Book 6

I This sixth little book is sent you here, Martialis, dear to me above all others: if you polish it with attentive ear, it will dare, less anxious and trembling, to come into Caesar's great hands.

II It was sport to betray the bonds of sacred wedlock, sport too to cut the undeserving males. Both you forbid, Caesar, and to the peoples to come you bring relief, bidding them be born without violation. Now no man will be eunuch or adulterer with you as guardian: but before—O the morals!—even a eunuch was an adulterer.

III Be born, name promised to Dardanian Iulus, true offspring of the gods; be born, great boy: to whom your father may hand the eternal reins after the ages, and may you rule the world, old, with one older still. Julia herself with snowy thumb will spin you golden threads and weave the whole fleece of Phrixus.

IV Greatest censor and prince of princes, though Rome already owes you so many triumphs, so many temples newly born, so many reborn, so many spectacles, so many gods, so many cities: Rome owes you more—that she is chaste.

V I've bought a country estate for much money: lend me a hundred thousand, Caecilianus, I ask. You give me no answer? I believe you say in silence "You won't repay": that, Caecilianus, is why I ask.

VI There are three actors, but your Paula, Lupercus, loves four: and Paula loves even the mute role.

VII Since the Julian law was reborn for the peoples, Faustinus, and Chastity was ordered to enter our homes, it's less than, or surely not more than, thirty days, and already Telesilla is marrying her tenth husband. She who marries so often does not marry: by the law she's an adulteress. I'm less offended by a more straightforward harlot.

VIII Two praetors, four tribunes, seven pleaders, ten poets were lately seeking a certain girl's hand from a certain old man. He, without delay, gave the girl to Eulogus the auctioneer. Tell me, Severus—did he act foolishly?

IX You sleep in Pompey's theatre, Laevinus: and you complain if Oceanus wakes you?

X When I lately happened to ask Jove for a few thousand, "He will give it," he said, "who gave me my temples." Temples indeed he gave to Jove, but to me no thousands did he give: I'm ashamed, ah, to have asked Jove for so little. But how unfrowning, how clouded by no anger, with how calm a face he had read my prayers! Such is he when he grants diadems to suppliant Dacians and goes and comes along the Capitoline ways. Tell me, I pray, O maiden who shares our Thunderer's secrets, if he refuses with that face, with what face does he grant? So I; and so to me, briefly, with her Gorgon laid aside, Pallas: "What has not yet been given, fool, do you count as refused?"

XI That there's no Pylades in this age, no Orestes, you wonder? Pylades, Marcus, drank the same wine, nor was better bread or thrush given to Orestes, but the dinner was equal and the same for both. You devour Lucrine oysters, watery clams feed me: my palate is no less wellborn than yours, Marcus. Cadmean Tyre clothes you, rich Gaul clothes me: do you want me, dressed in coarse wool, to love you in purple? For me to be your Pylades, let someone be my Orestes. This is not done by words, Marcus: to be loved, love.

XII Fabulla swears the hair she bought is her own: does she, Paulus, perjure herself?

XIII Who would not think you, Julia, shaped by Phidias's chisel, or the work of Pallas's art? The white marble answers with no silent image, and living grace gleams in your calm face. Your hand—not rough—plays with the Acidalian knot that it snatched, little Cupid, from your neck. To call back the love of Mars and the supreme Thunderer, let Juno ask the girdle of you, and Venus herself.

XIV You declare you can write eloquent verses, Laberius: why then won't you? Whoever can write eloquent verses, let him not write, Laberius: I'll think him a man.

XV While an ant was wandering in Phaethon's shade, an amber drop entangled the slender creature. So she, who lately had been despised while life remained, has now been made precious by her own death.

XVI You who terrify men with your member and perverts with your sickle, guard these few acres of secluded soil. So may no aged thieves enter your orchards, but a boy and a fair girl with long hair.

XVII You bid yourself be called Cinna, Cinnamus. Isn't this, I ask, Cinna, a barbarism? If you'd been called Furius before, by that reasoning you'd be called Fur—Thief.

XVIII Saloninus rests in the Spanish lands, where no better shade sees the Stygian halls. But to mourn is wrong: for he who left you, Priscus, lives on in the better part by which he wished to live.

XIX Not of violence nor murder nor poison, but my lawsuit is about three she-goats: I complain that my neighbour stole them. This the judge demands be proved to him: you thunder of Cannae and the Mithridatic war and the perjuries of Punic frenzy and the Sullas and Mariuses and Muciuses with great voice and your whole hand. Now speak, Postumus, about the three she-goats.

XX I asked you, Phoebus, to lend me a hundred thousand sesterces, when you'd said to me, "You ask nothing, then?" You inquire, you hesitate, you delay, and for ten days you torment me and yourself: now, Phoebus, I ask—refuse.

XXI While glad Venus joined the everlasting Ianthis to Stella the poet, she said, "I could give no more." This before the lady; but more wickedly that into his ear: "See you commit no fault, you ruinous man. Often, in fury, I have beaten wanton Mars, when he was straying before lawful beds. But since he's mine, no rival has wronged me: Juno would wish to have so well-behaved a husband." She spoke, and struck his breast with her secret thong. The blow pleases: but you now, goddess, beat the gods.

XXII That you marry your bedfellow, Proculina, and make him now a husband whom you lately made a lover, so that the Julian law cannot brand you: you don't marry, Proculina—you confess.

XXIII You bid my member always stand for you, Lesbia: believe me, what's a finger isn't a prick. Though you press me with coaxing hands and words, your face is commanding against you.

XXIV Nothing is more wanton than Charisianus: at the Saturnalia he walks about in a toga.

XXV Marcellinus, true offspring of a good father, whom the bristling Bear covers under the Arcadian ridge, hear what your old, ancestral friend would wish for you, and keep these prayers in a mindful heart: let your valour be cautious, nor let rash ardour bear you into the midst of swords and savage weapons. Let the irrational want wars and fierce Mars; you can be both your father's soldier and your leader's.

XXVI Our Sotades stands in peril of his head. You think Sotades is a defendant? He isn't. Sotades has lost the power to get it up: he licks.

XXVII Twice my neighbour, Nepos—for you too dwell near Flora and you too dwell in old Ficeliae— you have a girl whose face is sealed with her father's likeness, a witness born to her mother's chastity. Yet don't be too sparing of your aged Falernian, and rather leave the jars full of money. Let her be dutiful, let her be rich, but let your daughter drink new wine: the amphora, now new, will grow old along with its mistress. Let the Caecuban vintage nourish not only the childless: fathers too can live, believe me.

XXVIII That famous freedman of Melior, who fell with all Rome grieving, the brief darling of his dear patron, Glaucias, buried beneath this marble, lies in a tomb joined to the Flaminian way: pure in morals, untouched in modesty, quick of wit, blessed with beauty. The boy had just completed twice six harvests and was barely adding one more year. You who weep at such things, traveller, weep at nothing.

XXIX Not of the household's commons, nor a slave of the greedy auction-block, but a boy worthy of his master's holy love, when he could not yet feel his patron's gifts, Glaucias was already Melior's freedman. This was granted to his character and his beauty: who was more charming than he? Or who was fairer with Apollo's face? For the extraordinary, life is brief and old age rare. Whatever you love, pray it not please too much.

XXX Had you given me six thousand sesterces at once, when you said to me, "Take it, take it up, it's a gift," I'd owe you, Paetus, as if for two hundred thousand. But now, since you gave it after long delay, after seven, I think, or nine Kalends, do you want me to tell you something truer than truth? You've wasted six thousand sesterces, Paetus.

XXXI You yourself know and allow, Charidemus, that your wife is laid by the doctor: you want to die without a fever.

XXXII While the war-goddess of civil strife still wavered and soft Otho could perhaps have won, he condemned a Mars that would cost much blood and pierced his whole breast with a sure hand. Let Cato, while he lives, be even greater than Caesar: but in dying—was he greater than Otho?

XXXIII Nothing more pitiable, Matho, than Sabellus the sodomite have you seen, than whom nothing was happier before. Thefts, runaways, deaths of slaves, fires, mourning afflict the man, and now, wretched, he even goes with women.

XXXIV Give me kisses, Diadumenus, pressed close. "How many?" you ask. You bid me number the waves of Ocean and the shells scattered along the Aegean shores and the bees that wander on the Cecropian mount, and the voices and hands that sound in the full theatre when the people suddenly see Caesar's face. I don't want as many as Lesbia, won over, gave to clever Catullus: he wants few who can count them.

XXXV Seven water-clocks, demanded by you in a loud voice, the unwilling judge, Caecilianus, granted. But you speak much and long, and half-reclining drink lukewarm water from glass flasks. That you may at last sate both voice and thirst, we ask that you now drink, Caecilianus, from the water-clock.

XXXVI Your member is as big, Papylus, as your nose, so that you can smell it whenever you get it up.

XXXVII Charinus has, of his split backside, right up to the navel, no remnant left, and yet he itches right up to the navel. O with what an itch the wretch suffers! He has no arse, yet he's a pervert.

XXXVIII You see how little Regulus, not yet three full years old, listens and praises his father himself? And how, at the sight of his sire, he leaves his mother's lap and feels his father's praises to be his own? Already the shouting and the Hundred Men and the dense crowd of the ring and the Julian hall please the infant. So the spirited horse's offspring delights in the great dust, so the calf longs for battles with its soft brow. Gods, preserve, I pray, the mother's vows for her, the father's for him, that Regulus may hear his son, and she hear two.

XXXIX You've been made the father of seven, Cinna, by Marulla— not of children: for none is yours, nor a friend's son nor a neighbour's, but, conceived on cots and mats, they betray their mother's thefts by their own heads. This one, who walks as a Moor with curled hair, admits he's the offspring of Santra the cook. But that one, with snub nose and swollen lips, is the very image of Pannychus the wrestler. Who doesn't know the third is the baker's, whoever knows and sees blear-eyed Dama? The fourth, with a pervert's brow and fair face, was born to you from your bedfellow Lygdus: bugger your son, if you like: it's no crime. But this one, with pointed head and long ears, which twitch the way donkeys' usually do, who can deny is the son of Cyrta the fool? The two sisters, that one dark and this one red, are the children of Crotus the flute-player and Carpus the bailiff. Already you'd have a full flock of Niobids, if Coresus and Dindymus weren't eunuchs.

XL No woman could be preferred to you, Lycoris: no woman can be preferred to Glycera. She will become what you are: you can't be what she is. What time does! Her I want, you I wanted.

XLI He who recites with throat and neck wrapped in wool, denies that he can speak or can keep silent.

XLII Unless you bathe at Etruscus's little baths, you'll die unwashed, Oppianus. No waters will so caress you, not the springs of Aponus, untried by girls, not soft Sinuessa and the scalding floods of Passer or proud Anxur, not Phoebus's shallows and royal Baiae. Nowhere is so bright a clear sky at leisure: the very light is longer there, and the day withdraws from no place more slowly. There the quarries of Taygetus gleam green and stones vie in varied beauty, which the Phrygian and the Libyan cut deep. Rich onyx breathes out dry heat and the serpentine stones glow with a thin flame: if Spartan customs please you, content with the dry vapour, you may plunge in raw Virgin or Marcian water; which shines so bright, so clear, that you'd suspect no water there and believe empty marble gleams. You're not attending, and with idle ear you've long heard me as if carelessly. You'll die unwashed, Oppianus.

XLIII While happy Baiae indulges you, Castricus, and the white nymph swims in the sulphurous waters, the leisure of my Nomentan farm restores me and a cottage not burdened by its own acres. This is my Baian sunshine and soft Lucrine, this, Castricus, is your wealth to me. Once I would run to the praised waters wherever I pleased and not dread long journeys, now I delight in the neighbourhood of the city and easy retreats, and it's enough, if I'm allowed to be lazy.

XLIV You believe, Calliodorus, that you joke wittily and that you alone are steeped in much salt. You grin at everyone, you sling gibes at everyone; so you think you can please as a dinner-guest. But if I should say something not nicely, but truly, no one will toast you, Calliodorus.

XLV You've had your sport, it's enough: marry, you wanton cunts: no Venus is allowed you but the chaste. Is this chaste Venus? Laetoria marries Lygdus: she'll be a fouler wife than she was lately a harlot.

XLVI The Blue team's four-horse chariot is whipped constantly, yet doesn't run: it's doing a great thing, Catianus.

XLVII Nymph, who, household to my Stella, glide from the pure spring and pass beneath your master's jewelled roof, whether Numa's wife sent you from Trivia's caves, or you come ninth from the troop of the Camenae: Marcus pays his vows to you with this sow, because, sick, he drank your water on the sly. You, content now with my offence, grant me safely the joys of your spring: let my thirst be healthy.

XLVIII That the toga-clad crowd shouts so loud a "Bravo!" for you, it's not you, Pomponius—your dinner is eloquent.

XLIX I'm not carved from brittle elm, nor is this column, that stands stiff and erect, made of any chance wood, but begotten from living cypress: which fears neither the ages run a hundred times nor the rot of long old age. You, whoever you are, O wicked man, fear this. For if with greedy hand you harm even the smallest grapes of this vine, there will grow—though you may wish to deny it— a fig grafted on you from the cypress.

L When poor Telesinus cultivated honest friends, he wandered shabby in his chilly little toga: since he began to court obscene perverts, he alone buys silver, tables, estates. Do you want to grow rich, Bithynicus? Be an accomplice: pure kisses will give you nothing, not even the least.

LI That you dine without me so often, Lupercus, I've found out how to do you harm. I'm angry: you may keep calling and sending and asking— "What will you do?" you say. What will I do? I'll come.

LII In this tomb lies, carried off in his boyhood years, Pantagathus, his master's care and grief, skilled with barely-touching blade to trim the straying hair and dress the shaggy cheeks. Though you be, as you should, kind and light, earth, you cannot be lighter than the craftsman's hand.

LIII He bathed with us, dined merrily, and the same man was found dead in the morning—Andragoras. You ask the cause of so sudden a death, Faustinus? In his sleep he'd seen the doctor Hermocrates.

LIV If you forbade Sextilianus, Aulus, to say "so many men" and "so many women," he'd scarcely string three words together, poor man. "What does he mean by it?" you ask. I'll tell you what I suspect: Sextilianus loves so many men and so many women.

LV That you always reek black with cassia and cinnamon and the nest of the proud bird, fragrant with Niceros's leaden boxes, you laugh at us, Coracinus, who smell of nothing: I'd rather smell of nothing than smell good.

LVI That your legs are stiff with bristles and your chest with shaggy hair, do you think, Charidemus, you fool report? Pluck out, believe me, the hairs from your whole body and testify that you depilate your buttocks. "What's the reason?" you say. You know many say many things: make them think, Charidemus, that you get buggered.

LVII You feign fake hair with ointment, Phoebus, and your dirty bald head is covered with painted locks. There's no need to bring a barber to your head: a sponge, Phoebus, can shave you better.

LVIII While it delights you, Aulus, to behold the Arcadian Bear close at hand and bear the stars of the Getic sky, O how nearly was I, snatched to the Stygian waters, made to see the dark clouds of the Elysian realm! Though weary, my eyes were seeking your face, and "Pudens" was forever on my cold lips. If the wool-spinning sisters draw me threads not black and that voice has no deaf gods, safe yourself, with me safe, you'll be carried back to the Latin cities and return, a famous knight, with the rewards of your service.

LIX Baccara both grieves and complains that the cold doesn't reach him, because of his six hundred shaggy cloaks, he longs for dark days and winds and snows, and hates the winter days, if they've turned warm. What harm have my cloaks done you, cruel man, which a light breeze can lift from one's shoulders? How much simpler, how much more humane it would be to put on your shaggy cloaks even in the month of August!

LX My Rome praises, loves, recites my little books, and every pocket holds me, every hand holds me. Look—a certain man reddens, pales, gapes, yawns, hates. This I want: now my songs please me.

LXI Pompullus has done a great thing, Faustinus: he'll be read and scatter his name throughout the whole world. "So may the light race of the fair-haired Usipi fare well, and whoever does not love the Ausonian empire." Yet Pompullus's writings are said to be ingenious. "But for fame that's not enough, believe me: how many eloquent men feed bookworms and moths, and only cooks buy up learned poems! There's something more, something that grants the ages to pages: a book that will live must have a genius."

LXII Salanus has lost his only son, a father: do you delay to send gifts, Oppianus? Alas, cruel crime and the wicked Fates! Whose vulture will this corpse be?

LXIII You know you're being courted, you know this courtier is greedy, and you know, Marianus, what the one who courts you wants. Yet you, fool, write him heir in your last will and want him, madman, to take your place. "Still, he sent great gifts." But he sent them on a hook; and can a fish love the fisherman? Will this man weep for your fate with real grief? If you want him to weep, Marianus, leave him nothing.

LXIV Though you're not born of the rigid Fabian stock, nor such as a ruddy wife bore to Curius beneath the shaggy oak while she brought lunch to her ploughing husband, but the son of a father shaved at the mirror and a toga-wearing mother, and your bride could call you her bride: yet you presume to correct my little books, which fame knows, and to carp at the trifles of a happy man— these trifles, I say, to which the leaders of city and forum do not scorn to turn their whole ear, which the bookcases of eternal Silius deem worthy and which Regulus so often repeats with eloquent voice, and which Sura, neighbour of Aventine Diana, who watches the great Circus's contests more closely, praises, which Caesar himself, the lord, under so great a weight of affairs, does not disdain to unroll two and three times. But you have more sense, your heart with sharpening Minerva is keener, and refined Athens shaped your breast. May I perish if that isn't far wiser which, with slack paunch and great foot and red lung, old and fearsome with its nostrils, the cruel butcher carries about through all the crossroads. Besides, you dare to write against me little verses that no one would know, and waste your miserable papers. But if the heat of my bile should scorch you with anything, it will live and stick and be read throughout the world, nor will Cinnamus erase the brand-marks with his cunning art. But have pity on yourself, and don't, lost in rabid madness, provoke the smoking nostril of a living bear. Though he be gentle and lick your fingers and hands, if grief and bile, if just anger compel him, he'll be a bear: weary your teeth on an empty hide and seek some silent flesh that you can gnaw.

LXV "You make an epigram in hexameters"—I know Tucca says it. Tucca, it's customary; in short, Tucca, it's allowed. "But still, this is long." That too is customary, Tucca, and allowed: if you approve shorter ones, read only the couplets. Let us agree that it's fair for you to skip long epigrams, Tucca, and for me to write them.

LXVI A girl of not too good a name, such as sit in the middle of the Subura, the crier Gellianus was lately auctioning. When the price stayed low a long time, wishing to prove her pure to all, he drew her toward him, resisting, with his hand and kissed her twice and thrice and four times. What did he gain by the kiss, you ask? The man who'd just bid six hundred withdrew it.

LXVII Why does your Caelia have only eunuchs, you ask, Pannychus? Caelia wants to be laid and not to bear.

LXVIII Weep for your sin, but weep with all Lucrinus, Naiads, and let Thetis herself feel the grief. Among the Baian waves, snatched away, a boy has died, that Eutychos, your sweet companion, Castricus. This was your partner in cares and your coaxing solace, this was your love, this was our poet's Alexis. Did some wanton nymph see you naked beneath the glassy waves and send back Hylas to Alcides? Or does the goddess now neglect womanish Hermaphroditus, stirred by the embrace of a tender man? Whatever it is, whatever the cause of the sudden seizure, may both earth and water, I pray, be gentle to you.

LXIX I don't wonder that your Bassa drinks water, Catullus: I wonder that Bassus's daughter drinks water.

LXX The sixtieth harvest, Marcianus, is past, and now, I think, the second of Cotta, nor does he recall having felt the weariness of a fevered bed even for a single day. He shows his finger—but the indecent one— to Alcon and Dasius and Symmachus. But if our years be well reckoned, and whatever the grim fevers or heavy languor or evil pains took away be separated from the better life: we are infants, and we seem old men. He who thinks the age of Priam and Nestor long, Marcianus, is much deceived and mistaken. To live is not life, but to be well.

LXXI She who is skilled to perform wanton gestures to Baetic music and to play in the Gaditanian style, who could rouse trembling Pelias and Hecuba's husband to Hector's pyre, Telethusa burns and torments her former master: he sold her as a slave-girl, now he buys her back as mistress.

LXXII A thief of all-too-noted rapacity, Cilix, wished to plunder a garden, but in the huge garden, Fabullus, there was nothing but a marble Priapus. Not wanting to return empty-handed, Cilix stole Priapus himself.

LXXIII No rude settler made me with unskilled blade: you see the noble work of a steward. For the richest cultivator of the Caeretan land, Hilarus, holds these hills and joyful ridges. See how I seem not wooden, with sure face, nor bear the weapons of my groin devoted to the hearth-fire, but for me, of everlasting, never-dying cypress, stands stiff a member worthy of Phidias's hand. Neighbours, I warn you, honour holy Priapus and spare these twice seven acres.

LXXIV He who reclines lowest on the middle couch, his three-haired bald head streaked with ointment, and picks his loose mouth with clipped mastic-twigs, is lying, Aefulanus: he has no teeth.

LXXV When you send me a thrush or a slice of cake, or a hare's thigh, or something like these, you say, Pontia, that you've sent me your tidbits. These, Pontia, I'll neither send on nor eat.

LXXVI That guardian of the sacred side and of Mars in the toga, to whom the camp of the supreme leader was entrusted, here lies Fuscus. This, Fortune, we may confess: this stone now fears no enemy threats; the Dacian has taken the great yoke on his subdued neck, and the victorious shade possesses the grove as its slave.

LXXVII Though you're as poor as wretched Irus is not, as young as Parthenopaeus was not, as strong as Artemidorus was not, even when he won, why do you delight to be the burden of six Cappadocians? You're laughed at and much more disgraced, Afer, than if you walked naked in the middle of the forum. Just so Atlas is pointed at, with his matched mule, and the black beast that carries a Libyan like itself. You ask how hateful your litter is? You shouldn't be carried dead in a six-bearer.

LXXVIII The famous drinker, Aulus, Phryx, was blind in one eye and bleary in the other. To him Heras the doctor said, "Beware of drinking: if you drink wine, you'll see nothing." Laughing, Phryx said to his eye, "Farewell." He at once orders measures mixed for himself, but frequent ones. You ask the outcome? Phryx drank wine, his eye drank poison.

LXXIX You're sad and fortunate. Beware lest Fortune know it: she'll call you ungrateful, Lupus, if she knows.

LXXX That she might send you new gifts, Caesar, the land of Nile in her eagerness had sent you winter roses. The Memphian sailor laughed at the Pharian gardens as soon as he entered the first thresholds of your city: so great was the glory of spring and the grace of fragrant Flora, so great the splendour of the Paestan countryside; wherever, wandering, he bore his step and his eyes, every path was red with clipped garlands. But you, now bidden to yield to the Roman winter, send us your harvests, Nile, and accept our roses.

LXXXI You bathe as if enraged at the people, Charidemus: so you wash your groin all over in the tub. Nor would I have you wash even your head here, Charidemus. And look, you do wash your head: I'd rather you washed your groin.

LXXXII A certain man, Rufus, having lately inspected me carefully, like a buyer or a trainer, when he'd marked me with face and finger, "Are you," he said, "are you that famous Martial, whose naughtiness and jokes are known to everyone who hasn't a Batavian ear?" I smiled modestly, and with a slight nod didn't deny I was who he'd said. "Why then," he said, "do you have a bad cloak?" I replied, "Because I'm a bad poet." That this may not happen too often to the poet, send me, Rufus, good cloaks.

LXXXIII As much as anxious Etruscus's father's fortune, so much, highest of leaders, do they both owe you. For with your right hand you recalled the thunderbolts you'd hurled: I'd wish such conduct were in the fires of Jove; if your nature, Caesar, belonged to the supreme Thunderer, a hand would rarely use the whole thunderbolt. Etruscus attests to both gifts of yours, that it fell to him both as companion and as returnee.

LXXXIV Philippus is carried, in good health, by eight bearers, Avitus. If you think him in health, Avitus, you're mad.

LXXXV See, the sixth book is published for me without you, Rufus Camonius, nor does the book hope for you as reader, friend: the impious land of the Cappadocians, seen by you under an ill star, returns ashes and bones to your father. Pour out tears, Bononia, bereft of your Rufus, and let the lament resound through all Aemilia: alas, what piety, alas how brief an age has perished! He had just seen the fifth rewards of the Alphean games. You, who used to unroll our sport in a mindful breast, you, Rufus, used to hold all my jokes by heart, receive, with weeping, the brief poem of your grieving friend, and consider these to have been the incense for one absent.

LXXXVI Setine wine and the master's snows and thick goblets. When shall I drink you with the doctor not forbidding? Foolish and ungrateful and unworthy of so great a gift is he who would rather be the heir of rich Midas. Let him possess Libyan harvests and the Hermus and the Tagus, and let him drink warm water, who envies me.

LXXXVII May the gods give you, and you, Caesar, whatever you deserve: may the gods give me, and you, what I want, if I've deserved it.

LXXXVIII This morning I greeted you by your real name, by chance, and didn't call you my lord, Caecilianus. You ask how much such great freedom costs me? It cost me a hundred farthings.

LXXXIX When, now at midnight, Panaretus, drunk, sought the late chamber-pot with snapping thumb, a Spoletine flask was given him, but one he'd emptied himself, nor had the whole jar been enough for him alone. He, with utmost faith of the vessel, measured back his wine and gave back the full weight of his wine-jar. You wonder the flask held as much as he'd drunk? Stop wondering, Rufus: he'd drunk it neat.

XC Gellia has only one lover. This is fouler still: she's the wife of two.

XCI The holy censure of the supreme leader forbids and bans adultery. Rejoice, Zoilus: you don't go with women.

XCII Though there's chased for you, Annianus, a serpent on your bowl by Myron's art, you drink Vatican wine: you drink poison.

XCIII Thais smells as foul as not the old jar of a greedy fuller, just now broken in the middle of the road, not a he-goat fresh from love, not a lion's mouth, not the Transtiberine hide stripped from a dog, not a chick rotting in an aborted egg, not an amphora spoiled with tainted fish-sauce. That she may shrewdly swap this stench for another scent, whenever she lays her clothes aside and seeks the baths, she's green with depilatory or hides smeared with sour chalk or is covered three and four times with rich bean-paste. When she's thought herself well safe by a thousand tricks, when she's done it all, Thais smells of Thais.

XCIV Gold-inlaid dishes are always set before Calpetanus, whether he dines out or at home in the city. So he dines always, even in an inn, so in the country. Has he nothing else, then? No—and not even his own.