Book 9
Imperial Marcus Valerius Martialis Latinpr. Greetings, my Toranius, dearest brother. The epigram that stands outside the order of the pages I wrote to Stertinius, a most distinguished man, who wished to set up my likeness in his library. About this I thought I should write to you, lest you not know who this Avitus is who is addressed. Farewell, and prepare a lodging.
Bard renowned, whether you wish it or not, with a lofty heart, to whom your late ashes shall bring worthy rewards, let this brief poem live for you beneath my likeness, which, Avitus, you join with men of no obscure name: 'I am that man, second to none in the praise of trifles, whom you, reader, do not admire, but, I think, love. Let greater men sound greater things: for me, who speak of small matters, it suffices to come often back into your hands.'
I While Janus lends the years their winters, Domitian his autumns, and Augustus his summers, while the great light of the German Kalends claims the mighty title of the subdued Rhine, while the Tarpeian rocks of the highest Father stand, while the suppliant matron with voice and incense appeases the sweet godhead of divine Julia: the lofty glory of the Flavian line shall remain with the sun and the stars and with the Roman light. Whatever the unconquered hand has founded belongs to heaven.
II Though you are poor toward friendship, Lupus, you are not so toward your mistress, and your cock alone has no complaint of you. That adulteress grows fat on wheaten cunts, while black flour feeds your dinner-guest; Setine wine, that would inflame the snows, is strained for your mistress, while we drink the dark poisons of a Corsican jar; a night is bought from you with no small part of your father's lands, while your deserted comrade ploughs fields not his own; your mistress shines, translucent with Erythraean pearls, while your client is led off, made over to debt, as you fuck; a litter borne up by eight Syrians is given to the girl, while your friend will be the naked weight of a pauper's bier. Go now, Cybele, and cut off the wretched catamites: this, this was the cock worthy of your knives.
III How much you have already given to the gods above, Caesar, and to heaven, if you should call it back and choose to be the creditor, though a great auction be held on aethereal Olympus and the gods be forced to sell whatever they have, Atlas will go bankrupt, and there will not be a whole ounce on which the very father of the gods could settle with you: for what can he pay you for the Capitoline temples, what for the honour of the Tarpeian foliage? What can the Thunderer's matron pay for her twin roofs? Pallas I pass over: she manages your affairs. Why speak of Alcides, and Phoebus, and the pious Laconians? What of the Flavian temple added to the Latian sky? You must wait and endure, Augustus, of necessity: for Jupiter's coffer has nothing to pay you with.
IV Though Galla can be fucked for two gold pieces, and for more than fucked, if you add as many again: why does Galla get ten gold pieces from you, Aeschylus? Galla does not suck for so much. What, then? She keeps quiet.
V To you, supreme tamer of the Rhine and parent of the world, chaste prince, the cities give thanks: they will have peoples; now it is no crime to bear children. No longer does the boy, cut by the greedy dealer's art, mourn the losses of his stolen manhood, nor does the wretched mother give to her prostituted infant the petty fee that the haughty pander would count. What modesty did not exist even in the bedchamber before your day has begun, thanks to you, even in the brothel.
VI I wished to say 'Good morning' to you, Afer, on your return from the Libyan tribes, for five days running: 'He's not free' or 'He's asleep' was said, twice and three times, as I came back. That's enough now: you don't want to be greeted, Afer; farewell.
VII As though it were a small injury to our sex to have prostituted males for the people's filthy use, the cradle had already become the pander's, so that, snatched from the breast, the boy demanded sordid coins with his wailing: immature bodies paid unspeakable penalties. The Ausonian father did not bear such monstrosities, the same who lately came to the aid of tender youths, that savage lust might not make men barren. Before, boys and young men and old men loved you, but now infants too love you, Caesar.
VIII Fabius left you nothing, Bithynicus, you to whom you used to give, if I remember, six thousand a year. He gave more to no one: don't complain, Bithynicus: he has left you six thousand a year.
IX Though you dine abroad gladly, Cantharus, you shout and slander and threaten. Lay aside your fierce spirit, we warn you: you cannot be both a free-spoken man and a glutton.
X You want to marry Priscus: I'm not surprised, Paula; you're wise. Priscus doesn't want to marry you: and he too is wise.
XI A name born with violets and roses, by which the best part of the year is named, which tastes of Hybla and Attic flowers, which smells of the proud bird's nest; a name sweeter than blessed nectar, by which Cybele's boy would rather be called, and he who mixes the Thunderer's cups; which, if you sound it in the Parrhasian hall, the Venuses and Cupids answer; a noble name, soft, delicate, I wished to speak in no rough verse: but you, stubborn syllable, rebel. Yet poets say 'Eiarinos' — but Greek ones, to whom nothing is denied and whom it befits to sound 'Ares, Ares': we are not allowed to be so eloquent, we who cultivate the sterner Muses.
XII You have a name that names the season of the tender year, when the Cecropian bees plunder the brief spring; a name that deserved to be painted with Acidalia's reed, that Cytherea delights to write with her own needle; a name that, made a letter with Erythraean pearls, a gem polished by the Heliads' thumb might mark; that the cranes might raise to the stars with writing wing; that befits being only in Caesar's house.
XIII If autumn gave me my name, I'd be Oporinos; if the harsh stars of winter, Chimerinos; named from the summer month, I'd be called Therinos by you: but he to whom the spring season gave his name — who is he?
XIV This friend whom your table, whom your dinner has won you — do you think his is a heart of faithful friendship? He loves the boar and the mullets and the udder and the oysters, not you. If I dined as well, he would be my friend.
XV The wicked Chloe inscribed on the tombs of her seven husbands that she had made them. What could be plainer?
XVI The counsellor of his beauty, the mirror, and his sweet hair that boy, most pleasing of all the court to his master, who marks the spring season with his name, set up as hallowed gifts to the Pergamene god. Happy the land esteemed with such a gift! Nor would it wish to have Ganymede's locks.
XVII Venerable grandson of Latona, who with gentle herbs prevail upon the Parcae's threads and their short distaffs, this hair, praised by his master, a granted vow, that boy of yours sent from the Latian city; he added too a shining disc to the hallowed locks, by whose verdict his happy face was kept safe. Preserve his youthful charm, that he be no fairer in long hair than in shorter.
XVIII I have — and may I have it long with you as guardian, Caesar — a tiny country place, and small are my household gods in the city too. But from a low valley, to give what it can to the thirsty gardens, the curved pump raises laboured-up waters: my dry house complains that no dew refreshes it, though the Marcian water sounds in a fountain near me. The water you give to my household, Augustus, will be for me Castalia's spring or Jove's own rain.
XIX You praise the baths of Ponticus, who dines well, in three hundred verses, Sabellus. You want to dine, Sabellus, not to bathe.
XX This ground, which lies all open and is covered with marble and gold, was conscious of our infant lord, happy, oh, with what wailings it rang, and what crawling hands it saw and held up: here had stood the venerable house that gave the world what Rhodes gave the starry sky, what pious Crete. The Curetes shielded Jove with clashing arms, such as the half-male Phrygians could bear: but you the father of the gods protected, and for you, Caesar, the thunderbolt and aegis served as javelin and shield.
XXI Artemidorus has a boy, but he sold his farm; Calliodorus has a farm in exchange for a boy. Tell me, Auctus, which of these has done the better business: Artemidorus loves, Calliodorus ploughs.
XXII You believe, perhaps, Pastor, that I beg for wealth on the same grounds as the common, thick-witted crowd begs, that Setine soil may wear out my hoes and a Tuscan field clank with countless fetters of slaves; that a hundred Moorish round tables stand on Libyan tusks and golden plate rattle on my couches, that no crystal but the great be worn by my lips and my Falernian make black snows; that a Canusian-cloaked Syrian sweat under my chair-pole and my chair be thronged with well-dressed clients; that a guest grow hot, drenched, at the hands of my servant, whom you'd not exchange even for Ganymede; that a muddy mule daub my Tyrian cloaks and a Massylian wand steer my horse. None of these is the reason: I call the gods and stars to witness. What then? That I may give, Pastor, and build.
XXIII O you to whom it has fallen to grow golden with the virgin's gold, tell me, Carus, where is your Palladian honour? 'You see, look, my master's face gleaming in marble? My crown came of itself to those locks.' The pious oak of the Alban olive may well be livid, that the oak first crowned the unconquered head.
XXIV Who, having imitated the Palatine features in his likeness, outdid Phidian ivory with Latian marble? This is the face of the world, these the lips of serene Jove: so that god thunders, when he thunders without a cloud. Not the crown alone did Pallas grant you, Carus; she gave the master's image, which you worship.
XXV Whenever we have looked at your Hyllus giving the wine, you mark us, Afer, with a more troubled eye. What, I ask, what crime is it to watch a soft servant? We look at the sun, the stars, the temples, the gods. Shall I turn away my face, as if a Gorgon held out the cups to me and sought my eyes and face? Alcides was grim, and one could look at Hylas; one may play with Mercury and Ganymede. If you don't want a guest to watch your tender servants, invite, Afer, men like Phineus and the Oedipuses.
XXVI He who dares to send poems to eloquent Nerva will give pale woad-perfume to you, Cosmus, violets and white privet to the Paestan gardener, Corsican honey to the bees of Hybla: but yet even a small Muse has some grace; the cheap olive is sought after when the boar is set aside. Nor let it be a wonder to you that my Thalia, aware of her modest bard, fears your judgement: even Nero himself is said to have feared your ears, when as a young man he played a wanton work for you.
XXVII Though you carry depilated balls, Chrestus, and a cock like a vulture's neck, and a head smoother than prostitutes' arses, and not a hair lives on your leg, and savage tweezers cleanse your white lips: yet you talk and thunder, menacing, with grand words of Curii, Camilli, Quintii, Numas, Ancuses, and whatever hairy worthies we ever read of, and you brawl with the theatre and the age. If meanwhile some strongman crosses your path, just freed from his tutor and whose swollen penis the smith has unbuckled: you call him with a nod and lead him off, and I am ashamed to say, Chrestus, what you do with your Cato-like tongue.
XXVIII Sweet glory of the stage, fame of the games, I am that Latinus, your applause and your delight, who could have made a spectator of Cato, who could relax the grave Curii and Fabricii. But my life took nothing from our theatre, and I am called an actor by my art alone; nor could I be pleasing to our lord without good character; that god looks more deeply into men's minds. Call me the parasite of laurelled Phoebus, so long as Rome knows me the servant of her own Jove.
XXIX Philaenis, who had measured out the ages of Nestor's old age, have you been snatched so soon to the infernal waters of Dis? You did not yet count the long years of the Euboean Sibyl: she was greater by three months. Ah, what a tongue is silent! A thousand auction-blocks could not outdo it, nor the throng that loves Sarapis, nor the curled-haired band of the morning schoolmaster, nor the bank that sounds with the Strymonian flock. Who now will know how to draw down the moon with the Thessalian wheel, who, as a bawd, to sell this man's bed or that? May the earth lie light on you and soft sand cover you, that the dogs may not be unable to dig up your bones.
XXX Antistius Rusticus died on the savage shores of the Cappadocians. O land guilty of a grievous crime! Nigrina brought back in her bosom the bones of her dear husband and complained the long roads were not enough; and when she gave the holy urn to the tomb she envies, she felt herself twice widowed of her snatched husband.
XXXI When Velius clung as comrade to Caesar's Northern arms, he vowed this bird to Mars on behalf of his leader; the moon had not yet finished twice four circuits, and already the god demanded the vows owed him: of itself the goose hastened gladly to its altar and fell, a small victim, on the holy hearth. You see eight coins hanging from the bird's open beak? These were lately hidden in the entrails: the victim that makes offering for you, Caesar, with silver, not blood, teaches that there is now no need of the knife.
XXXII I want her who is easy, who roams in a little cloak, I want her who has already given herself to my boy, I want her whom a single denarius buys outright, I want her who, one alone, suffices three at once. Let the cock of thick-witted Bordeaux possess the woman who demands money and sounds off grand words.
XXXIII If you hear applause in any bath, Flaccus, know that Maro's cock is there.
XXXIV Jupiter laughed at the lies of his Idaean tomb, while he saw the Flavian temple of Augustus' sky, and amid the tables, now flowing with abundant nectar, as he himself handed the cups to his own Mars, looking on Phoebus and Phoebus' sister alike, with whom were Alcides and the pious Arcadian: 'You gave me,' he said, 'monuments in Cnossos: see how much better it is to be Caesar's father.'
XXXV By these arts, Philomusus, you always earn your dinner, inventing much, but reporting it as if true. You know what Pacorus deliberates in the Arsacid court, you count the Rhenish and Sarmatian forces, you unseal the words of the Dacian leader committed to paper, you see the victor's laurel before it comes, you know how often dark Syene is drenched by the Pharian Jove, you know how many ships go from the Libyan shore, on whose head the Julian olives are born, to whom the aethereal father destines his own garlands. Away with your arts; today you'll dine at my house on this condition, Philomusus: that you tell nothing new.
XXXVI The Phrygian boy, the known joy of the other Jove, had seen the Ausonian servant just now with his hair laid aside: 'What your Caesar, look, has allowed his own youth, allow yours, greatest ruler,' he said; 'Already my first down hides in long hair, already your Juno laughs at me and calls me a man.' To him the aethereal father said, 'O sweetest boy, it is not I, but the thing itself, that denies you what you ask: our Caesar has a thousand servants like you, and that great hall scarcely holds his star-like males; but if shorn hair gives you a manly look, who else will there be to mix me nectar?'
XXXVII Though you are yourself at home and dress in the middle of the Subura, your hair, Galla, is made for you in your absence, and you lay aside your teeth at night as you do your silks, and you lie stowed in a hundred boxes, nor does your face sleep with you, and you wink with that eyebrow that was brought out for you in the morning, and no reverence for your grey cunt moves you, which you can now number among your forebears. Yet you promise six hundred delights; but the cock is deaf, and though it be one-eyed, it nonetheless sees you.
XXXVIII Though you play, Agathinus, at the highest perils with speed, yet you cannot make your shield fall. It follows you against your will, and, turned back through the thin air, sits on your foot or your back, your hair or your nail; though the boards be slippery with Corycian saffron-spray and swift south-winds snatch the denied sails, the neglected shield walks over the boy's untroubled limbs, and wind and water harm the artist not at all. Though you wish to err, when you have done everything, you cannot be foiled: it takes art to make your shield fall.
XXXIX This first light dawned for the Palatine Thunderer, on which Cybele would have wished to have borne Jove; on this too holy Caesonia, my Rufus' wife, was born: no girl owes more to her mother. The husband rejoices in the double lot of his prayers, that it has fallen to him to love this day for both.
XL When Diodorus sought Rome from the Pharos he had left, for the Tarpeian crowns, Philaenis vowed, for her husband's return, that, as a simple girl, she would lick the part that even chaste Sabine women cherish. His ship scattered by grim storms, sunk in the waves and overwhelmed by the sea, Diodorus swam to fulfil the vow. O too slow and sluggish husband! Had my girl made this vow on the shore, I would have come back at once.
XLI Ponticus, that you never fuck, but use your left hand as a concubine, and your hand serves Venus as a mistress — do you think this is nothing? It is a crime, believe me, and a great one, greater than you yourself can conceive in your mind. Horace, surely, fucked but once to beget three; Mars once, that chaste Ilia might give twins: all would have been lost, had each of them, masturbating, entrusted his foul pleasures to his own hands. Believe that Nature herself says this to you: 'That which you waste with your fingers, Ponticus, is a man.'
XLII So, Apollo, may you enjoy the rich Myrine plains, so may you ever delight in your aged swans, so may the learned sisters serve you, nor let your Delphi lie to anyone, so may the Palatine court you and love you: quickly, at your asking, may good Caesar grant Stella twice six fasces and nod assent. Then happy I, and bound by a vow, will lead to your rustic altars a bullock with gilded horns, to fall for you. The victim is born, Phoebus; why do you delay?
XLIII This god who, seated, softens the hard rocks with his outstretched lion-skin, great in a little bronze, and gazes with upturned face at the stars he bore, whose left hand is warm with his club, his right with wine: this is no recent fame, no glory of our chisel; you see the noble gift and work of Lysippus. This godhead the table of the Pellaean tyrant possessed, who, conqueror, lies in a world soon subdued; to this Hannibal as a boy swore at the Libyan altars; this bade grim Sulla lay down his power. Offended by the swollen terrors of varied courts, he now rejoices to dwell in private households, and as he was once the guest of gentle Molorchus, so the god wished to be learned Vindex's.
XLIV Just now I was asking Vindex's Alcides whose work and happy labour he was. He laughed — for so he is wont — and with a slight nod said, 'Poet, do you not know Greek? The base is inscribed and gives the name.' I read 'Lysippus' work'; I had thought it Phidias'.
XLV A soldier, Marcellinus, you lately bore the Hyperborean Bears and the sluggish stars of the Getic sky: behold, the rocks of Prometheus and the fabled mountain, how near to your eyes they now are to be approached! When you see the rocks that rang with the old man's boundless laments, you'll say, 'He himself was harder.' And you may add this: 'He who could bear such things had deserved to fashion the human race.'
XLVI Gellius is always building: now he sets thresholds, now he fits keys to doors and buys locks, now these, now those windows he remakes and changes; so long as he builds at all, he does anything — that he may say to a friend begging for money that one word, Gellius: 'I'm building.'
XLVII Democrituses, Zenos, and tangled Platos, and whatever moulders in shaggy busts, you talk of, as though the successor and heir of Pythagoras. Your beard, indeed, hangs no shorter than theirs: but what is shameful in goatish, foul in hairy men, you gladly take a stiff one in your soft buttocks. You, who know the principles and weight of the sects, tell me, Pannychus, what doctrine is it to be buggered?
XLVIII When you swore I was heir to a fourth part of your estate, Garricus, by your sacred rites and your own head, I believed it — for who readily condemns his own hopes? — and kept fostering the hope with gifts I gave. Among them I sent a Laurentine boar of rare weight: you'd think it from Aetolian Calydon. But you at once invited the people and the senate, and pale Rome still belches up my boar: I myself — who would believe it? — was a guest, and not the lowest, yet no rib was given me, no tail sent my way. What can I hope for from your quarter-share, Garricus? Not one ounce of my own boar came to me.
XLIX This is that toga, much sung in my little books, which my reader has learned by heart and loves. It was once Parthenius', a memorable gift to the bard: in it I went, a knight to be admired, while it shone, splendid, with new and glossy wool, and while it was worthy of the name of its giver: now an old thing, scarcely fit for a shivering pauper, which you could rightly call snow-white. What does long time, what do the years not consume? This toga is no longer Parthenius'; it is mine.
L You prove to me, Gaurus, that my talent is so small, because I make poems that please by their brevity. I confess it. But you, who write in twice six books the grand battles of Priam — are you a great man? We make a living Brutus' boy, we make a living Langon: you, Gaurus, make a great Giant of clay.
LI What you always begged of the gods against your brother's wish, this, Lucanus, has fallen to you — to die first. He envies you; for Tullus wished, though he is younger, to go first to the Stygian shades. You dwell in Elysium, and now, an inhabitant of the lovely grove, you long to be without your brother for the first time; and if he comes by turns from the bright stars, in Pollux's place you warn Castor not to return.
LII If you believe me, Quintus, what you deserve, I love your birthday, Ovidius, the Kalends of April, as I love my own Kalends of March. Happy each light and day for us, to be marked with the better pebbles! This gave me life, but that gave me a friend. Your Kalends, Quintus, give me more.
LIII On your birthday, Quintus, I wished to give you small gifts; you forbid it: you're an imperious man. I must obey your warnings; let it be done as we both wish and as pleases us both: you, Quintus, give to me.
LIV If a thrush were ripening for me on a Picene olive, or a Sabine wood were stretching my nets, or light prey were drawn in by the growing reed and the limed twig held the entangled birds: my dear kinship would give you its customary gift, nor would a brother or grandfather come before you. Now the field hears poor starlings and the chaffinches' complaints and grows green in spring with the chattering sparrow; hence the ploughman, greeted, answers the magpie, hence the rapacious kite flies near the topmost stars. So I send you the little gifts of a small farmyard: if you accept such things, you'll often be a kinsman.
LV On the day of kinsmen, when birds are sent in plenty, while I prepare thrushes for Stella, and for you, Flaccus, a huge and burdensome crowd comes to mind, in which each man counts himself first and mine. To oblige two is my wish; to offend more is hardly safe; to send gifts to many is grievous. By the only means I can, I'll win pardon: I'll give thrushes neither to Stella nor to you, Flaccus.
LVI Spendophorus, the master's armour-bearer, seeks the Libyan cities: prepare, Cupid, the darts you would give the boy, those with which you pierce young men and soft girls: but let the spear too be smooth in his tender hand. Breastplate, shield, and helmet I give back to you; that he may safely enter battles, let him go naked: neither javelin, sword, nor arrow harmed Parthenopaeus while he was free of the helmet. Whoever is pierced by this boy will die of love. O happy, if such a good fate awaits anyone! While you are a boy, come back; while your face is smooth, and let not Libya make you a man, but your own Rome.
LVII Nothing is more worn than Hedylus' cloaks: not the handles of old Corinthian bronzes, nor the leg made slippery by a ten-year fetter, nor the chafed neck of a broken-down mule, nor the ruts that cut the Flaminian Way, nor the pebbles that shine on the shore, nor the hoe polished by a Tuscan vineyard, nor the pale toga of a dead clansman, nor the cracked wheel of a lazy muleteer, nor the side of a bison shaved by its cage, nor the now-aged tusk of a fierce boar. There is one thing, though — he himself won't deny it: Hedylus' arsehole is more worn than his cloaks.
LVIII Nymph, queen of the sacred lake, to whom welcome Sabinus gave temples that will endure, a pious gift, so may mountain Umbria forever tend your springs, nor may your Sassina prefer the waters of Baiae: receive kindly my anxious gifts, these little books; be the Pegasean spring to my Muses. — 'Whoever gives his own songs to the temples of the Nymphs, shows himself what ought to be done with such books.'
LIX Mamurra, having wandered long and much in the Saepta, here where golden Rome torments its own wealth, inspected the soft boys and devoured them with his eyes, not those whom the front stalls prostitute, but those whom the boards of the secret platform keep and whom neither the public nor my sort sees. Then, sated, he stripped the covers from tables and round tops and asked for the rich ivory displayed up high, and, measuring four times the tortoiseshell six-couch table, groaned that it was not big enough for his citrus-wood top. He consulted his nose, whether the bronzes smelled of Corinth, he found fault even with your statues, Polyclitus, and, complaining that some crystal was spoiled by bits of glass, he marked ten murrine cups and set them aside. He weighed old goblets, and any cups ennobled by Mentor's hand, and counted green gems in painted gold, and whatever, larger, rings from a snow-white ear. Sardonyxes, indeed, he sought at every table and set a price on great jaspers. When at last, wearied, he was leaving at the eleventh hour, he bought two cups for a penny and carried them himself.
LX Whether you were born in Paestan or in Tiburtine fields, or whether the soil of Tusculum blushed with your bloom, or whether the bailiff's wife gathered you in a Praenestine garden, or whether you were lately the glory of Campanian country: that you may seem a fairer garland to my Sabinus, let him think you come from my Nomentan farm.
LXI In the Tartessian lands there is a most famous house, where rich Corduba loves the placid Baetis, where the tawny fleeces grow pale with native metal and living gold-leaf coats the Hesperian flock. In the midst of the house, embracing the whole household, stands a Caesarian plane-tree with thick foliage, which the happy right hand of the unconquered guest set, and from that hand the shoot began to grow. The grove seems to feel its planter and master: so it is green and seeks the high stars with its branches. Often beneath this tree the drunken Fauns have played, and a late pipe has frightened the silent house; and while nocturnal Pan fled through the lonely fields, often beneath this leafage a rustic Dryad hid. And the household gods smelled of Lyaeus the reveller, and the shade grew gladder for the spilled wine; the grass was reddened, strewn with yesterday's garlands, and no one could call the roses his own. O tree beloved of the gods, O tree of great Caesar, fear not the iron and the sacrilegious hearths. You may hope for the perpetual honours of your leaves: no Pompeian hands planted you.
LXII That Philaenis wears garments dyed with purple both night and day, she is not ostentatious nor haughty: she delights in the smell, not the colour.
LXIII All the catamites invite you to dinner, Phoebus. The man whom a cock feeds is not, I think, a clean man.
LXIV Caesar, having deigned to come down into the features of great Hercules, gives new temples to the Latin way, where the traveller, as he seeks Trivia's wooded realms, reads the eighth milestone from the mistress city. Before, he was worshipped with vows and abundant blood; now the lesser Alcides himself worships the greater. This man asks him for great wealth, that one for honours; to him this one, untroubled, makes his lesser vows.
LXV Alcides, now to be recognized by the Latian Thunderer, since you bear the fair face of the god Caesar, if you had then had these features and this bearing, when the wild monsters yielded to your hands: the nations would not have seen you serve as slave to the Argive tyrant and suffer his savage rule, but you would have given orders to Eurystheus; nor would treacherous Lichas have brought you the perfidious gifts of Nessus, without the law of the Oetaean pyre, untroubled, you would have approached the stars of your highest father, which your punishment gave you; nor would you have drawn out Lydian wool for a haughty mistress, nor seen the Styx and the Tartarean dog. Now Juno favours you, now your Hebe loves you; now, if a nymph saw you, she would send back Hylas.
LXVI Since you have a wife, beautiful, chaste, a young girl, what need have you, Fabullus, of the rights of three children? What you beg as a suppliant from our lord and god, you will give to yourself, if you can get it up.
LXVII I possessed all night a wanton girl, whose naughtinesses no one can outdo. Tired of a thousand ways, I asked for that boyish thing: she granted it before all my prayers and first words. Laughing and blushing, I asked something more shameless: the lustful girl promised it with no delay. But for me she was pure; for you she won't be, Aeschylus, if you wish to receive this favour on a bad condition.
LXVIII What have you to do with us, accursed schoolmaster, head hateful to boys and girls? The crested cocks have not yet broken the silence: already you thunder with savage muttering and lashings. As loudly does the bronze ring from struck anvils, when the smith fits a lawyer to a horse in the middle; gentler the shouting rages in the great amphitheatre, when its crowd cheers the winning shield. We neighbours ask for sleep — not all night long: for to lie awake is light, to lie awake all night is grievous. Dismiss your pupils. Will you take, chatterbox, as much to keep quiet as you take to shout?
LXIX When you fuck, Polycharmus, you usually shit at the end. When you are buggered, Polycharmus, what do you do?
LXX 'O the times! O the manners!' Tullius once cried, when Catiline was contriving his sacrilegious crime, when son-in-law and father-in-law clashed in dreadful arms and the mournful earth was soaked with civil slaughter. Why do you now say 'O the manners!', why now 'O the times!'? What is there, Caecilianus, that displeases you? There is no savagery of leaders, no madness of the sword; we may enjoy a sure peace and gladness. It is not our times that make your age sordid to you, but your own manners, Caecilianus.
LXXI A lion, the fame of the Massylian ridge, and a husband of the woolly flock joined together in wondrous loyalty. You may see it yourself: they are stabled in one cage and each crops the shared feast alike: they delight neither in the woods' offspring nor in mild herbs, but a tender lamb sates their harmonious hunger. What did the terror of Nemea earn, what the bearer of Helle, that they should gleam as bright signs of the high sky? If beasts of flock and field could earn the stars, this ram was worthy of the stars, this lion.
LXXII Liber, your brow bound with the Amyclaean crown, who shake Greek lashes with Ausonian hand, since you send me lunches shut in woven wicker, why does no flask come to accompany the feast? Yet if you brought gifts worthy of your name, you know, I think, what gifts ought to have been given me.
LXXIII You who used to draw out old hides with your teeth and bite the rotten, ancient sole with mud, now hold the Praenestine realms of your deceived patron, in which I am indignant if you ever had a cell; and, drunk, you break the crystal with burning Falernian, and you lust with your master's Ganymede. But my foolish parents taught me my letters: what have I to do with grammarians and rhetors? Break the light reeds and tear up the books, Thalia, if a shoe can give such things to a cobbler.
LXXIV Only the likeness of the boy Camonius does the painting keep, and the small image of the infant remains. No portrait marked his face in its flowering, since the pious father feared to see the mute features.
LXXV Not of hard flint or built-up rubble, nor of baked brick, with which Semiramis girt long Babylon, did Tucca make his bath: but of slaughtered groves and pinewood frame, so that Tucca could sail in his bath. The same man, elegant, builds rich warm-baths of every marble that Carystos found, that Phrygian Synnas, that African Nomas sent, and that Eurotas washed with its green stream. But wood is wanting: put the bath under the warm-baths to burn.
LXXVI These are those features of my Camonius you behold, this was the boy's face and first form. This face had grown stronger in twice ten years, and the beard rejoiced to paint his cheeks, and the bloom, sipped but once, had just sprinkled the topmost razors: of three, one sister envied and cut the threads with hastened spinning, and the urn brought back to the father the pyre of his absent son. But lest the painting alone speak of the boy, this greater image will be in my pages.
LXXVII What is the best banquet, the eloquent page of Priscus disputes, and reports much sweetly, much sublimely, but all with learned heart. You ask what is the best banquet? One at which there will be no flute-player.
LXXVIII After the funerals of seven husbands, Galla married you, Picentinus: Galla wants, I think, to follow her husbands.
LXXIX Rome hated before the leaders' servants and the former throng and the Palatine arrogance: but now so great is the love of all for your people, Augustus, that each cares for his own house second. So peaceful are their minds, so great their reverence for us, so calm their quiet, so much modesty in their faces. No one — this is the nature of a powerful court — but the master's manners does a Caesarian have.
LXXX A poor, hungry man married a rich old woman: Gellius both feeds his wife and fucks her.
LXXXI Reader and listener approve my little books, Aulus, but a certain poet says they are not polished. I don't much care: for I'd rather the courses of my dinner pleased the guests than the cooks.
LXXXII The astrologer had said you would soon perish, Munna, nor, I think, had he lied to you when he said it. For while you feared to leave anything behind after death, you devoured your father's wealth in luxury, and your two million melted in less than a year: tell me, Munna, is this not to perish soon?
LXXXIII Among the great wonders of your arena, Caesar, which surpass the famous shows of leaders of old, the eyes confess they owe much, but the ears more, to you, because those who used to recite now watch.
LXXXIV When your sacred loyalty stood, Norbanus, for our lord Caesar against sacrilegious frenzies, I was playing these things, safe in the Pierian shade, a known cultivator of your friendship. The Raetian told of me to you on the Vindelician shores, nor was the North unaware of my name: oh, how often, not denying an old friend, you said, 'That poet is mine, mine!' All my work, which for twice three years now joined my reader gave you before, the author will now give.
LXXXV Whenever our Paulus is rather indisposed, Atilius, he keeps not himself but his guests from food. You, indeed, suffer a sudden and feigned indisposition, but my dole, Paulus, has stretched out its feet.
LXXXVI That Silius, more than once mighty in Ausonian speech, groaned at the hastened fate of his Severus, I sadly complained with the Pierian band and Phoebus. 'I myself wept my own Linus,' said Apollo: and he looked back at his Calliope, who stood nearest his brother, and said: 'You too have a wound. Look at the Tarpeian and the Palatine Thunderer: Lachesis, daring the unspeakable, wounded both Joves. When you see godheads subject to harsh fates, you may free the gods of the charge of envy.'
LXXXVII After seven cups of Opimian wine, when I lie thick-tongued with deep draughts, you bring me some tablets or other and say, 'I have just ordered Nasta to be freed — he's a slave inherited from my father —: sign.' Tomorrow it will go better, Lupercus: just now my ring seals the wine-flask.
LXXXVIII While you were angling for me, you sent me gifts: now that you've caught me, Rufus, you give me nothing. To keep what you've caught, send the caught one gifts too, lest the ill-fed boar flee from the cage.
LXXXIX By too hard a law you force a guest to write verses, Stella. 'One may, of course, write bad ones.'
XC So, reclining on the flowery grass, where here and there the curving wave with gem-like streams stirs the pebble, all troubles shut far off, may you pierce the ice with a dark draught, your brow red with stitched garlands; so may you have for yourself alone a catamite boy and a most chaste girl lust for you: the ill-famed Cyprus, in too great a heat, beware of, I warn and beg you, Flaccus, when the threshing-floor wears the crackling harvest and the burning mane of the lion rages. But you, goddess of Paphos, send back, send back to my prayers the young man unharmed: so may the Kalends of March serve you, and with incense and wine and victim may there be poured for you at your white altars many a cut square of cake.
XCI If to dinner amid opposite stars there summoned me, on this side Caesar's inviter, on that Jove's, though the stars were nearer, the Palatine farther off, these answers to the gods above I would give to bring back: 'Seek one who would rather become the Thunderer's guest: my Jupiter, look, keeps me on earth.'
XCII What are a master's ills, what a slave's advantages, you do not know, Condylus, who groan that you have long been a slave. A cheap little mat gives you untroubled sleep, while Gaius, look, lies sleepless on feathers. Gaius from first light, trembling, greets so many masters, but you, Condylus, not even a master. 'Pay what you owe, Gaius,' says Phoebus, and from over there Cinnamus: this, Condylus, no one says to you. Do you fear the torturer? Gout in foot and hand racks Gaius, and he would rather suffer a thousand lashes. Because you neither vomit in the morning nor lick cunt, Condylus, would you not rather be yourself three times over than Gaius?
XCIII Why do you delay, boy, to add the immortal Falernian? Double my quarter-measure from the older jar. Now tell me, Catacissus, to which of the gods do I bid you pour six cups? 'It will be Caesar.' Let a stitched rose be fitted ten times to our hair, that there be one who set up the noble work of the sacred line. Now give me twice five kisses, that that name be made which the god bore from the Odrysian world.
XCIV With a Santonican herb-drugged drink Hippocrates gave me a cup: the cheek of the man! Now he asks me for honey-wine. Never were you so stupid even, I think, Glaucus, who gave golden gifts to one who gave you bronze. Does anyone ask for a sweet gift in return for a bitter one? Let him have it — but only if he drinks it in hellebore.
XCV He was Alfius before; now he has begun to be Olfius, since Athenagoras took a wife.
95b. XCVb You believe, Callistratus, that 'Athenagoras' is a real name. May I die if I know who Athenagoras is. But suppose I do speak a real name, Callistratus: it is not I, but your Athenagoras, who errs.
XCVI The physician Herodes had filched a ladle from a sick man: caught, he said, 'Fool, why then do you drink?'
XCVII A certain man bursts with envy, dearest Julius, because Rome reads me, he bursts with envy. He bursts with envy, because in every crowd I am always pointed at with a finger, he bursts with envy. He bursts with envy, because both Caesars granted me the right of children, he bursts with envy. He bursts with envy, because I have a sweet country place near the city and a small house in the city, he bursts with envy. He bursts with envy, because I am dear to my friends, because I am a frequent guest, he bursts with envy. He bursts with envy, because I am loved and approved: let him burst, whoever bursts with envy.
XCVIII The yield of the vintage did not everywhere fail, Ovidius; the great rain helped. Coranus made a hundred amphoras — of water.
XCIX Marcus Antonius loves my Muses, Atticus, if the saluting paper now reports truly: Marcus, the not-to-be-denied glory of Palladian Toulouse, whom Quiet, the nursling of Peace, begot. You who can bear the long expense of the roads, go, book, a pledge of absent friendship. You were cheap, I confess, if a buyer now sent you; the author will be the great price of your gift: it matters much, believe me, whether water be drunk that flows from the source, or that stagnates in a sluggish pool.
C For three denarii you invite me, and bid me in the morning, gowned, attend your halls, Bassus, then cling to your side, walk before your chair, go with you to ten widows, more or less. My little toga, indeed, is worn and cheap and old: yet for three denarii, Bassus, I do not buy it.
CI Appian Way, whom venerable Caesar, in the likeness of Hercules, hallows, greatest fame of the Ausonian road, if you wish to know the deeds of the earlier Alcides, learn: he tamed the Libyan, carried off the golden apples, unbelted the shield-bearing Amazon of her Scythian knot, added to the Arcadian boar the lion's hide, took the bronze-footed stag from the woods, the Stymphalian birds from the stars, came back from the Stygian water with the dog, forbade the fruitful hydra to be renewed by deaths, washed the Hesperian cattle in the Tuscan stream. These the lesser Alcides did: hear what the greater has done, whom the sixth milestone from the Alban citadel worships. He claimed the Palatine, possessed by evil rule, and as a boy waged his first wars for his own Jove; when he alone now held the Julian reins, he handed them over and was third in his own world; thrice he crushed the treacherous horns of the Sarmatian Hister, thrice he washed his sweating horse in Getic snow; sparing, often refusing to lead triumphs, he, victor, won a name from the Hyperborean world; he gave temples to the gods, manners to peoples, rest from the sword, stars to his own, constellations to heaven, garlands to Jove. The godhead of Hercules is not enough for such deeds: let this god lend his face to the Tarpeian father.
CII You hand me back, Phoebus, the tablets for four hundred thousand: rather lend me, Phoebus, a hundred thousand. Seek another to whom you may boast of so empty a gift: what I cannot pay you, Phoebus, is mine.
CIII What new Leda bore servants so like you? What Spartan woman was taken naked by another swan? Pollux gives his face to Hierus, Castor to Asylus, and in each face the Tyndarian sister shines. Had that beauty been at Therapnaean Amyclae, when lesser gifts overcame the two goddesses, you would have stayed, Helen, and Dardanian Paris would have returned to Phrygian Ida with a twin Ganymede.