Book 11

I Where are you headed, where, my idle book, dressed in no everyday Sidonian dye? Surely not to see Parthenius? No doubt: you'll go and return unrolled, unread: he reads no books, only petitions; nor has he time for the Muses—else he'd have time for his own. Do you reckon yourself blessed enough, if lesser hands take hold of you? Make for the portico of neighbouring Quirinus: no idler crowd is to be had at Pompey's, or by Agenor's daughter's, or at the fickle owner of the first ship's. There are two or three there who'd unroll the bookworms of my trifles, but only when the wagers and stale gossip about Scorpus and Incitatus are done.

II The grim eyebrow, the stern brow of hard Cato, the daughter of Fabricius the ploughman, the masked airs and the rule of morals, and whatever we aren't, in the dark—out you go. Look, my verses cry "Hurrah, Saturnalia!": under your reign, Nerva, it's both allowed and a pleasure. Sour readers, go memorize knotty Santra: I've nothing to do with you: this book is mine.

III Not only urban leisure delights in my Pimpleian Muse, nor do I give these things to empty ears, but my book is thumbed by a stiff centurion amid Getic frosts, at the Martian standards, and Britain is said to chant my verses. What good is it? My purse knows nothing of this. Yet what enduring pages we could compose, what battles blast on the Pierian trumpet, when the kindly gods have given an Augustus back to earth, and a Maecenas too, if they gave you one, Rome!

IV The rites and household gods of the Phrygians, which Troy's heir chose to snatch rather than Laomedon's wealth about to burn, and Jupiter, now inscribed for the first time in eternal gold, and his sister and the perfect daughter of the supreme father, and you, Janus, who now enter a third name in the purple calendar for Nerva; I beg you with reverent voice: preserve, all of you, this leader, preserve the senate; let the one live by the prince's morals, the other by his own.

V So great is your reverence for the right and the just, Caesar, as was Numa's: but Numa was poor. A hard thing it is, not to surrender morals to wealth, and, when you've outdone so many Croesuses, to be a Numa. If the old fathers, those mighty names, should return, if one might empty the Elysian grove: unconquered Camillus will court you, for freedom's sake, Fabricius, while you give it, will want gold; Brutus will rejoice with you as leader, to you bloody Sulla will hand over command, when he's about to lay it down; Magnus will love you, with Caesar a private man, and Crassus will give you all his wealth. Even Cato himself, recalled from the infernal shades of Dis, if he were restored, would be a Caesarian.

VI In the festive days of the scythe-bearing old man, over which the ruling dice-box holds sway, you permit me, I think, felt-capped Rome, to play in unlaborious verse. You've smiled; so it's allowed, we're not forbidden. Pale cares, depart far from here; whatever comes to hand, let me speak it without peevish forethought. Mix the half-measures, boy, such as Pythagoras gave to Nero, mix them, Dindymus, but more frequent ones: I can do nothing sober; drinking, fifteen poets will come to my aid. Now give kisses, but Catullan ones: which if they prove as many as he named, I'll give you the Sparrow of Catullus.

VII Now at last, Paula, you won't say to your stupid husband, whenever you want to go far off to your lover, "Caesar bade me come to the Alban estate at dawn, Caesar to Circeii." That trick is gone now. You may be a Penelope under prince Nerva: but the itch and your old nature forbid it. Unhappy one, what will you do? Pretend a sick friend? Your husband himself will cling, the companion of his lady, and go with you to brother and mother and father. What frauds, then, do you plot, so ingenious? Another adulteress might perhaps say she was hysterical and wanted to take the waters at the lake of Sinuessa. How much better you manage it, whenever it pleases you to go and screw, you who'd rather tell your husband the truth, Paula!

VIII The scent of yesterday's balsam-resin that lingers faintly, the last whiff that falls from curling saffron; fruit ripening in a winter chest, a field luxuriant with springtime trees; silk from the empress's Palatine presses, amber rewarmed by a maiden's hand; a jar of dark Falernian, broken far off, a garden that keeps Sicilian bees; the perfume-jars of Cosmus and the altars of the gods, a garland just now slipped from rich locks: why name them one by one? They're not enough; mix them all: this is how my boy's kisses smell in the morning. You want to know his name? If for the sake of the kisses, I'll tell. You've sworn: you want to know too much, Sabinus.

IX Bright with Jove's foliage, fame of the Roman buskin, Memor breathes again, restored by Apelles' art.

X Turnus turned his mighty genius to satire. Why not to the songs of Memor? He was his brother.

XI Take away, boy, the cups and the embossed work of the tepid Nile, and hand me goblets with a careless hand, worn by the lips of our fathers, clean from an unshorn servant; let the ancient honour be restored to our tables. A gem-cup befits you to drink from, who break Mentor's work into a chamber-pot for your whore, Sardanapalus.

XII Let the right of seven children be granted you, Zoilus, so long as no one gives you a mother, no one a father.

XIII Whoever you are who tread the Flaminian Way, traveller, do not pass by this noble marble. The delight of the city, the wit of the Nile, art and grace, sport and pleasure, the glory and grief of the Roman theatre, and all the Venuses and Cupids are buried in this tomb, with Paris.

XIV Heirs, do not bury the short farmer: for to him earth, however little, is heavy.

XV I have pages that Cato's wife and the dreadful Sabine women might read: this whole little book I want to laugh and be more wanton than all little books. Let it be drenched with wine and not blush to be dirty with rich Cosmian pomade, let it play with boys, love girls, and not speak in roundabout phrases of that from which we're born, the parent of us all, which holy Numa called a cock. Yet remember that these verses are of the Saturnalia, Apollinaris: this little book does not have my morals.

XVI You who are too solemn, reader, can leave now wherever you like: I wrote these for the city's toga; now my page grows wanton with Lampsacene verse and clashes the cymbals with a Tartessian hand. O how often you'll strike your cloak with stiffened member, though you be graver than Curius and Fabricius! You too, girl, will read the naughtiness and the games of my little book, moist with desire, though you be from Patavium. Lucretia blushed and put down my book, but in Brutus' presence; Brutus, withdraw: she'll read.

XVII Not every page of my book is for the night: you'll find, Sabinus, something to read in the morning too.

XVIII You gave me, Lupus, a farm near the city; but I've a bigger farm in my window. Can you call this a farm, name this a farm? In which a rue-sprig makes Diana's grove, which the wing of a chirping cicada covers, which an ant eats up in a single day, for which a closed rose-petal is a garland; in which no more grass is found than a leaf of Cosmus or raw pepper; in which neither a cucumber can lie straight nor a whole snake make its home. The garden scarcely feeds a single caterpillar, the gnat dies once the willow-bed's consumed, and a mole is my digger and ploughman. The mushroom can't gape open, the fig can't smile, the violets can't spread out. A mouse ravages the borders, and by the farmer is feared like a Calydonian boar, and the crop, snatched by flying Procne's claw, lies in a swallow's nest; and though he stand there without sickle or member, there's no room for half a Priapus. The finished harvest scarcely fills a snail-shell, and we store the new wine in a pitch-sealed nut. You made a mistake, Lupus, but by a single letter: for at the time you gave me a praedium, a farm, I'd have preferred you'd given me a prandium, a lunch.

XIX You ask why I won't marry you, Galla? You're eloquent. My cock often commits a solecism.

XX You who, being sour, read sour Latin words, read six wanton verses of Caesar Augustus, you envious one: "Because Antony fucks Glaphyra, Fulvia has decreed this penalty for me, that I fuck her too. That I should fuck Fulvia? What if Manius begged me to bugger him, would I do it? I think not, if I were sane. 'Either fuck or let's fight,' she says. But what, since my prick is dearer to me than life itself? Let the trumpets sound!" You absolve, no doubt, my witty little books, Augustus, you who know how to speak with Roman frankness.

XXI Lydia is as loose as the arse of a bronze horseman, as the swift hoop that rings with shrill bronze, as the wheel struck so often by the leaping vaulter, as an old shoe soaked in muddy water, as the wide-meshed nets that wait for wandering thrushes, as the awnings denied to Pompey's south wind, as the bracelet slipped from a consumptive catamite, as a mattress widowed of its Leuconian stuffing, as the old breeches of a poor Briton, and as the foul gullet of a Ravenna pelican. They say I fucked her in a sea-water pool. I don't know; I think I fucked the pool.

XXII That you wear away the soft kisses of snowy Galaesus with your hard mouth, that you lie with naked Ganymede, (who denies it?) that's too much. But let it be enough; at least spare their groins, don't trouble them with a fucking hand. In smooth boys this sins more than the cock does, and the fingers hasten and make a man of him: hence the goatish smell and the quick hairs and a beard to amaze his mother, and the baths displease in broad daylight. Nature divided the male: one part is born for girls, one for men. Use your own part.

XXIII Sila is ready to marry me on any terms whatever; but on no terms do I want to marry Sila. When she pressed me, though, I said: "You'll give me ten million in gold as dowry, my bride; what could be less than that? Nor will I fuck you, though your husband, even on the first night, nor will I share a bed with you; I'll embrace my own mistress, and you won't forbid it, and at my bidding you'll send me your maid. While you watch, the servant will give me wanton kisses, whether he's mine or yours. You'll come to dinner, but you'll recline so set apart that our cloaks aren't touched by yours. You'll give me kisses rarely and not of your own accord, nor give them like a wife, but like an old mother. If you can endure all this, if you refuse to bear nothing, you'll find someone, Sila, who'll want to marry you."

XXIV While I escort you and walk you home, while I lend you my ear as you chatter, and praise whatever you say and do, how many verses, Labullus, could have been born! Does it not seem a loss to you, if what Rome reads, the visitor seeks out, the knight doesn't mock, the senator keeps, the lawyer praises, the poet carps at, perishes because of you? Labullus, is this right? Could anyone bear it? That your tally of little toga'd clients should be larger, mine of my own books smaller? For nearly thirty days now one single page has scarcely been finished by me. So it goes, when a poet doesn't want to dine at home.

XXV That over-lustful member, known to not a few girls, has stopped standing for Linus. Tongue, beware.

XXVI O my dear repose, O my coaxing care, Telesphorus, such as was never before in my embrace: give me kisses, boy, moist with old Falernian, give me cups made smaller by your lips. If you'd add to these the true joys of Venus, I'd say Jove's no better off with Ganymede.

XXVII You're made of iron, Flaccus, if your cock can stand, when your girlfriend begs you for six measures of fish-sauce, or asks for two slices of tunny or a thin mackerel, and doesn't think herself worthy of a whole bunch of grapes; to whom a maid joyfully brings on a red dish some fish-pickle, but only what she'll gulp down at once; or when she's rubbed her brow and laid aside shame and asks five greasy fleeces for a cloak. But let my girlfriend demand a pound of nard from me, or green gems or matched sardonyx, and want only the finest silk from the Tuscan quarter, or ask for a hundred gold pieces as if for small change. Now you think I want to give these things to a girl? No, I don't, but I want a girl worthy of them.

XXVIII Frenzied Nasica burst in on the doctor Euctus and buggered Hylas. This one, I think, was sane.

XXIX When you begin to handle my limp manhood with your old hand, Phyllis, I'm done in by your thumb: for when you call me your mouse, your eyes, I scarcely think I can recover in ten hours. You don't know flattery: say "I'll give you a hundred thousand and I'll give you the well-tilled acres of Setine soil; take wine, a house, slave-boys, gold plate, tables." There's no need of fingers: rub me like this, Phyllis.

XXX You say lawyers and poets have foul-smelling mouths. But a cocksucker's, Zoilus, smells worse.

XXXI Caecilius is the Atreus of gourds: just as if they were the sons of Thyestes, he mangles them and cuts them into a thousand parts. You'll eat these right away in the relish course, he'll serve these in the first or second course, the third course will set these before you, from these he'll prepare late after-dinner dishes. From these the baker makes silly little cakes, from these he builds up multiple wafers and dates known to theatre audiences. From these comes a varied hash for the cook, so you'd think it was lentils and beans set out; it imitates mushrooms and little sausages, and the tail of a tunny and small sprats. From these the steward tries out his arts, so that, sly fellow, he may store in a rue-leaf Capellian conserves of varied flavour. So he fills the bowls and the dishes and the smooth platters and hollowed trays. This he calls elegant, this he thinks charming, to set out for so many courses a single penny.

XXXII You've neither toga nor hearth nor a bedbug-worn bed, nor a mat patched from absorbent marsh-reeds, nor slave-boy nor older man, no maidservant nor infant, nor bolt nor key nor dog and cup. Yet you affect, Nestor, to be called and to seem poor, and seek to have a place among the people. You lie and flatter yourself with empty honour. It's no poverty, Nestor, to have nothing.

XXXIII Time and again the Green has reached the palm since Nero's death, and as victor carries off more prizes. Go now, gnawing envy, say you yielded to Nero: it was no doubt not Nero who won, but the Green.

XXXIV Aper bought a house, but one that not even an owl would want as its own: so black and old a hovel it is. Sleek Maro owns the gardens next to him. Aper will dine well, but won't live well.

XXXV Since you invite three hundred strangers to me, you wonder and complain and quarrel that I don't come, though invited, to your house. I dine alone, Fabullus, but not gladly.

XXXVI Gaius Julius marks this day for me with a white gem— hurrah, behold, he's been given back to my prayers: it's a joy to have despaired, as if the sisters' threads were already cut; those who feared nothing rejoice less. Hypnus, why do you dally, lazy one? Pour out immortal Falernian, such vows demand an old cask: let's drink five measures, and six, and eight, so that he may be Gaius and Julius and Proculus.

XXXVII Zoilus, what pleasure is it to gird your gem with a whole pound of gold and ruin the poor sardonyx? That ring was lately fit for your legs: the same weight does not suit fingers.

XXXVIII A mule-driver, Aulus, just sold for twenty thousand. You wonder at so steep a price? He was deaf.

XXXIX You'd been the rocker of my cradle, Charidemus, and the guardian and constant companion of my boyhood. Now my towels darken with my shaven beard, and the girl complains, pricked by my lips; but to you I've never grown up: you our bailiff dreads, you the steward, you the very household fears. You allow us neither to play nor to love; you want nothing for me and want everything allowed for you. You scold, watch, complain, draw sighs, and your anger scarcely keeps off the rods. If I've put on Tyrian clothes or oiled my hair, you exclaim, "Your father never did such things"; and you count my measures with knitted brow, as if that cask came from your own cellar. Stop it; I can't bear a freedman Cato. My girl will tell you I'm a man now.

XL Lupercus loves beautiful Glycera, and holds her alone and rules her alone. When, sadly complaining that he'd not fucked her in a whole month, he wanted to give Aelianus the reason he asked for, he answered that Glycera's teeth ached.

XLI While the shepherd Amyntas pampered his flock too much and delighted in the fame and luxury of his herd, he overweighed the branches yielding to their load and the bending wood, and fell himself, chasing the shaken wealth. The father forbade the grim grove to outlive the dire ruin and condemned the guilty timber to the pyres. Let your neighbour Iollas, Lygdus, have the fat swine: it's enough for us that you count me the flock.

XLII Though you ask for lively epigrams, you set out dead subjects. What can be done, Caecilianus? You bid Hyblaean honey, or Hymettian, be born for you, yet you set Corsican thyme before the Cecropian bee!

XLIII Caught with a boy, wife, you scold me with grim words and reply that you too have an arse. How often Juno said the same to the wanton Thunderer! Yet he lies with sturdy Ganymede. The Tirynthian bent over Hylas, laying down his bow: do you think Megara had no buttocks? Fleeing Daphne tormented Phoebus: yet the Oebalian boy bade those flames depart. Though Briseis lay much turned away, the smooth friend was nearer the son of Aeacus. So stop giving masculine names to your possessions, and think, wife, that you have two cunts.

XLIV You're childless and rich and born when Brutus was consul: do you believe your friendships are true? There are true ones, but those you had when young, when poor. The friend who's new—he loves your death.

XLV Whenever you've entered the threshold of a placarded cell, whether a boy or a girl has smiled on you, you're not content with door and curtain and bolt, and demand a greater secrecy for yourself: any chink, if there's the least suspicion of one, is smeared over, and the holes that are bored by a wanton needle. No one is of so tender and anxious modesty, Cantharus, who either buggers or fucks.

XLVI Now you get it up only in sleep, Mevius, and your prick begins to piss between your feet, and the worn-out member is rubbed by weary fingers but doesn't lift its dead head, however coaxed. Why do you vainly harass poor cunts and arses? Aim higher: there an old woman's member lives.

XLVII Why does Lattara avoid all the baths beloved by crowds of women? So as not to fuck. Why does he not stroll idly in Pompey's shade, nor seek the threshold of Inachus' daughter? So as not to fuck. Why does he drench his body, muddy with Spartan ointment, in the cold water of the Virgin? So as not to fuck. Since he thus shuns all contact with the female sex, why does Lattara lick a cunt? So as not to fuck.

XLVIII Silius haunts these monuments of great Maro, he who owns the acres of eloquent Cicero. As heir and master of his tomb and home neither Maro nor Cicero would prefer another.

XLIX There's no hour, Phyllis, in which you don't despoil me, mad with love: with such cunning you plunder me. Now the sly maid weeps for a mirror left behind, or a gem falls from your finger or a stone from your ear; now smuggled silks can be made profit of, now a dry onyx-jar of Cosmus is produced for me; now a worm-eaten jar of dark Falernian is sought, to expiate your dreams with a babbling crone; now, that I may buy a great pike or a two-pound mullet, a rich girlfriend has announced a dinner to you. Have some shame and at last some regard for truth and fairness: I deny you nothing, Phyllis; deny me nothing, Phyllis.

L There was but one poor man left to tend the now nearly deserted ashes and holy name of Maro. Silius resolved to come to the aid of the longed-for shade, and Silius, himself no lesser bard, honours the bard.

LI So great is the column that hangs on Titius, as the girls of Lampsacus worship. He, with none to attend and none to trouble him, bathes in great baths—his own. Yet Titius bathes in cramped quarters.

LII You'll dine well, Julius Cerialis, at my house; if you've no better engagement, come. You can keep the eighth hour; we'll bathe together: you know how close Stephanus' baths are to me. First you'll be given lettuce, useful for moving the belly, and shoots cut from their leeks, then a salted tunny, larger than a slender mackerel, but one that eggs and rue-leaves will cover; nor will more be lacking, turned over warm ash, and a cheese curdled at the Velabran hearth, and olives that have felt the Picene frost. This is enough for the relish. You want to know the rest? I'll lie, so you'll come: fish, shellfish, sow's udder, and the fat birds of the poultry-yard and the marsh, which even Stella's not used to serve except at a rare dinner. And I promise more: I'll recite nothing to you, though you may read me your Giants over and over, or your rural verse next to immortal Virgil's.

LIII Though Claudia Rufina was born of the blue-painted Britons, what hearts of the Latin race she has! What beauty of form! The Italian mothers might believe her Roman, the Athenian their own. The gods do well that fruitful she bore to a holy husband, that, still a girl, she hopes for sons-in-law and daughters-in-law. So may it please the gods above that she delight in one spouse and always delight in her three children.

LIV The ointments and the cassia and the myrrh that smells of funerals and the incense half-burned from the midst of a pyre and the cinnamon you snatched from the Stygian bier, shameless Zoilus, give back from your vile pocket. Your wanton hands learned from your feet to sin. I don't wonder you're a thief, who were a runaway.

LV That Lupus urges you, Urbicus, to become a father, don't believe it; there's nothing he'd want less. It's the art of legacy-hunting to seem to want what you don't; he prays you won't do what he asks you to do. Let your Cosconia only say she's pregnant: Lupus will turn paler than a woman in labour. But, so you may seem to have used a friend's advice, die in such a way that he thinks you've become a father.

LVI That you praise death too much, Chaeremon the Stoic, do you want me to admire and look up to your spirit? This virtue a jug with a broken handle makes for you, and the gloomy hearth that warms with no fire, and the mat and the bedbug and the frame of a bare cot, and a short toga, the same by night and by day. O how great a man you are, who can do without the dregs of red vinegar and straw and black bread! Come now, let your mattress swell with Leuconian wool and combed purple gird your couches, and let the boy sleep with you who, mixing the Caecuban just now, tormented your guests with his rosy mouth: O how you'll long to live three times Nestor's years and want to lose nothing of any day! In tight straits it's easy to despise life: he acts bravely who can be wretched.

LVII You wonder that I send poems to learned Severus, when I'm inviting you, learned Severus, to dinner? Jupiter is full of ambrosia and lives on nectar; yet we give Jove raw entrails and unmixed wine. Since everything is granted you by the gift of the gods, if you don't want what you have, then what will you accept?

LVIII When you see I want it and feel me hard, Telesphorus, you ask for great things—suppose I want to refuse: am I allowed?— and unless I've said "I'll give" on oath, you withdraw those buttocks, which grant me so much in return. What if my barber, when the drawn razor is over me, should then beg liberty and riches? I'd promise; for at that moment it's not a barber asking, it's a robber: fear is a commanding thing: but once the razor is safe in its curved case, I'll break the barber's legs and his hands together. But to you I'll do nothing, except that my cock, washed with wool, will tell your greedy avarice to go suck itself.

LIX Charinus wears six rings on each finger, and never takes off his rings at night, nor when he bathes. You ask what the reason is? He has no ring-case.

LX You ask whether Phlogis or Chione is more fit for Venus? Chione is the prettier; but Phlogis has an itch, an itch that could stiffen Priam's leather and not let old Pelias be old, an itch that everyone wants his own girl to have, which Crito can cure, not Hygia: but Chione feels no work, nor with any cries does she help, you'd think her absent or made of marble. If, gods, one might win so great a boon from you and you'd be willing to give gifts so precious, you'd make Phlogis have the body that Chione has, and Chione the itch that Phlogis has.

LXI A husband with his tongue, an adulterer with his mouth, Nanneius, filthier than the cheeks of the Summemmian whores; whom, when obscene Leda saw naked from her Suburan window, she shuts up her brothel and prefers to kiss his middle rather than his top; he who lately went through all the tubes of the guts and with a sure and knowing voice would tell whether boy or girl was in the mother's womb: —rejoice, cunts; for your business is done— he can't get his fucking tongue up. For while, sunk in a swelling womb, he clings and hears inside the wailing infants, an unseemly disease unstrings his gluttonous part. He can be neither pure now nor impure.

LXII Lesbia swears she's never been fucked for free. It's true. When she wants to be fucked, she pays.

LXIII You watch us, Philomusus, when we bathe, and keep asking why my smooth boys are so well-hung. I'll answer you plainly, since you ask: they bugger the curious, Philomusus.

LXIV I don't know what you write to so many girls, Faustus: this I know, that no girl writes to you.

LXV Six hundred dine at your invitation, Justinus, for the duty of the day that was your first. Among them, I recall, I used not to be the last; nor was this place an enviable one for me. But the next day you repeat the rites of the festive table: to six hundred today, tomorrow you'll be born for me.

LXVI You're an informer and a slanderer, and a swindler and a dealer, and a cocksucker and a gladiator-trainer. I wonder why you don't have money, Vacerra.

LXVII You give me nothing while you live; you say you'll give after death. If you're not a fool, you know, Maro, what I wish.

LXVIII You ask small things of great men; but the great don't give even these. So that you may be less ashamed, Matho, ask great things.

LXIX Reared among the trainers of the amphitheatre, a huntress, fierce in the woods, gentle at home, I was called Lydia, most faithful to my master Dexter, who'd not have preferred to own Erigone's dog, nor the one that, following Cephalus of the Dictaean line, came likewise to the stars of the dawn-bringing goddess. No long span took me, nor useless age, such as were the fates of the Dulichian dog: I was destroyed by the lightning tusk of a foaming boar, great as yours, Calydon, or yours, Erymanthus. Nor do I complain, though snatched so swiftly to the shades below: I could not have died by a nobler fate.

LXX Can you sell, Tucca, boys bought for a hundred thousand each? Can you sell, Tucca, weeping masters? Do neither their coaxings nor their words nor their untrained complaints, nor their necks wounded by your own teeth, move you? Oh, the crime! the groin lies bare, the tunic lifted on both sides, and the member made by your hand is inspected. If counted money delights you, sell your silver, tables, murra-cups, lands, house; sell old slaves, they'll forgive you, sell those your father left: just don't sell boys; sell everything, wretch. It's extravagance to buy them—for who doubts or denies it?— but to sell them is far greater extravagance.

LXXI Leda had told her old husband she was hysterical and complains it's necessary for her to be fucked; but, weeping and groaning, she says health isn't worth so much and declares she'd rather have resolved to die. Her husband begs her to live and not desert her green years, and allows what he himself no longer does to be done. At once the male doctors come up and the female ones withdraw, and her feet are lifted. O weighty medicine!

LXXII Natta calls his stud's tool a little willy, compared to which Priapus is a Gallus.

LXXIII You always swear you'll come when I ask, Lygdus, and you fix the hour and you fix the place. When I've lain in vain, tense with long lust, my left hand often comes to my aid in your place. What shall I wish you, deceiver, for such deserts and ways? That you carry the parasol, Lygdus, of a one-eyed mistress.

LXXIV Baccara the Raetian entrusted his penis to be cured to a rival doctor. Baccara will become a Gallus.

LXXV A slave covered with a bronze sheath bathes with you, Caelia; why, I ask, is it, since he's no lyre-player or flute-player? You don't want, I suppose, to see his member. Why, then, do you bathe with the public? Are we all eunuchs to you? So, lest you seem to be jealous, release, Caelia, the clasp from your slave.

LXXVI You force me, Paetus, to pay you ten thousand sesterces, because Bucco lost you two hundred thousand. Don't let crimes that aren't mine harm me, I beg: you who can lose two hundred thousand, lose ten.

LXXVII That Vacerra spends hours in all the privies and sits the whole day long, Vacerra wants to dine, not to shit.

LXXVIII Use feminine embraces, use them, Victor, and let your cock learn its unknown task. The bridal veil is being woven, now the maiden is being readied, now the new bride will crop your boys' hair. She'll let you bugger her once, the eager husband, while she fears the first wounds of the new weapon: nurse and mother will forbid this happen more often and will say, "She's your wife, not your boy." Alas, what fevers, what labours you'll suffer, if the cunt is a foreign thing to you! So hand the recruit over to a Suburan instructress. She'll make a man of you; a virgin teaches badly.

LXXIX That we came to the first milestone at the tenth hour, we're charged with the crime of slow laziness. That's no fault of the road, no fault of mine, but yours, Paetus, who sent me your mules.

LXXX The golden shore of blessed Venus, Baiae, Baiae, the coaxing gifts of proud Nature, though I praised Baiae in a thousand verses, Flaccus, still I'd not praise Baiae worthily enough. But I prefer Martial, Flaccus, to Baiae. To wish for both alike is a greedy man's prayer. But if this were granted you by the gift of the gods, what joys there'd be—Martial and Baiae!

LXXXI The eunuch Dindymus and an old man trouble Aegle they share, and the girl lies dry in the middle of the couch. The one isn't up to the work in strength, the other in years: so for both the labour itches without effect. She, a suppliant, prays for herself and the two wretches, that you make this one a youth, Cytherea, that one a man.

LXXXII The guest Philostratus, returning from the waters of Sinuessa to his hired lodging at the bidding of night, nearly died, like Elpenor, by cruel fate, as he tumbled headlong down the long stairs. He'd not have suffered such great perils, Nymphs, if he'd drunk your waters instead.

LXXXIII No one lives free of charge at your house unless rich and childless. No one, Sosibianus, lets a house for more.

LXXXIV Whoever does not yet seek to descend to the Stygian shades, let him flee, if he's wise, the barber Antiochus. White arms are torn by less savage knives when the god-frenzied crowd raves to Phrygian measures; gentler Alcon cuts through tangled ruptures and dresses broken bones with a workman's hand. Let this man shear the destitute Cynics and Stoic chins and strip the horse's neck of its dusty mane. Let him scrape wretched Prometheus beneath the Scythian crag, he'll call for the executioner bird with its hard breast; Pentheus will flee to his mother, Orpheus to the Maenads, only let the barbarous weapons of Antiochus sound. These scars, however many you count on my chin, such as sit on an old boxer's brow, no heavy wife made with angry nails: it's the steel of Antiochus and his criminal hand. Of all animals the goat alone has sense: he lives bearded, so as not to endure Antiochus.

LXXXV Your tongue was suddenly struck by lightning, Zoilus, while you were licking. Surely, Zoilus, now you'll fuck.

LXXXVI That a doctor may soothe your throat, which a harsh cough constantly vexes, Parthenopaeus, he orders you given honey and nuts and sweet cakes and whatever doesn't let boys be fierce. But you don't stop coughing all day long. This is no cough, Parthenopaeus, it's greed.

LXXXVII You were rich once: but then you were a buggerer, and for a long time no woman was known to you. Now you chase old women. O what poverty drives one to! That woman, Charidemus, makes a fucker of you.

LXXXVIII For many days now, Lupus, Charisianus says he can't bugger. When his comrades just now asked the reason, he said he had a loose belly.

LXXXIX Why do you send me untouched garlands, Polla? I'd rather hold roses rumpled by you.

XC You approve no poems that run on a smooth path, but those that fall through ruts and over deep rocks, and you reckon a thing greater than Maeonian verse: "Here lies Metrophanes, little pillar of Lucilius;" and astounded you read "of the fruit-bearing earth," and whatever Accius and Pacuvius vomit up. You want me to imitate the old poets and your own, Chrestillus? May I die, if you don't know what a cock tastes like.

XCI Canace, daughter of Aeolis, lies entombed in this sepulchre, to whom, small as she was, a seventh and last winter came. Ah, the crime, ah, the outrage! you who hasten to weep, traveller, here it's not allowed to complain of life's brevity: sadder than her death is the manner of death: a hideous plague took her face and settled on her tender mouth, and the cruel disease itself devoured her kisses, nor were her whole lips given to the black pyres. If the fates were coming with so headlong a flight, they ought to have come by another road. But death hastened to close the path of her sweet voice, lest her tongue could bend the hard goddesses.

XCII He lies who calls you vicious, Zoilus. You're not a vicious man, Zoilus, but vice itself.

XCIII Flame took the Pierian household gods of the bard Theodorus. Does this please the Muses and you, Phoebus? O crime, O great outrage and reproach of the gods, that the house and its master did not burn together!

XCIV That you're too envious and everywhere disparage my little books, I forgive: circumcised poet, you're wise. This too I don't mind, that while you carp at my poems, you plunder them: even so, circumcised poet, you're wise. This is what tortures me, that, born in Jerusalem itself, you bugger my boy, circumcised poet. Look, you deny it and swear to me by the temples of the Thunderer. I don't believe it: swear, circumcised one, by Anchialus.

XCV Whenever you fall in with the kisses of cocksuckers, think you're plunging your head, Flaccus, into a bath-tub.

XCVI Marcia, not the Rhine, leaps here, German: why do you stand in the way and forbid the boy the bounty of the rich pool? Barbarian, the conquering water ought not, with a citizen pushed aside, relieve a captive servant's thirst.

XCVII In one night I can do it four times: but if I can do you once, Telesilla, in four years, may I die.

XCVIII There's no escaping the kissers, Flaccus. They press in, delay you, pursue, run to meet you, from this side and that, everywhere, on every road. No sharp ulcer or gleaming pustules, no grim chin or filthy scabs, no lips smeared with greasy salve, no drop from a frozen nose will help you. They kiss you sweating and they kiss you freezing, and they kiss you saving up your bridal kiss. It won't save you to have your head covered with cowls, nor your litter shut safe with leather and curtain, nor will a chair, however often closed, protect you: the kisser will get in through every crack. Not the consulship itself, not the tribunate nor the six rods, nor the proud staff of a bawling lictor will drive off the kisser: though you sit on a high tribunal and from the curule chair dispense justice to the nations, the kisser will climb up here and there. He'll kiss you fevered and weeping, he'll give a kiss to you yawning and swimming, he'll give one to you shitting. The sole remedy for the evil is to make a friend of someone you'd not want to kiss you.

XCIX Whenever you rise from your chair—I've often noticed it— your wretched tunics bugger you, Lesbia. When you've tried with your right hand, tried with your left, to pluck them out, you extract them with tears and groaning: so they're gripped by the twin Symplegades of your arse and enter your over-large, dark-blue buttocks. You want to mend the unsightly fault? I'll teach you: Lesbia, I advise you neither to rise nor to sit.

C I don't want a girlfriend, Flaccus, so thin that my rings would circle her arms, who'd scrape me with a bare hip and prick me with her knee, whose loins jut out like a saw, whose arse like a spear-point. But I also don't want a girlfriend of a thousand pounds. I'm a lover of flesh, not a lover of fat.

CI Could you, Flaccus, even see Thais, she's so thin? You, I think, can see, Flaccus, what isn't there.

CII He didn't lie who told me you have a beautiful body, Lydia, not a beautiful face. It's so, if you keep silent and recline as mute as a face is silent in wax or on a painted board. But whenever you speak, Lydia, you ruin your body too, and no one's tongue harms anyone more than yours does you. Take care the aedile neither hears nor sees you: it's a portent, whenever a statue begins to speak.

CIII So great, Safronius, is the goodness of your spirit and face, that I wonder you could have become a father.

CIV Wife, out the door, or fall in with my ways: I'm no Curius nor Numa nor Tatius. Pleasant nights drawn out over cups delight me: you, having drunk water, hurry sourly to rise. You take joy in darkness: but I take joy in playing with the lamp as witness and in bursting my flank with the light let in. A band and tunics and dark cloaks hide you: but no girl lies naked enough for me. Kisses that mimic the coaxing doves win me: you give me such as you give your grandmother in the morning. You deign to help the work with neither motion nor voice nor fingers, as though you were preparing incense and wine: the Phrygian slaves used to masturbate behind the door whenever Hector's wife sat on the steed, and though the Ithacan snored, chaste Penelope was always used to keep her hand busy there. You refuse to be buggered: Cornelia gave this to Gracchus, Julia to Pompey, Porcia, Brutus, to you; before the Dardanian servant mixed his sweet cups, Juno was Ganymede to Jove. If gravity delights you, you may be a Lucretia all day long: at night I want a Lais.

CV You used to send a pound, Garricus; you send a quarter now. At least pay me half, Garricus.

CVI Vibius Maximus, if you've leisure to be greeted, read only this: for you're both busy and not too fond of labour. You skip these four lines too? You've shown sense.

CVII You hand me back a book unrolled clear to its very horns and as if read through, Septicianus. You've read it all. I believe it, I know it, I'm glad, it's true. I read through your five books the same way.

CVIII Though you might be sated with so long a little book, reader, you still ask a few more couplets from me. But Lupus demands his interest and the boys their rations. Reader, pay up. You're silent and pretend not to hear? Farewell.