wind touched me: I had no fever, Symmachus—now I have.

X "What shall I call this—that fame is denied the living, and that rare is the reader who loves his own age?" These, no doubt, Regulus, are the ways of envy, that it should always prefer the old to the new. So, ungrateful, we seek out old Pompey's shade, so old men praise Catulus's paltry temples; Ennius was read while you, Rome, still had Maro, and his own age laughed at the Maeonian, the seldom-crowded theatre applauded crowned Menander, only Corinna knew her Naso. Yet you, O my little books, do not be in haste: if glory comes after death, I'm in no hurry.

XI Sardonyxes, emeralds, diamonds, jaspers—my Stella turns them all, Severus, on one knuckle. Many gems on his fingers, more in his verse you'll find: hence, I think, this cultured hand.

XII That proud Masclion bears nodding weights on his brow with the pole that props them, or that great Ninus lifts with all his muscles seven boys or eight, seems no hard feat to me, when my Stella with one finger, this one or that, carries ten girls.

XIII I am, I confess, and always was, Callistratus, poor, but no obscure or ill-known knight; I'm read throughout the world and people say "That's the man", and what death gives to few, life has given me. But your roofs rest on a hundred columns, your strongbox lashes freedman's wealth, the great soil of Nile's Syene serves you, and Gallic Parma shears your countless flocks. This is what I and you are: but what I am, you cannot be; what you are, anyone from the crowd can be.

XIV Nanneius, used always to sit in the front row, back when one could grab a seat, twice and three times moved on, shifted his camp, and almost as a third party, among the very chairs, sat down behind a Gaius and a Lucius. From there, his head covered with a hood, he peers out and watches the games, unseemly, with one eye. And from there, poor wretch, thrown out, he passes into the gangway, and half-propped on the edge of a back bench, and ill-received, on one knee, he pretends to a knight that he's sitting, to Leitus that he's standing.

XV This is the fifth book of my jokes, Augustus, and no one complains of being hurt by my verse, but many a reader rejoices at an honoured name, to whom by my gift lasting fame is given. "Yet what do these things profit, though they honour many?" Granted they profit not—still they delight me.

XVI That I prefer to write what pleases, though I could write serious things—you are the cause, friendly reader, you who read and sing all my songs throughout Rome: but you don't know how much such love costs me. For if I chose to defend the temple of the scythe-bearing Thunderer and sell words to anxious defendants, many a sailor would send me Spanish casks and my pocket would grow grimy with varied coin. But now my little book is a guest and a reveller, and my page pleases only for free. Yet the ancients were not content with praise alone, when the least gift to a poet was an Alexis. "Nicely said," you say; "it delights me and we'll praise it always." You play dumb? You'll make me a pleader, I think.

XVII While you recount grandfathers and ancestors and great names, while a knight like me is to you a sordid match, while you say you cannot marry, Gellia, anyone but a man of the broad stripe—you've married, Gellia, a chest-bearer.

XVIII That in December, the month when napkins fly and slender ladles and wax tapers and papers and the sharp jar of Damascus plums goes to old men, I sent you nothing but home-born little books, perhaps I may seem stingy or unkind— I hate the crafty and wicked arts of gifts: gifts mimic hooks: for who does not know that the greedy scarus is caught by the swallowed fly? Whenever a poor man gives nothing to a rich friend, O Quintianus, he is generous.

XIX If there's any faith in truth, O greatest Caesar, no ages can be preferred to your times. When was it allowed to see worthier triumphs? When did the Palatine gods deserve more? Under what leader was warlike Rome fairer and greater? Under what prince was liberty so great? Yet there is this fault—and no slight one, though it's the only one— that the poor man cultivates ungrateful friendships. Who lavishes wealth on an old and faithful comrade, or whom does a knight, not unrelated, attend? To have sent a ladle of a half-pound at the Saturnalia, or ten full scruples of a flame-coloured toga, is luxury, and the swollen patrons call these gifts: one who might jingle gold pieces will perhaps be the only one. Since these patrons don't exist, be you, Caesar, our friend: no virtue of a leader can be sweeter. Long since you've been laughing, Germanicus, with silent nose, that I give you advice useful to me.

XX If with you, dear Martialis, I were allowed to enjoy carefree days, to dispose of leisured time and alike be free for true life: we'd know neither the halls nor the houses of the powerful, nor grim lawsuits and the gloomy forum, nor proud ancestral busts; but riding, talk, little books, the Field, the colonnade, shade, the Virgin's water, the baths— these would always be our haunts, these our labours. Now neither of us lives for himself, and feels the good suns flee and pass away, which perish for us and are charged to our account. Does any man, who knows how to live, delay?

XXI Quintus instead of Decimus, Macer instead of Crassus, Regulus, the rhetor Apollodotus used to greet. Now he returns each man's greeting by his own name. How much care and toil can do! He wrote it down and learned it by heart.

XXII If I did not wish and deserve to see you at home in the morning, let your Esquiline, Paulus, be farther off for me. But I'm a near neighbour to the Tiburtine pillar, where rustic Flora looks on ancient Jove: the steep path of the Suburan slope must be climbed, and the filthy stones, with a step never dry, and one can scarcely break through the long mule-trains and the marble you see dragged with much rope. Worse still is this: that after a thousand labours the doorkeeper tells me, Paulus, you're not at home, exhausted. This is the end of my vain effort and my soaked little toga: it was scarcely worth so much to see Paulus in the morning. The dutiful man always has unkind friends: unless you sleep in, you cannot be my patron.

XXIII You had clothed yourself in grass-green colours, Bassus, while the laws of the theatre seats were silent. But after the gentle censor's care bade them be reborn, and the knight, made surer, obeys Oceanus, you shine in no clothing but what is soaked with scarlet or dyed with purple, and think thus to fool him. There are no four-hundred-thousand cloaks, Bassus, or my Cordus would have a horse before all others.

XXIV Hermes, the warlike delight of the age, Hermes, skilled in all weapons, Hermes both gladiator and trainer, Hermes, the throng and terror of his own school, Hermes, whom Helius fears, but him alone, Hermes, to whom Advolans falls, but to him alone, Hermes, taught to conquer and not to wound, Hermes, his own understudy, Hermes, the riches of the seat-sellers, Hermes, the care and toil of the gladiators' women, Hermes, proud with the warlike spear, Hermes, menacing with the sea-god's trident, Hermes, fearsome with the drooping helmet, Hermes, the glory of universal Mars, Hermes, all things in one and three times one.

XXV "You don't have four hundred thousand, Chaerestratus: get up, look, Leitus is coming: stand, flee, run, hide." Is there anyone, ah, who calls him back and leads the departing in? Is there any friend, ah, who opens his ample wealth? Whom shall we give to our pages and to fame and to the talk of nations? Who would not wish to go down whole to the Stygian lakes? Is not this, I ask, better than to spatter the stage with a red shower and be drenched with lavished saffron? Than to give four hundred thousand to a horse that won't feel it, so that Scorpus's golden nose may gleam everywhere? O rich man in vain, O dissembler of your friend, do you read this and praise it? What fame you're losing!

XXVI That I called you the alpha of the cloaked men, Cordus, lately, when I was joking on some page, if perchance this verse stirred your bile, you may call me the beta of the toga-wearers.

XXVII Talent and study and manners and birth you have of a knight, I admit: the rest you have of the plebs. Don't let your fourteen rows of benches be worth so much that you sit pale at the sight of Oceanus.

XXVIII That Mamercus should speak and think well, you could bring about by no manners, Aulus: though you outdo the Curvian brothers in piety, the Nervas in calm, the Rusos in courtesy, the Macers in honesty, the Mauricuses in fairness, the Reguli in oratory, the Pauli in jests: he gnaws everything with rusty teeth. You might believe him perhaps a spiteful man: I believe him a wretched one, whom no one pleases.

XXIX Whenever you send me a hare, Gellia, you say: "You'll be handsome, Marcus, for seven days." If you don't mock, if you tell the truth, my light, you've never eaten a hare, Gellia.

XXX Varro, not to be disowned by the Sophoclean buskin, nor less to be admired in the Calabrian lyre, put off your work, let neither eloquent Catullus's stage detain you, nor elegy with her dressed hair; but in smoky December read these poems, not to be scorned, sent you in their own month: unless perhaps it seems to you handier and better to lose, Varro, the Saturnalian nuts.

XXXI See how the troop leaps over the gentle bullocks and how the easy-natured bull loves its own burden. This one hangs from the very tips of the horns, that one, ranging, runs along the shoulders and brandishes his weapons all over the ox. But the savage beast stays rigid, unmoved: the sand would be no safer, and the level ground could deceive them more. Their gestures don't tremble; but for the prize at stake the boy is unconcerned, the herd anxious.

XXXII Crispus, Faustinus, in his last will did not leave his wife a farthing. "To whom did he leave it, then?" To himself.

XXXIII A pleader is said to carp at my poems: who he is, I don't know: if I find out, woe to you, pleader.

XXXIV To you, father Fronto, mother Flaccilla, I commend this girl, my kisses and my darling, that little Erotion may not shudder at the dark shades and the monstrous jaws of the hound of Tartarus. She would have completed the cold of her sixth winter, had she not lived just so many days too few. Among such aged patrons let her play, wanton, and chatter my name with lisping mouth. Let no hard turf cover her soft bones, and you, earth, do not be heavy on her: she was not heavy on you.

XXXV While scarlet-clad Euclides was shouting that he gets two hundred thousand back from his Patran estates and more from his suburban land near Corinth, and traced his long pedigree from fair Leda, and resisted Leitus, who was making him get up: from the proud, noble, wealthy knight's bosom a great key suddenly fell. Never, Fabullus, was there a more good-for-nothing key.

XXXVI A certain man, praised in my little book, Faustinus, pretends, as if he owed nothing: he's cheated me.

XXXVII A girl sweeter to me than the aged swans, softer than the lamb of Phalantine Galaesus, daintier than the shell of the Lucrine pool, to whom you'd prefer neither Erythraean pearls, nor the just-polished tooth of the Indian beast, nor virgin snows nor the untouched lily; who outdid in hair the fleece of the Baetic flock and the knots of the Rhine and the golden dormouse; whose breath was fragrant as the rose-gardens of Paestum, as the first honey of Attic combs, as a lump of amber snatched from the hand; compared to whom the peacock was unlovely, the squirrel unpleasing, and the phoenix common: Erotion is still warm on her fresh pyre, whom the bitter law of cruellest fates finished in her sixth winter, and not even all of it, my love and joy and play— and yet my Paetus forbids me to be sad, beating his breast and tearing his hair the same: "Aren't you ashamed to weep at a little slave-girl's death? I," he says, "have buried a wife, and yet I live, a famous, proud, noble, wealthy wife." What can be braver than our Paetus? He inherited twenty million, and yet he lives.

XXXVIII Calliodorus has an equestrian fortune—who doesn't know it?— Sextus, but Calliodorus also has a brother. He who says "Split the four hundred thousand" is dividing a fig: do you think two can sit on one horse? What have you to do with your brother, with troublesome Pollux? If you had no Pollux, you'd be Castor. Since you are one, will you, Calliodorus, sit as two? Get up: you're committing a solecism, Calliodorus. Or imitate Leda's brood—if you can't sit with your brother—: take turns, Calliodorus, in sitting.

XXXIX Thirty times in a year, Charinus, when you sealed your last will, I sent you cakes soaked in Hyblaean thyme. I'm worn out: have pity now, Charinus: seal less often, or do once for all what your cough keeps falsely promising. I've emptied my money-boxes and my purse: though I'd been richer than Croesus, I'd be poorer than Irus, Charinus, if you so often ate up my bean-soup.

XL You painted Venus, Artemidorus, and you worship Minerva: and you wonder your work has displeased?

XLI Though you are more unmanned than a flabby eunuch, and softer than the catamite of Celaenae, whom the gelded Gallus of the frenzied mother bewails, you talk of theatres and rows and edicts, and of robes and the Ides and brooches and fortunes, and point out the poor with your pumiced hand. Whether you may sit on the knights' benches, I'll see, Didymus: you may not sit on the husbands'.

XLII A cunning thief will carry off your coins with the chest broken open, impious flame will lay your ancestral home in ruins: a debtor will deny alike the interest and the principal, the barren field won't return the seed cast in: a deceitful mistress will rob your steward, the wave will overwhelm your ships piled with merchandise. Beyond fortune's reach is whatever is given to friends: the wealth you give away is the only wealth you'll always have.

XLIII Thais has black teeth, Laecania snow-white. What's the reason? This one has bought hers, that one has her own.

XLIV What has happened, I ask, what suddenly has happened, that when I invited you to dinner, Dento— who would believe it?—you dared four times to refuse? And you don't look back and you flee me when I follow, whom you used just now to seek at the baths and theatres and in every gathering-room. So it is—you've been caught by a richer table, and a bigger kitchen has snatched the dog. Soon, but quickly, recognized and dropped, when the rich cookshop has grown tired of you, you'll come back to the bones of your old dinner.

XLV You call yourself beautiful, Bassa, you call yourself a girl. That's what she who is neither tends to say, Bassa.

XLVI Since I want no kisses but those I've snatched in struggle, and your anger pleases me more than your face, to ask you often, Diadumenus, I often beat you: and I achieve this—that you neither fear nor love me.

XLVII Philo swears he's never dined at home, and it's true: he doesn't dine, whenever no one has invited him.

XLVIII What does love not compel? Encolpos cut his hair against his master's wish—though not forbidden— Pudens allowed it and wept: so the father gave up the reins, complaining of bold Phaethon: so Hylas was carried off, so Achilles, discovered, laid down his hair gladly, his mother grieving. But you, don't hurry—don't trust to short hair— and come slowly, beard, in return for so great a gift.

XLIX When just now I happened to see you sitting alone, Labienus, I thought you three. The number of your bald head deceived me: you have hairs on this side, you have them on that, such as might even suit a boy; the head's bare in the middle, and not one hair is marked on the long expanse. This mistake profited you in December, then, when the Emperor sent out the dinners: you came back with three little bread-baskets. Such, I believe, was Geryon. You should avoid, I advise, Philip's colonnade: if Hercules sees you, you're done for.

L Whenever I dine at home, unless I've invited you, Charopinus, at once there are huge hostilities, and you could run me through the middle with drawn sword, if you learn my hearth grew warm without you. So I'm not allowed even once to steal a meal? Nothing is more shameless than this gullet of yours, Charopinus. Stop now, I beg, watching my kitchen, and let my cook for once put one over on you.

LI This man, who carries a left hand weighed down with books, whom a light chorus of clerks crowds round, who, with notebooks brought out from this side and that and with letters, lends a grave countenance, like Cato and Tullius and Brutus, though the racks should force him, Rufus, cannot manage a Latin "Greetings," nor a Greek "Chaire." If you think I'm making this up, let's greet him.

LII What you've done for me I remember and will always keep in mind. Why then am I silent, Postumus? Because you talk. Whenever I begin to recount your gifts to someone, at once he cries, "He told me himself." Some things two don't do nicely: one is enough for this task: if you want me to speak, be silent yourself. Believe me, Postumus, gifts, however huge, are spoiled by the chattering of their giver.

LIII Why write of Medea, why, friend, write of Thyestes? What use to you, Bassus, are Niobe or Andromache? The fittest subject for your pages, believe me, is Deucalion, or, if he doesn't please, Phaethon.

LIV My rhetor has become an improviser: he didn't write down "Calpurnius," and he greeted him.

LV Tell me, whom do you carry, queen of the birds? "The Thunderer." Why does he hold no thunderbolts in his hand? "He's in love." With what fire does the god burn? "A boy's." Why do you look back gently at Jove, with open beak? "I'm speaking of Ganymede."

LVI To what schoolmaster you should hand your son, Lupus, you ask, anxious, and inquire a long time. Avoid, I advise, all the grammarians and rhetors: let him have nothing to do with the books of Cicero or Maro, let him leave Tutilius to his own fame; if he makes verses, disown the poet. Does he want to learn the money-making arts? See that he learns lyre-playing or flute-playing; if the boy seems of dull wit, make him an auctioneer or an architect.

LVII When I call you "lord," Cinna, don't be pleased with yourself: I often return your slave's greeting that way too.

LVIII Tomorrow you'll live, tomorrow, you keep saying, Postumus. Tell me, that "tomorrow," Postumus—when does it come? How far off is that "tomorrow," where is it? Or where is it to be sought? Surely it doesn't hide among the Parthians and Armenians? That "tomorrow" already has the years of Priam or Nestor. That "tomorrow"—tell me—for how much could it be bought? You'll live tomorrow? Today it's already too late to live, Postumus: he is wise, whoever, Postumus, lived yesterday.

LIX That I send you no silver, that I send you no gold, this I do, eloquent Stella, for your own sake. Whoever has given great things wished great things sent back to him; by my earthenware you'll be relieved of that.

LX Though you bark at us on and on and provoke us with your shameless yelping, I'm resolved to deny you outright this fame, which you've long sought, that in my little books, such as they are, you should be read throughout the world. For why should anyone know you existed? You must perish unknown, poor wretch. Yet perhaps there'll be no lack, in this city, of one or two or three or four willing to gnaw the dog's hide: but I keep my nails from this scab.

LXI Who is that curly-haired fellow, Marianus, always clinging to your wife? Who is that curly-haired fellow? Who whispers I-don't-know-what into your lady's tender ear and presses her chair with his right elbow? On all of whose fingers a slim ring runs, whose legs bear not a hair to mar them? You give me no answer? "He manages my wife's affairs," you say. To be sure, he's a steadfast, hard man, who shows the agent in his very face: Aufidius of Chios won't be sharper than this. O how you deserved, Marianus, the slaps of Latinus: you'll be the successor, I believe, to Panniculus. He manages your wife's affairs? That curly fellow, any affairs? Not your wife's affairs—your affairs he manages.

LXII By your own right you may stay in my gardens, guest, if you can lay your limbs on the bare ground, or if a great supply of furnishings is carried with you: for mine has already given up the ghost for guests. No mattress—not even an empty one—covers the broken couches, the rotten webbing lies with its cord snapped. Yet let the lodging be shared between us two: I bought the gardens; that's the greater part: you furnish them; that's the less.

LXIII "What do you think," you say, "Marcus, of my little books?" So you often ask me, Ponticus, anxious. I admire, I'm astonished: nothing is more perfect than they, Regulus himself will yield to your genius. "You think so?" you say. "So may Caesar be good to you, so may Capitoline Jupiter." No—to you.

LXIV Pour me two measures of Falernian, Callistus, and you, Alcimus, melt summer snows over them, let my dripping hair grow rich with abundant balsam and my temples be wearied with sewn rose-garlands. The Mausoleum so near bids us live, since it teaches that the gods themselves can perish.

LXV Stars and heaven were given—though his stepmother opposed— to Alcides by the terror of Nemea and the Arcadian boar and the chastised wrestling-grease of the Libyan ring and Eryx, laid low heavily in Sicilian dust, and the woods' terror, who by silent fraud was wont to lead off cattle, walking backward, into his cave—Cacus. Of your arena, Caesar, what small fraction is this seen? The new day brings greater battles in the morning. How many heavier weights fall than the Nemean monster! How many Maenalian boars your spear lays low! Were the Iberian shepherd's triple fight renewed, you have one who could conquer Geryon. Though the Greek Lerna's beast be counted often, what does the wicked Hydra do beside the Nile's beasts? For such great merits, Augustus, the gods gave heaven to Alcides quickly, but to you they'll give it late.

LXVI Often greeted, you never greet first yourself: so you'll have, Pontilianus, your "Eternal farewell."

LXVII When the Attic birds were seeking their winter retreats in the usual way, one bird stayed behind in the nests. The others caught the crime when they returned in spring-time, and her own kind tore the deserter to pieces. Late she paid the penalty: the guilty mother should have been torn apart, but then, when she mangled Itys.

LXVIII From a northern race I've sent you hair, Lesbia, that you might know how much more golden yours is.

LXIX Antonius, who'll reproach Pharian Pothinus with nothing, and more lightly guilty by the proscription-list than by Cicero: why, madman, do you draw a sword against Roman lips? Not even Catiline would have allowed this crime. The impious soldier is bribed with unspeakable gold, and for such great wealth one voice falls silent for you. What use is the precious silence of that sacred tongue? All men will begin to speak for Cicero.

LXX A hundred thousand just poured into him by his patron, in full, Maximus—Syriscus, wandering through the cookshops with their stools around the four baths, ran through it. O what a gullet, to eat up a hundred thousand! And greater still—and not even reclining!

LXXI Where moist Trebula sends down her chill valleys and the green field is cold in the months of the Crab, country never violated by the Cleonaean lion and a house always friendly to the Aeolian South wind, they call you, Faustinus: pass your long harvests on these hills; Tibur will be your winter now.

LXXII He who could call the Thunderer Bacchus's mother could call Semele, Rufus, his father.

LXXIII Why I don't give you my little books, when you beg and demand them so often, do you wonder, Theodorus? There's a great reason: that you may not give me your little books.

LXXIV The young Pompeys Asia and Europe cover, but the father himself the land of Libya covers, if indeed any land covers him. What wonder if he's scattered over the whole world? In one place so great a ruin could not lie.

LXXV She who married you to obey the law, Laelia, Quintus, you may call your lawful wife.

LXXVI Mithridates profited by often drinking poison, so that savage toxins could not harm him. You too have taken precautions, dining always so badly, that you could never, Cinna, die of hunger.

LXXVII A certain man is said, Marullus, to have wittily said that you carry oil in your ear.

LXXVIII If you suffer from a dismal dinner alone at home, Toranius, you can go hungry with me. You won't lack, if you're used to an aperitif, cheap Cappadocian lettuce and pungent leeks, a slice of tuna will lie hidden in halved eggs. There'll be set out, to be held in scorched fingers on a black dish, green sprouts, which just now left the chilly garden, and a little sausage pressing snowy porridge, and pale beans with reddish bacon. If you'll have the gifts of the second course, shrivelled grapes will be offered you and pears that bear the name of the Syrians, and chestnuts that learned Naples produced, roasted in slow heat: the wine you'll make good by drinking it. After all this, if by chance Bacchus stirs the hunger he usually does, noble olives will come to your aid, such as the Picene branches lately bore, and hot chickpeas and warm lupins. The little dinner is small—who can deny it?— but you'll feign nothing nor hear feigned talk, and you'll recline at ease with your own face; nor will the host read out a fat scroll, nor will girls from wicked Gades keep quivering, lustful, without end, their wanton loins with practised trembling; but the pipe of little Condylus will sound something neither heavy nor coarse. This is the little dinner. You'll follow Claudia. What girl do you want me to put before you?

LXXIX Eleven times you got up at one dinner, Zoilus, and your dinner-suit was changed eleven times, lest the sweat, retained, should cling to your damp clothes and a thin breeze chafe your loosened skin. Why don't I sweat, who dine with you, Zoilus? Because one dinner-suit makes great cold.

LXXX You may give me, Severus, not a whole hour, if you have time—and you may charge it to me— while you read and assess my trifles. "It's hard to lose a holiday": I ask that you bear and endure this loss. But if you read these with eloquent —but surely we're not shameless?—Secundus, this little book will owe you much more than it owes its own author. For it will be carefree, nor will it see the restless marbles of weary Sisyphus, once the censorial file of learned Secundus, with my Severus, has nibbled it.

LXXXI You'll always be poor, if you're poor, Aemilianus. Wealth is now given to none but the rich.

LXXXII Why did you promise me two hundred thousand, Gaurus, if you couldn't give me ten thousand, Gaurus? Or can you and won't? I ask, isn't that more shameful? Go, may you perish, Gaurus: you're a paltry man.

LXXXIII You pursue, I flee; you flee, I pursue; this is my disposition: I don't want what you want, Dindymus, and I want what you don't.

LXXXIV Now the gloomy boy, his nuts abandoned, is called back by his bawling schoolmaster, and, badly betrayed by the coaxing dice-box, just dragged from his secret cookshop, the soaked gambler begs the aedile off. The Saturnalia have all gone by, and you've sent me no little gifts, not even smaller ones, Galla, than you used to. Well, let my December pass like that: you know surely, I think, that your own Saturnalia are coming now, the Kalends of March; then I'll give you back, Galla, what you gave.