Book 7

I Receive the rough breastplate of warlike Minerva, the very thing the wrath of Medusa's snaky hair dreads. While unused, Caesar, it may be called a cuirass: once it rests on your sacred breast, it will be the aegis.

II A breastplate for our lord, proof against Sarmatian arrows and surer than the Getic hide of Mars, woven from the smooth hooves of countless boars, safe even against the thrust of an Aetolian spear: happy in your lot, for it will be granted you to touch that sacred breast and grow warm with our god's spirit. Go, his companion, and earn great triumphs unscathed, and lead the way to the palm-embroidered robe — but quickly, give him back.

III Why do I not send you my little books, Pontilianus? So that you, Pontilianus, may not send me yours.

IV Since Oppianus, Castricus, was sickly in complexion, he took to writing verses.

V If you regard the longing of the people and the senators, Caesar, and the true joys of the Latin toga, give back our god to the prayers that beg for him. Rome envies her own foe, though many a laurel come his way: that foe sees the lord of the earth at closer range, and the barbarian is terrified by your face — and enjoys it.

VI Has Caesar, turned toward us at last from the Hyperborean shores, already made ready to take the Ausonian roads? The sure informant is missing, yet every voice proclaims it: I believe you, Rumour — you are wont to speak the truth. The public dispatches of victory attest the general joy; the spears of Mars grow green with laurelled point. Once more, hurrah, Rome cries great triumphs for you, and unconquered, Caesar, you resound within your city. But now, that our gladness may rest on firmer ground, come yourself, the messenger of the Sarmatian laurel.

VII Though the wintry Bear and rude Peuce and the Hister, hot with the beat of hooves, and the Rhine, now three times broken in his unruly horn, hold you taming the realms of a treacherous race, O supreme ruler of the world and parent of the globe: still you cannot be absent from our prayers. There we are with you, in eyes and hearts, Caesar, and you alone so possess the minds of all, that the very crowd of the great Circus does not know whether Passerinus or Tigris is running.

VIII Now be merry, Muses — if ever for me, be merry now and play: the god comes back victor from the Odrysian world. You first, December, make the people's prayers sure: now we may cry aloud, 'He comes!' Happy in your lot! You could refuse to yield to Janus, if you gave us the joys that he will give. The garlanded soldier shall play at festal taunts, when he walks as comrade among the laurelled horses. It is right to hear jests and lighter songs, Caesar, for you too — if the very triumph loves a game.

IX Though Cascellius counts sixty years, he is a clever man: when will he be eloquent?

X Eros is sodomized, Linus sucks: Olus, what is it to you what either of them does with his own skin? Matho fucks for a hundred thousand: Olus, what is it to you? You will not be the poorer for it — only Matho. Sertorius dines till dawn: Olus, what is it to you, when you are free to snore the whole night through? Lupus owes Titus seven hundred thousand: Olus, what is it to you? Don't you give Lupus a penny, or trust him with one. The thing you ignore is the one that concerns you, Olus, the one that ought to be more your care. You owe for your shabby toga: this concerns you, Olus. No one now will trust you for a farthing: this too. Your wife is an adulteress: this concerns you, Olus. Your grown-up daughter now demands a dowry: this too. I could name fifteen things that concern you: but what you do, Olus, is nothing whatever to me.

XI You force me, Pudens, with my own pen and hand, to correct my little books. Oh, how excessively you approve of me and love me, you who want to own my trifles in the original!

XII So may my lord read me, Faustinus, with serene brow, and take in my jests with the ear he is used to, as truly my page has never injured even those it justly hates, and no fame that comes by a blush can please me. What good is it, when certain men want my work to seem theirs, if any darts of mine drip with the blood of Lycambes, and someone spews viper's venom under my name — one who cannot bear the rays of Phoebus and the day? I play harmlessly: you know this well. I swear by the genius of mighty Fame, and by the Castalian band, and by your ears, which are like a great divinity to me, reader free of every inhuman spite.

XIII When dusky Lycoris heard that the ivory of an old tusk turns white under the suns of Tibur, she went up to the Herculean hills. What power the air of lofty Tibur has! In a short while she came back black.

XIV An unspeakable disaster has befallen my girl, Aulus; she has lost her plaything and her darling: not such as Catullus' tender mistress Lesbia mourned, robbed of the naughtiness of her sparrow, nor such as the Ianthis my Stella sang of wept for, whose black dove flies in Elysium: my light is not caught by such trifles or such fancies, nor do such losses move my mistress's heart: she has lost a boy who was counting twice ten years, whose cock was not yet a foot and a half long.

XV What boy is this who keeps off from the bright waters of Ianthis? Is it Hylas, fleeing his mistress the Naiad? How well it is that the Tirynthian is worshipped in this grove and guards these amorous waters so close at hand! You may tend these springs in safety, Argynnus: the Nymphs will do nothing — but beware lest he himself should wish it.

XVI There is no cash at home, Regulus; the only thing left is to sell the gifts you gave me: will you buy them?

XVII Library of a charming country house, from which the reader sees the neighbouring city, if among holier songs there be any place for wanton Thalia, you may set on even the lowest shelf these seven little books I have sent you, marked by their author's own pen: this erasure makes their value. But you, dedicated by my small gift, who will be sung, famed through the whole world, guard this pledge of my heart, library of Julius Martialis.

XVIII Though your face is such that no woman could fault it, though no blemish marks your body, why so rarely does a lover want you and come back for more? Do you wonder? The fault is no light one, Galla: every time I set to work and we are moved with mingled loins, your cunt is not silent — while you yourself are. Would to the gods you spoke and it kept quiet: I am offended by your cunt's chatter. I would rather you broke wind: for that, says Symmachus, is not without use, and the thing raises a laugh as well. But who can laugh at the silly noises of a cunt? When it sounds off, whose cock and whose mind does not collapse? Say something at least, drown out that clamorous cunt, and if you are so dumb, learn to talk at least from that quarter.

XIX This fragment, which you think cheap and useless wood, was the first keel of an unknown sea. The crashing Cyaneae of old could not break her, nor the grimmer wrath of the Scythian strait: the ages have conquered her — but though she has yielded to the years, the little plank, saved, is holier than the whole ship was.

XX Nothing is more wretched or more gluttonous than Santra. Invited at last to a proper dinner, which for so many days and nights he had angled for, three times he asks for boar's sweetbreads, four for loin, and for both haunches of a hare and its two shoulders, nor does he blush to perjure himself over a thrush and to snatch the dingy fibres of oysters. He smears his filthy napkin with gobs of cake; in it too are stowed away preserved grapes and a few seeds of pomegranates and the unsightly skin of a hollowed-out sow's womb, and a runny fig and a flabby mushroom. But when the napkin already bursts with a thousand thefts, he hides in his warm bosom gnawed vertebrae and a headless turtledove with its head devoured. Nor does he think it shameful to gather with a long arm whatever the crumb-collectors and the dogs have left. And the edible loot is not enough for his gullet: he fills his flask at his feet with mixed wine. When he has carried all this home up two hundred stairs and shut himself, anxious, in his bolted room, that glutton — the next day he sells it.

XXI This is that day, conscious of a mighty birth, which gave Lucan to the nations and to you, Polla. Alas, cruel Nero, no shade more hateful than yours, this at least ought not to have been permitted you.

XXII The day of the Apollonian bard, memorable for his great birth, returns: throng of the Muses, favour the rites. This day deserved, when it gave you, Lucan, to the earth, that Baetis should be mingled with Castalia's water.

XXIII Come, Phoebus, but as great as you were when you yourself gave the second plectrum to the Latin lyre as it thundered war. What shall I pray for, on so great a day? You, Polla, cherish your husband often, and let him feel himself cherished.

XXIV You who try to set me at odds with my Juvenal, what will you not dare to say, treacherous tongue? With you inventing crimes, Orestes would have hated Pylades, the love of Pirithous would have abandoned Theseus, you could have parted the Sicilian brothers, and the Atridae — a greater name — and the offspring of Leda. This I call down on you for such deserts and such ventures: that you do, my tongue, the thing I think you do.

XXV Though you only ever write sweet epigrams, whiter than white-leaded skin, and there is in them no grain of salt nor any drop of bitter gall — yet, you fool, you want them read! Even food does not please when robbed of the bite of vinegar, nor is a face charming that lacks a dimple. Give honey-apples and insipid figs to a baby: for me, the Chian fig that knows how to sting has flavour.

XXVI Go find my friend Apollinaris, Scazon; and if he has leisure — don't come at him as a bother — give him this, such as it is, of which he himself is some part: let his ears take in this witty song. If you see yourself received with a fully open brow, ask him to support it with his well-known favour. You know with what love of my trifles he burns: not even I can love you more. If you want to be safe against the spiteful, go find my friend Apollinaris, Scazon.

XXVII A boar, ravager of Tuscan acorns and now sluggish from much oak, second in fame to the Aetolian beast, which my Dexter pierced with shining point, lies as prey, the envy of my hearth: let my house-gods grow fat, glad in the dripping savour, and let the festive kitchen blaze with a felled ridge of wood. But the cook will use up a huge heap of pepper and add Falernian mixed with secret fish-sauce: go back to your owner, my fire cannot hold you, ruinous boar: I go hungry more cheaply.

XXVIII So may the wood of Tiburtine Diana grow for you and the often-felled grove make haste to come back, nor may your olives, Fuscus, yield to Tartessian presses, and may the vats give the good must of an ample crop; so may the forums admire you, the palaces praise you, and many a palm adorn your twin doors: while mid-December gives you a little leisure, weigh — but with a sure ear — the jests you read. 'You wish to know the truth? That is a hard task.' But you, Fuscus, can say what you want said to you.

XXIX Thestylus, sweet torment of Voconius Victor, than whom no boy is better known in all the world, so may you be lovely even when your curls are laid aside, and may no girl please your poet: set aside your master's learned little books awhile, while I read small verses to your Victor. And Maecenas, when Maro sang of Alexis, still knew the dusky Melaenis of Marsus.

XXX You give yourself to Parthians, to Germans, to Dacians, Caelia, nor do you spurn the beds of Cilicians and Cappadocians; to you sails a Memphitic fornicator from the Pharian city, and a black Indian from the Red Sea waters; nor do you flee the circumcised loins of Jews, nor does the Alan pass you by on his Sarmatian horse. What is your reason, since you are a Roman girl, that no Roman cock pleases you?

XXXI The birds of the noisy farmyard and the mothers' eggs, and the yellow Chian figs ripened by gentle heat, and the rough young of the bleating she-goat, and olives no longer able to bear the cold, and greens beneath the chilly frosts — do you believe these were sent you from my farm? Oh, how diligently you err, Regulus! My little fields bear nothing but me. Whatever your Umbrian bailiff or your tenant or the country marked at the third milestone or the Tuscans send you, or the men of Tusculum, all that is born for me in the whole Subura.

XXXII Atticus, you who revive the name of an eloquent line and do not let a mighty house fall silent, the pious throng of Cecropian Minerva attends you, quiet seclusion loves you, every sage loves you. But other youths a trainer with a battered ear cultivates, and the grimy masseur snatches their undeserving wealth. No ball, no bladder, no rustic football at the baths prepares you, nor the dull blow of a bare stump, nor do you stretch crooked arms in the sticky wrestler's grease, nor, roaming, do you snatch the dusty handballs, but you only run near the snowy waters of the Virgin, or where the bull glows with Sidonian love. To play, through the various arts that every field serves, when one is free to run, is sloth.

XXXIII Though your toga is filthier than mud, Cinna, while your shoe is whiter than the first snow, why, fool, do you drench your feet with your dragging cloak? Gather up your toga, Cinna — look, your shoe is ruined.

XXXIV By what means, Severus, you ask, could the worst man of all, Charinus, have done one thing well? I'll tell you, but quickly. What is worse than Nero? What is better than the Neronian baths? At once, behold, one of the spiteful is not lacking, who speaks thus with rancid mouth: 'What? Do you prefer this to all the gifts of our lord and god?' I prefer the Neronian baths — to the bathing-place of a catamite.

XXXV A slave with his black loins girt in leather stands by, whenever you bathe in warm water all over. But my slave, Laecania — to say nothing of myself — has a Jewish weight under his bare skin, and young men and old bathe naked with you. Or is your slave's cock the only real one? Do you, married woman, seek out the women's recesses, and bathe apart, you cunt, in your own water?

XXXVI When my unfinished farmhouse refused to bear the rains and dripping Jupiter, and swam in winter waters, many a tile to pour off the sudden showers came, sent by your gifts. Behold, rough December roars with Boreas' shriek: Stella, you roof the house — you do not roof the farmer.

XXXVII You know the quaestor's deadly sign, Castricus? It is worth your while to learn a new mark of death: whenever he wiped his nose, running with cold, he had ordered that to be the fatal sign for the throat. A foul icicle was hanging from his loathsome nose, when fierce December blew from his dripping jaw: his colleagues held his hands — what more do you ask? The poor wretch, Castricus, was not allowed to blow his nose.

XXXVIII So vast you are, and such, our Severus' Polyphemus, that even the Cyclops himself could marvel at you. But Scylla is no smaller. If you should join the two wild monsters, each would become the other's terror.

XXXIX When Caelius could no longer endure or suffer the various rushing about, the wandering mornings, the haughtiness and the 'good morning' of the powerful, he began to feign the gout. And while he wants too much to prove it real, and smears and binds his healthy soles and walks with a laboured step — such is the power of care and the art of pain! — Caelius stopped feigning the gout.

XL Here lies that old man, known in the imperial court, who bore both gods with no humble breast; whom his children's piety mingled with the holy shade of his wife: both possess the Elysian grove. She fell first, cheated of her green youth: he lived nearly thrice six Olympiads. But whoever saw your tears, Etruscus, believed him snatched from you in years cut short.

XLI You seem to yourself, Sempronius Tucca, to be a man of the world: the world's ways, Sempronius, are as bad as they are good.

XLII If anyone should wish to vie with you in gifts, let him also dare, Castricus, in verses. We are slight in both, and ready to be beaten: hence sleep is ours, and deep quiet pleases us. You ask, then, why I gave you such bad verses? Do you think no one gave apples to Alcinous?

XLIII The first thing, Cinna, is to grant whatever I ask of you; the next thing after, Cinna, is to refuse quickly. I love the man who grants; I do not hate, Cinna, the one who refuses: but you neither grant, Cinna, nor quickly refuse.

XLIV That great Caesonius of yours, Ovidius, is the man here, whose face the living wax still keeps. Nero condemned him; but you dared to condemn Nero, and to follow the fate of the exile, not your own: a noble comrade you went across Scylla's seas with the banished man, you who had lately refused to go as comrade of a consul. If names entrusted to my pages are to live, and it is granted me to survive my own ashes: the crowd now present and to come shall hear that you were to him what he was to his own Seneca.

XLV Mighty friend of eloquent Seneca, next to dear Serenus, or before him, this is that Maximus, whom on many a page the lucky letter greets in close array. Him you followed through the Sicilian waves, O Ovidius, not to be passed over by any tongue, and you scorned the rage of a raving lord. Let antiquity admire its Pylades, who clung as comrade to the exile of his parent: who would compare the dangers of the two? You clung, a comrade, to the exile of Nero.

XLVI While you want to commend your gift to me in song and long to speak more learnedly than Maeonian lips, you torment both me and yourself alike for many days, and your Thalia, Priscus, says nothing of mine. You can send the rich your Muses and your sounding elegies: but to the poor give gifts in prose.

XLVII Licinius Sura, most renowned of learned men, whose grave and ancient tongue brought back our forefathers, you are given back to us — heavens, by what gift of the fates! — all but released, having tasted of Lethe's water. Our prayers had already lost their fear, and untroubled sorrow wept, and you were as good as done with our tears: but the ruler of silent Avernus would not bear the spite, and himself gave back the snatched distaff to the Fates. You know, then, what great laments a false report of death has stirred among men, and you enjoy your own posterity. Live as one whose life is snatched, and pluck fugitive joys: let your returned life lose not a single day.

XLVIII Though he has nearly three hundred tables, Annius has servants instead of tables: the dishes run past, the platters fly. Keep these feasts to yourselves, you elegant folk: I am put off by a dinner that walks about.

XLIX I send you small gifts from my suburban garden: eggs for your throat, Severus, apples for your appetite.

L Fountain of the mistress, queen of the place that Ianthis delights in, glory and darling of a famous house, since your bank is adorned with so many snow-white attendants and your water gleams with a Ganymede-like band: what is the Alcides doing, hallowed in that grove? Why does the god keep a cave so near to you? Does he, perhaps, watch over the known loves of the Nymphs, lest so many Hylases be carried off at once?

LI If it irks you, Urbicus, to buy my trifles, yet you would like to know my wanton songs, seek out Pompeius Auctus — perhaps you know him; he sits at the front of the temple of Mars the Avenger: steeped in law and polished by the varied wear of the toga, he is not my reader, Urbicus, but my book. So he holds my absent verses by heart and recites them, that not a letter perishes from my pages: in short, if he wished, he could seem to have written them; but he prefers to favour my fame. You may pester him from the tenth hour — for he will not be free enough before — a little supper will hold the two of you; he will read, you drink; though you don't wish it, he will sound off; and when you have said 'That's enough now,' he will read.

LII It is gratifying, Auctus, that you read my little books to Celer, if, that is, what you read, Auctus, pleases Celer too. He governed my own people and the Celtic Iberians, and there was no surer good faith in all our world. A greater reverence the more disturbs me, and I think my ears are those not of a hearer, but of a judge.

LIII You sent me everything at the Saturnalia, Umber — all the gifts the five days had brought you: twelve three-leaved tablets and seven toothpicks; with these came a sponge, a napkin, a cup, a half-peck of beans with a basket of Picentine olives, and a black flask of Laletanian must; small Syrian figs came with wrinkled prunes and a jar heavy with the weight of Libyan figs. I reckon the whole gift was scarcely worth thirty sesterces — and eight strapping Syrians brought it. How much more conveniently, with no labour at all, a single boy could have carried me five pounds of silver!

LIV Every morning you tell me sheer dreams about myself, to stir and trouble my mind. The last vintage has gone to the dregs, and this one too, while the witch wears out my nights to placate you; I have used up the salted meal and the heaps of incense; my flocks have dwindled, while lamb after lamb falls; no pig, no farmyard birds, no eggs are left. Either keep watch, Nasidianus, or dream for yourself.

LV If you send back gifts to no one, Chrestus, then don't give to us or send any back: I will believe you generous enough. But if you make returns to Apicius and Lupus, to Gallus and Titius and Caesius, you shall lick — not mine, for it is honest and small — but the one that comes from burnt Jerusalem, the cock lately condemned to tribute.

LVI You have grasped the stars and the sky with pious mind, Rabirius, who with wondrous art build the Parrhasian palace. If Pisa prepares to give temples worthy of Phidian Jove, she will seek these hands of yours from our Thunderer.

LVII Gabinia made an Achilles out of Castor — out of a Pollux: he had been a good boxer; now he will be a horse-tamer.

LVIII You have married six or seven catamites by now, Galla, while their combed hair and dressed beards please you too much. Then, having tried their flanks and loins like a soaked thong, and parts that no tired hand could force to stand, you desert the unwarlike marriage-beds and the soft husband; and again and again you fall back into beds of the same kind. Look for some man forever talking of Curii and Fabii, shaggy and grim with harsh rusticity: you'll find one — but that grim crowd has its catamites too. It is hard, Galla, to marry a real man.

LIX Our friend Caecilianus, Titus, never dines without a boar. A fine dinner-guest Caecilianus keeps!

LX Reverend ruler of the Tarpeian court, whom, while our chief is safe, we believe the Thunderer, since each man wearies you with prayers for himself and begs you to grant what you gods are able: do not be angry, Jupiter, as at a proud man, that I ask nothing for myself. For Caesar I must pray to you; for myself I must pray to Caesar.

LXI The reckless huckster had stolen the whole city, and no man's threshold was his own at his own door. You ordered the narrow alleys to grow, Germanicus, and what had lately been a footpath became a road. No pillar now is girt with chained flasks, nor is the praetor forced to walk through the mud, nor is a razor blindly drawn in the thick crowd, nor does the black cookshop seize whole streets. Barber, taverner, cook, butcher keep to their own thresholds. Now it is Rome; lately it was one big shop.

LXII Behind open doors you bugger grown men, Amillus, and you want to be caught while you do it, so that no freedman or your father's slaves may tattle, nor a dark client with sidelong gossip. The man who calls others to witness he is not sodomized, Amillus, often does the thing he does without a witness.

LXIII You who read the never-dying volumes of eternal Silius, poems worthy of the Latin toga, do you suppose only the Pierian retreats pleased the bard, and the Bacchic garlands on his Aonian hair? He did not touch the rites of buskined Maro before he had filled the work of great Cicero: him the grave spear of the Hundred Men still admires, him many a client speaks of with grateful mouth. After he had ruled the mighty year with its twelve fasces — the year that was hallowed when the world was set free — he handed over his earned years to the Muses and to Phoebus, and now keeps Helicon as his forum.

LXIV You who were the most famous barber in all the city, and afterward, by your mistress's gift, were made a knight, you sought out the Sicilian cities and Aetna's realms, Cinnamus, when you fled the grim laws of the forum. By what art will you now bear, useless, your burdensome years? What does an unhappy, fugitive leisure do? You cannot be a rhetor, a grammarian, or a schoolmaster, nor a Cynic, nor a Stoic, nor sell your voice and applause to Sicilian theatres: what is left, Cinnamus, is to be a barber again.

LXV A lawsuit, while you count the frosts of twice ten winters, wears you down, Gargilianus — one suit in three courts. Ah, wretched and mad! Does anyone litigate for twenty years, Gargilianus, when he is free to lose?

LXVI Fabius left Labienus heir to the whole estate: yet Labienus says he deserved more.

LXVII Philaenis the tribade buggers boys, and, fiercer than a husband in her lust, ploughs eleven girls a day. Tucked up, she plays at handball too, grows yellow with sand, and whirls with easy arm the weights heavy for athletes; and, muddied from the crumbling wrestling-ground, she is whipped by the oiled trainer's lash. Nor does she dine or recline before she has vomited up seven measures of neat wine; to which she thinks it right to return when she has eaten sixteen rissoles. After all this, when she lusts, she does not suck — she thinks that too unmanly — but plainly devours the middles of girls. May the gods give you your own mind, Philaenis, you who think it manly to lick a cunt.

LXVIII Forbear, I beg, to commend my Muses, Instantius Rufus, to your father-in-law: perhaps he likes serious things. But if he too admits wanton little books, these I would read even to a Curius or a Fabricius.

LXIX This is that Theophila promised to you, Canius, whose breast is steeped in Cecropian endowment: the garden of the great old man might justly claim her for its own, nor would the Stoic throng less wish her theirs. Whatever work you send out through these ears will live: so unwomanly, so uncommon is her taste. Let not your Pantaenis prefer herself too much to her, though she is well known to the Pierian choir. Sappho the lover praised her as she fashioned songs: Theophila was chaster, and Sappho no more learned.

LXX Tribade of the very tribades, Philaenis, you rightly call the woman you fuck your 'girlfriend.'

LXXI The wife is poxed with figs, the husband poxed himself, the daughter poxed, and the son-in-law and grandson; neither steward nor bailiff lacks the foul sore, nor the sturdy digger, nor even the ploughman. Since young and old alike are poxed, it is a marvel: one single field has no figs.

LXXII So may December be welcome to you, Paulus, nor may there come empty three-leaved tablets and skimpy napkins nor light half-pounds of incense, but may a great defendant or a powerful friend bring you platters and your grandsires' goblets, or whatever rather pleases and takes you; so may you beat Novius and Publius shut in by their stockades and glass robber-pieces; so may the favour of the umpire of the oiled ring give you the palm at bare ball-play, and praise no more the left-handed strokes of Polybius: if any spiteful man says that the songs which drip with black venom are mine, lend me your voice as advocate and cry, as loud and as long as you can: 'My Martial did not write that.'

LXXIII You have a house on the Esquiline, a house on Diana's hill, and the patrician quarter holds your rooftops; from here you look on widowed Cybele's shrines, from there on Vesta's, on the new Jupiter from this side, the old from that. Tell me where I may meet you, tell me where to find you: the man who lives everywhere, Maximus, lives nowhere.

LXXIV Glory of Cyllene and the sky, eloquent minister, whose golden wand grows green with a twisted serpent: so may you never lack a store of wanton intrigue, whether you long for Paphos or grow warm for Ganymede, and may your mother's Ides be decked with sacred leaves, and your aged grandfather be pressed with a light burden: this day may Norbana ever keep with her husband Carpus, glad — the day they came together to their first bed. Here this pious priest of wisdom offers you his gifts, here he calls you with incense, himself faithful to Jove too.

LXXV You want to be fucked for free, though you are ugly and old. A most ridiculous thing: you want to give, yet won't pay.

LXXVI That more powerful men tear you to pieces at banquets, porticoes, theatres, and it delights them, whenever you've fallen in their way, to be carried and to bathe with you: do not be too pleased with yourself. You amuse, Philomusus; you are not loved.

LXXVII You demand, Tucca, that I make you a gift of my little books. I won't: for you want to sell them, not read them.

LXXVIII Since a tail of Saxetan mackerel is served you, and beans dressed for you, if you dine well: yet you send out sow's udder, boar, hare, mushrooms, oysters, mullet — you have, Papylus, neither heart nor taste.

LXXIX I lately drank a consular wine. You ask how old and how generous? Laid down under Priscus' consulship: but the very man who set it before me, Severus, was the consul.

LXXX Since now the Roman peace tempers the Odrysian North and the grim trumpets have fallen silent, you may send this little book to Marcellinus, Faustinus: now he is free for pages, now for jests. But if you wish to commend the small gifts of your friend, let a boy carry my songs — not the kind who, gorged on the milk of a Getic heifer, plays on the stiff Sarmatian stream with a hoop, but the rosy youth of a Mitylenean dealer, or a Laconian not yet flogged at his mother's bidding. But to you a captive servant shall be sent from the Hister, one able to pasture your Tiburtine sheep.

LXXXI 'Thirty epigrams in the whole book are bad.' If as many are good, Lausus, the book is good.

LXXXII So large a sheath clothes Menophilus' penis that it alone would be enough for all the comic actors. I had believed — for we often bathe together — that he was anxious, Flaccus, to spare his voice: but while he played in the middle of the wrestling-ground, with the crowd looking on, the sheath slipped off the poor man: he was circumcised.

LXXXIII While the barber Eutrapelus goes round Lupercus' face and paints his cheeks, a second beard comes up.

LXXXIV While my likeness is being shaped for Caecilius Secundus and the painted panel breathes from a skilful hand, go, book, to Getic Peuce and the recumbent Hister: he holds those places, the peoples thoroughly tamed. You will give small, but sweet, gifts to a dear comrade: my face will be surer in my song; proof against any chances, blottable by no years, it will live, when the work of Apelles dies.

LXXXV That you write certain quatrains not without wit, and a few couplets prettily, Sabellus, I praise, but do not marvel. It is easy to write epigrams prettily; but to write a book is hard.

LXXXVI I used to be invited to your birthday feasts, back when I was not your friend, Sextus: what has happened, I ask, what has suddenly happened, after so many pledges between us, after so many years, that I, an old comrade, am passed over? But I know the reason: no pound of refined Spanish silver came to you from me, no light toga, no fresh cloaks. A dole that drives a bargain is no dole; you feed gifts, Sextus, not friends. Now you'll say to me, 'Let the summoner be flogged.'

LXXXVII If my Flaccus delights in a long-eared fox-ape, if Canius enjoys a grim Ethiopian; if Publius burns with love for a tiny lapdog, if Cronius loves a monkey like himself; if a destructive ichneumon pleases Marius, if a chattering magpie pleases you, Lausus; if Cadilla winds a cold serpent round her neck, if Telesilla gave a tomb to a nightingale: why should not the man who sees such monsters please their owners love the charming face of Cupid-like Labyrtas?

LXXXVIII It is said, if the report is true, that lovely Vienna holds my little books among her delights: there every old man and youth and boy reads me, and the chaste girl before her grim husband. This I would rather than that my songs were sung by those who drink the Nile straight from its very mouth; than that my Tagus should fill me with Spanish gold, and Hybla and Hymettus feed my bees. So I am something, then, nor am I deceived by the gift of a flattering tongue: now, Lausus, I think I'll believe you.

LXXXIX Go, happy rose, and with your soft garlands crown the hair of my Apollinaris. And remember to bind them, white — but only in time to come, so may Venus love you always — when his hair is grey.

XC Matho boasts that I have made an uneven little book: if it is true, Matho praises my poems. Calvinus and Umber write even books: an even book, Creticus, is the one that is bad throughout.

XCI From my little farm, eloquent Juvenal, I send you, look, some Saturnalia nuts. The rest of the fruit the lustful cock of the guardian god gave away to wanton girls.

XCII 'If you need anything, you know you've only to ask me' — this you say twice and three times a day, Baccara, in one breath. Grim Secundus duns me in a harsh voice: you hear, and don't know, Baccara, what I need. The rent is demanded of me in your presence, loud and open: you hear, and don't know, Baccara, what I need. I complain my cloaks are cold and threadbare: you hear, and don't know, Baccara, what I need. What I need is this: that you suddenly be struck dumb by some star, so you can't say, Baccara, 'If you need anything.'

XCIII Narnia, whom the river, white with its sulphurous current, girdles, scarcely to be reached by a double ridge, why does it please you so often to steal my Quintus from us and detain him with sluggish delay? Why do you ruin for me the worth of my Nomentan farm, which was precious because of its neighbour? But now spare me, Narnia, do not abuse my Quintus: so may you enjoy your bridge forever.

XCIV What the small onyx jar lately held was perfume: after Papylus smelled it — behold, it is fish-sauce.

XCV It is winter, and rough December is stiff with cold, yet you dare, with a snowy kiss, to stop everyone you meet on this side and that, and to kiss all Rome, Linus. What heavier, what crueller thing could you do if you were struck and flogged? In this cold let no wife kiss me, nor my young daughter with her coaxing lips. But you are sweeter and more refined, you from whose dog's nostrils hangs a livid icicle, and whose beard is stiff, such as the Cilician barber reaps with upturned shears from a Cinyphian goatherd. I'd rather meet a hundred cunt-lickers, and I fear a fresh-castrated priest of Cybele less. So if you have any sense and shame, your winter kissings, Linus, I beg you put off till the month of April.

XCVI Here I am buried, Bassus' grief, the infant Urbicus, to whom greatest Rome gave birth and name. Six months were lacking to me of my first three years, when the grim goddesses cut short my thread of life. What good to me was beauty, speech, or age? Give tears to my tomb, you who read this: so may the one you wish to outlive you not go down to Lethe's waters, unless later than Nestor.

XCVII If you know Caesius Sabinus well, my little book, glory of mountainous Umbria, the townsman of my Aulus Pudens, you will give him these, even when he is busy: though a thousand cares press and weigh on him, he will still have time for my songs: for he loves me, and reads me next to the noble little books of Turnus. Oh, what a name is being won for you! Oh, what glory! how frequent a lover! You will sound at banquets, at the forum, at mansions, crossroads, porticoes, taverns. You are sent to one, you are read by all.

XCVIII You buy everything, Castor: so it will come about that you sell everything.

XCIX So may you ever see the Thunderer calm, Crispinus, nor may Rome love you less than your own Memphis: if my songs are read in the Parrhasian court — for they are wont to enjoy Caesar's sacred ear — dare to say of me, like a candid reader: 'This man brings no little credit to your times, and is not too far beneath Marsus and learned Catullus.' This is enough: the rest I entrust to the god himself.