Named in my earliest Muse, to be named in my last, Maecenas — you would have me back in the old school, when I am tested enough, and already given my discharge. My age is not the same, nor my mind. Veianius, his weapons nailed to Hercules’ doorpost, lies hidden in the country, not to beg the crowd, time and again, from the edge of the sand. There is one who keeps sounding in my well-cleansed ear: “Be wise in time, turn the aging horse out to grass, lest at the last he stumble, a laughing-stock, and break his wind.” So now I lay aside my verses and my other playthings; what is true and fitting is my care, my whole question, my whole self; I store and order what I may soon draw out again. And lest you ask under what leader, what household gods I shelter: sworn into the words of no master, wherever the weather sweeps me, there I am carried, a guest. Now I turn man of action and plunge into the civic waves, a guardian of true virtue and its unbending sentry; now I slip back, in secret, into the rules of Aristippus, and try to bend things to myself, not myself to things. As night is long for those whose mistress has failed them, and the day long for those who owe a day’s work, as the year drags slow for wards whom a mother’s hard guardianship holds down, so the hours run slow and thankless for me that put off the hope and the plan of setting briskly to that task which helps the poor man and the rich man alike, and, neglected, will harm boys and old men alike. It remains that I govern and console myself with these first principles. You cannot strain your eye as far as Lynceus could; yet you would not, for that, scorn to anoint it when it is sore; nor, because you despair of the limbs of unbeaten Glycon, would you refuse to keep your body free of knotted gout. There is some point one may reach, if no further is granted. Is your breast on fire with greed and wretched longing? There are words and chants by which you can ease that pain and lay aside a great part of the disease. Are you swollen with love of praise? There are sure rites that can restore you, the little book read three times through, with a clean heart. The envious, the hot-tempered, the slack, the drunkard, the lover — no one is so wild that he cannot be gentled, if only he lend a patient ear to the cure. To flee vice is virtue, and the first wisdom is to be rid of folly. You see what you believe the greatest of evils — a slender means, a shameful defeat at the polls — and with what toil of mind and body you shun them; a tireless trader, you run to the farthest Indians, fleeing poverty over sea, over rocks, through fire: will you not learn and hear and trust your better, and so care nothing for the things you foolishly admire and crave? What village boxer, fighting round the crossroads, would scorn to be crowned at the great Olympia, if he had the hope, the chance, of the sweet palm without the dust? Silver is cheaper than gold, gold than virtue. “O citizens, citizens, money is the first thing to seek; virtue after cash!” — so Janus preaches from top to bottom, this the lesson young men and old recite, their satchel and slate slung on the left arm. You have spirit, you have character, you have a tongue and honor, but you fall six or seven thousand short of the four hundred thousand: you will be one of the crowd. Yet boys at play say, “You’ll be king if you do right.” Let this be your wall of bronze: to have nothing on your conscience, to turn pale at no guilt. Tell me, please — is the Roscian law the better, or the children’s jingle that offers a kingdom to those who do right, the song the manly Curii and the Camilli chanted? Does he counsel you better who says, “Make money, money, honestly if you can, if not, money by any means” — the better to watch the tearful plays of Pupius up close — or he who, standing at your side, urges and fits you to face down proud Fortune, free and erect? But if the Roman people should chance to ask me why I do not share the same opinions as I share the same colonnades, nor pursue or shun what they themselves love or hate, I would answer as the wary fox once answered the sick lion: “Because the tracks frighten me, all of them turned toward you, none turning back.” You are a beast of many heads. For what am I to follow, or whom? Some men itch to farm the public contracts; some hunt greedy widows with sweets and fruit, and net old men to stock their preserves; for many the estate swells by hidden interest. Granted that different men are gripped by different concerns and pursuits: can the same men hold to the same likings for one hour? “No bay in the world outshines lovely Baiae,” if the rich man has said it, the lake and the sea feel the love of their hurrying lord; but if a diseased whim hands him the omen — “Tomorrow, workmen, you’ll carry your tools to Teanum!” The marriage-bed stands in his hall: he says nothing is better, nothing finer than the single life; if it does not, he swears the married alone are well off. With what knot shall I hold down this face of changing Proteus? And the poor man? Laugh: he changes his garrets, his beds, his baths, his barbers; in a hired boat he is just as seasick as the rich man whom his own private galley carries. If I meet you with my hair trimmed by an uneven barber, you laugh; if by chance a worn shirt shows beneath a well-combed tunic, or my toga sits awry, you laugh: but what when my judgment fights with itself, scorns what it sought, calls back what it just let go, heaves, and is out of step with the whole order of life, pulls down, builds up, swaps the square for the round? You think I am mad in the ordinary way, and do not laugh, nor believe I need a doctor or a guardian assigned by the praetor — you, the warden of my affairs, who chafe at a badly pared nail of a friend who hangs on you and looks to you. In sum: the wise man is below Jove alone — rich, free, honored, handsome, in short a king of kings, above all sound in health — except when the phlegm is troublesome.

The writer of the Trojan war — Lollius Maximus, while you declaim at Rome, I have read again at Praeneste; who says, more plainly and better than Chrysippus or Crantor, what is fair, what foul, what useful, what not. Why I have thought so, unless something detains you, hear. The tale in which, for the sake of Paris’ love, Greece is dashed against the foreigner in a slow-grinding war, holds within it the passions of foolish kings and peoples. Antenor moves to cut away the cause of the war: what of Paris? He says he cannot be forced to reign in safety and live happy. Nestor hurries to settle the quarrels between the son of Peleus and the son of Atreus; love burns the one, anger burns them both in common. Whatever madness the kings commit, the Achaeans are flogged for it. By faction, by treachery, crime, lust and anger men sin within the walls of Troy and without. Again, what virtue and what wisdom can do he set before us in a useful pattern — Ulysses, who, the tamer of Troy, with foresight looked upon the cities and the manners of many men, and over the wide sea, while he won a return for himself and his comrades, endured much that was harsh, never to be sunk in fortune’s adverse waves. You know the Sirens’ voices and Circe’s cups; had he, foolish and greedy, drunk of them with his comrades, he would have become the shapeless, witless thrall of a harlot mistress, would have lived a filthy dog, or a sow in love with the mire. We are mere ciphers, born to eat up the fruits of the earth, Penelope’s worthless suitors, the young men of Alcinous’ court, busier than was right with the grooming of their skins, whose glory it was to sleep till midday, and to lull care to rest at the sound of the lyre. Robbers rise in the night to cut a man’s throat; to save your own life, will you not wake? And yet, if you will not run while healthy, you will run when dropsied; and unless you call for your book and lamp before daylight, unless you bend your mind to study and honest pursuits, you will be racked awake by envy or by love. For why do you hasten to remove what hurts the eye, yet, if something gnaws at the mind, put off the time of its cure for a year? He who has begun has the half done; dare to be wise; begin! He who puts off the hour of living rightly is the rustic waiting for the river to run dry; but it glides on, and will glide on, rolling for all time. Money is sought, and a wife blessed with children to bear, and untilled woods are tamed with the plowshare: let the man whose lot is enough want nothing more. Not house and land, not a heap of bronze and gold has drawn the fevers from their sick owner’s body, nor cares from his mind; the owner must be sound if he means to make good use of his gathered goods. To the man who craves or fears, his house and wealth give as much joy as paintings to a sore eye, poultices to gout, the lyre to ears aching with the wax they have gathered. Unless the vessel is clean, whatever you pour in turns sour. Spurn pleasures; the pleasure bought with pain does harm. The greedy man is always in want; set a fixed limit to your longing. The envious man grows lean at another’s rich estate; Sicilian tyrants devised no torture greater than envy. He who will not master his anger will wish undone what resentment and temper urged, while he hurries to wreak vengeance, by violence, on his unslaked hate. Anger is a brief madness: rule your spirit, which, unless it obeys, gives orders; rein it in, restrain it with the chain. The trainer breaks the colt, with its tender neck, to go the road the rider points; the hunting pup, from the time it bayed at the deerskin in the yard, campaigns in the woods. Now, while you are a boy, take in these words with a clean heart, now offer yourself to your betters. The jar will keep for long the scent it was steeped in when new. But if you lag, or stride on ahead, I neither wait for the slow nor press on the heels of those in front.

Julius Florus, on what shores of the world Claudius, Augustus’ stepson, is soldiering — I labor to know. Does Thrace hold you, and the Hebrus bound in its snowy fetter, or the straits that run between the neighboring towers, or the rich plains and hills of Asia? What works does the studious staff build up? This too is my care. Who takes upon himself to write the deeds of Augustus? Who spreads his wars and his peaces into the long ages? What of Titius, soon to be on every Roman lip, who did not blanch to drink of the Pindaric spring, who dared to disdain the open lakes and streams — how does he fare? Does he remember me? Does he labor to fit Theban measures to the Latin lyre, with the Muse for patron, or rage and rant in the tragic art? What is my Celsus doing? Warned — and much to be warned — to seek his own resources, and to keep from touching the writings that Palatine Apollo has taken in, lest, if one day the flock of birds should come to reclaim their feathers, the little crow, stripped of its stolen colors, should raise a laugh. And you yourself, what do you dare? What beds of thyme do you flit nimbly round? Your talent is not small, not uncultivated, nor shamefully shaggy. Whether you whet your tongue for pleading, or prepare to give counsel on the civil law, or compose a winning song, you will carry off the first prizes of the conqueror’s ivy. But if you could leave behind the cold poultices of your cares, you would go where heavenly wisdom should lead you. This work, this study let us press on, small and great alike, if we wish to live dear to our country and to ourselves. You must write back this too: whether Munatius is as much your care as he ought to be; or whether the ill-stitched goodwill knits up in vain and tears apart again? But you — whether hot blood or ignorance of the world goads you, wild, with untamed neck — wherever in the world you live, too worthy to break the bond of brothers, a votive heifer is being fattened against your return.

Albius, candid judge of my conversations, what shall I say you are doing now in the country round Pedum? Writing what will outdo the little works of Cassius of Parma, or strolling in silence among the healthful woods, caring for whatever is worthy of a wise and good man? You were never a body without a mind: the gods gave you beauty, the gods gave you wealth, and the art of enjoying it. What more could a fond nurse pray for her sweet charge than that he be able to think, and to say what he feels, and that favor, fame, and health fall to him in plenty, and a neat living, with a purse that does not fail? Amid hope and care, amid fears and angers, believe that each day that has dawned for you is your last; the hour you do not count on will come as a welcome surprise. As for me, you will find me fat and sleek, my skin well tended, when you want a laugh — a pig from Epicurus’ herd.

If you can recline as a guest on Archias’ plain couches, and do not fear to dine on every kind of greens from a modest dish, I shall wait for you at home, Torquatus, at sundown. You will drink wine bottled in Taurus’ second consulship, between marshy Minturnae and Sinuessa’s Petrine field. If you have something better, send for it, or bring your orders. Long since the hearth has shone, and the furniture is clean for you. Let go your airy hopes and the contests of wealth, and Moschus’ case: tomorrow, the festal day of Caesar’s birth, gives leave to sleep; we may, unpunished, draw out the summer night in kindly talk. What good is fortune to me, if I am not allowed to use it? The man who, sparing for his heir’s sake, is too severe, sits next to the madman. I shall begin to drink and scatter the flowers, and let myself be thought rash, even, if it comes to that. What does drunkenness not unseal? It discloses what was hidden, bids our hopes be ratified, thrusts the coward into battle, lifts the load from anxious minds, teaches us arts. Whom have the brimming cups not made eloquent? Whom not set free in the pinch of poverty? This much I am charged to see to — and am fit for, and not unwilling — that no foul coverlet, no dirty napkin wrinkle your nose, that both the tankard and the platter show you to yourself, that among trusted friends there be no one to carry our words out of doors, that like may meet and be matched with like. I shall take on, for your sake, Butra and Septicius, and Sabinus, unless a better dinner or a preferable girl detains him. There is room for several shadow-guests as well; but the goat’s rank smell of overcrowding spoils too close a party. Write back how many you would like to be, and, leaving your affairs, give the slip by the back door to the client keeping watch on your hall.

To marvel at nothing is just about the one thing, Numicius, that can make a man happy and keep him so. This sun, the stars, the seasons that withdraw at fixed moments — there are men who can gaze on them steeped in no dread: what then do you make of the gifts of the earth, of the sea that enriches the far-off Arabs and Indians, what of the shows, the applause and gifts of the favoring citizen — in what manner, with what feeling and face do you think they should be looked on? He who fears their opposites marvels in much the same way as the man who craves them: in either case the flutter galls, and the sight, unforeseen, startles them both alike. Let a man rejoice or grieve, crave or fear — what does it matter, if, at whatever he has seen, better or worse than his hope, he stands fixed in eye and mind and body, numb? Let the wise man bear the name of madman, the just of unjust, if he chase even Virtue herself beyond what is enough. Go now, gape at silver and old marble, at bronzes and the arts, admire the Tyrian dyes along with the gems; rejoice that a thousand eyes watch you as you speak; go busy to the forum in the morning, home at evening, lest Mutus reap more grain from his dowered fields and — an indignity, since he is sprung from worse stock — he be a wonder to you rather than you to him. Whatever is under the earth, time will bring out into the light; it will bury and hide away what shines. When the colonnade of Agrippa, when the Appian Way has looked its fill on you, well known as you are, it still remains to go where Numa came down, and Ancus. If your side or your kidneys are seized with a sharp disease, seek escape from the disease. You want to live rightly: who does not? If virtue alone can grant this, then bravely, your delights laid aside, get to it. You think virtue mere words, and a sacred grove just timber? Then take care no rival seize the harbor before you, that you not lose the trade of Cibyra, the business of Bithynia; let a thousand talents be rounded off, as many more, then a third to follow, and the share that will square the heap. Why, queen Money grants a dowered wife, and credit, and friends, and birth, and beauty; and Persuasion and Venus grace the man well lined with cash. The king of Cappadocia, rich in slaves, is short of coin: do not you be like him. Lucullus, they say, when asked if he could lend a hundred cloaks for the stage — “How can I lend so many?” he said; “still, I’ll look, and send what I have.” A little later he writes that he has five thousand cloaks at home; let them take a part, or take the lot. It is a thin house where there is not much to spare, unknown to the master, and a windfall for thieves. So then, if wealth alone can make a man happy and keep him so, be the first to take up this task, the last to lay it down. If rank and influence make a man fortunate, let us buy a slave to prompt us the names, to nudge our left side and force us to stretch the right hand across the barriers: “This man has much weight in the Fabian tribe, that one in the Veline; this one will give the rods to whom he pleases, and snatch the curule ivory, churlish, from whomever he wills.” Add “brother,” add “father”: as each man’s age is, so adopt him, graciously, as kin. If he who dines well lives well — then it’s light, let us go where the gullet leads; let us fish, let us hunt, as once Gargilius did, who in the morning had his nets, his hunting-spears, his slaves ordered to cross the crowded forum and the people, that, of the many, one mule might carry home, before the watching crowd, a boar — that he had bought. Let us bathe, gorged and bloated, forgetting what is seemly and what not, fit for the Caerite roll — the rotten crew of the Ithacan Ulysses, to whom forbidden pleasure was dearer than their fatherland. If, as Mimnermus holds, without love and jests nothing is sweet, then live amid love and jests. Live, and farewell! If you know something better than these, share it frankly; if not, use these along with me.

Having promised you I would be in the country five days, all August long, a liar, I am missed. And yet, if you wish me to live sound and in good health, the indulgence you grant me when I am sick, Maecenas, you will grant when I fear to be — while the first figs and the heat adorn the undertaker with his black-clad lictors, while every father and fond little mother turns pale for their children, and dutiful attendance and the petty business of the forum bring on fevers and unseal the wills. But if winter spreads snows over the Alban fields, your poet will go down to the sea and spare himself, and read, hunched up; you, sweet friend, he will visit again with the Zephyrs, if you allow, and the first swallow. You have made me rich, but not in the way the Calabrian host presses his pears on a man: “Eat, do.” “I’ve had enough.” “But take as many as you like.” “No, thank you.” “You’ll bring no unwelcome little gifts to your small children.” “I’m as obliged by the offer as if you sent me off loaded.” “As you please; you’ll leave them to be eaten by the pigs today.” The fool and spendthrift give away what they scorn and hate; this seed-ground has borne, and will bear every year, only ingrates. The good and wise man says he stands ready for the deserving, and yet, for all that, knows the difference between true coin and counters. I too will prove myself worthy, to match the merit of the giver. But if you will not have me go away anywhere, you must give back my sound chest, the black hair on my narrow brow, give me back sweet talk, give me back the seemly laugh, and the lamenting, over the wine, of bold Cinara’s flight. A lean little vixen had crept through a narrow chink into a bin of grain, and, well fed, was trying in vain to get out again with her body full; to whom the weasel, from a distance: “If you want to escape from there, you must go back lean to the narrow hole you entered lean.” If I am taxed with this likeness, I give it all back; I neither praise the sleep of the common folk, gorged on poultry, nor would I exchange my ease for the teeming wealth of the Arabs. Often you have praised my modesty; “king” and “father” you heard from me to your face, no more sparing a word behind your back: see whether I can give your gifts back and be glad of it. Not badly did Telemachus say, child of long-suffering Ulysses: “Ithaca is no place fit for horses, neither stretched out in level runs nor lavish of much grass: son of Atreus, I’ll leave your gifts behind — more fit for you.” Small things suit the small: no longer does royal Rome please me, but empty Tibur, or unwarlike Tarentum. Philippus — energetic and bold, and famed for pleading cases — while coming back from his business about the eighth hour, and grumbling, now well on in years, that the Carinae stood too far from the Forum, caught sight, they say, of a close-shaven man in a barber’s empty booth, gently cleaning his own nails with a little knife. “Demetrius” — the boy took in Philippus’ orders none too clumsily — “go, ask, and bring back word: where is he from, who is he, of what means, with what father or what patron?” He goes, returns, reports: by name Volteius Mena, an auctioneer, of slender means, without reproach, known to bustle and to rest in season, to get and to spend, delighting in his humble cronies and a settled home, and in the games, and, when business is done, in the Campus. “I’d like to ask the man himself whatever you report: tell him to come to dinner.” Mena can hardly believe it; he marvels to himself in silence. In short: “No, thank you,” he answers. “He refuses me?” “The rascal refuses, and either slights you or stands in awe of you.” Philippus, in the morning, catches Volteius selling cheap trash to the tunic-clad rabble, and is the first to bid him good day. The man pleads to Philippus his work and his hired man’s bonds, that he had not come to his house in the morning, and, in short, that he had not spied him first. “Reckon yourself forgiven by me, on condition you dine with me today.” “As you please.” “Then come after the ninth hour: now go, briskly build up your stock.” When he had come to dinner, having said things to be said and not said, at last he is sent off to bed. When, again and again, he was seen to run to the hidden hook like a fish, a client in the morning and now a sure dinner-guest, he is bidden to go as companion to the suburban estate, the Latin festival proclaimed. Set up on the ponies, he does not cease to praise the Sabine soil and sky. Philippus sees and laughs; and while he seeks rest, and laughter on every side, while he makes him a gift of seven thousand sesterces, and promises seven on loan, he persuades him to buy a little farm. He buys it. Not to hold you longer with winding detours than is enough: from a trim townsman he turns rustic, and prates of nothing but furrows and vineyards, makes his elms ready, kills himself with his pursuits, and grows old in the love of getting. But when his sheep were lost to theft, his she-goats to disease, the crop belied its promise, the ox was worn out plowing, galled by his losses, in the dead of night he seizes his nag and, in a rage, makes for Philippus’ house. As soon as Philippus saw him, rough and unshorn, “Volteius,” he said, “you seem to me too hard on yourself, and too intent.” “By Pollux, patron, you would call me wretched,” he said, “if you wished to give me my true name. So, by your Genius, your right hand, and the household gods, I beg and implore you, give me back my former life!” He who has once seen by how much the things given up surpass the things pursued, let him return in time and seek again what he left. It is right that each man measure himself by his own rule and foot.

To Celsus Albinovanus, Muse, at my asking, carry greetings and the wish that he prosper, the comrade and secretary of Nero. If he asks what I am doing, say that, for all my threats of much that is fine, I live neither rightly nor pleasantly; not because hail has battered my vines and heat has nipped my olives, nor because my herd sickens in far-off pastures; but because, less sound in mind than in all my body, I will hear nothing, learn nothing, that might lighten the sick man; I take offense at my trusty doctors, grow angry at my friends for hurrying to drag me back from this deadly torpor; I follow what has harmed me, shun what I believe would do me good; fickle, at Rome I love Tibur, at Tibur Rome. After this, ask how he is, how he manages his affairs and himself, how he stands with the young prince and with the staff. If he says “well,” first rejoice, then straightway remember to drip this counsel into his little ears: as you, Celsus, bear your fortune, so we shall bear you.

Septimius alone, Claudius, surely understands how much you value me; for when he asks, and presses me with prayers to try, of course, to praise and commend him to you, as worthy of the mind and house of Nero, who chooses the honorable, when he judges that I fill the office of a closer friend, he sees and knows what I can do better than I do myself. Much, indeed, I said, that I might get off excused; but I feared I might be thought to have feigned my powers too small, a dissembler of my own resources, looking out for myself alone. So I, fleeing the reproach of a greater fault, have come down to the rewards of city-bred effrontery. But if you praise the modesty laid aside at a friend’s bidding, enroll this man in your circle, and believe him brave and good.

To Fuscus, the lover of the city, we, lovers of the country, send greetings — in this one thing, to be sure, much unlike, but in all else almost twins with brotherly hearts (what the one denies, the other denies too), we nod alike, two old and well-acquainted doves. You keep the nest; I praise the brooks of the lovely countryside, its moss-grown rocks, its grove. What more? I live and reign, the moment I have left behind those things you cry up to the sky with applauding rumor; and, like a priest’s runaway slave, I refuse the sweet cakes; I want plain bread now, better than honeyed pastries. If we must live agreeably to Nature, and a plot must first be found to set a house on, do you know a place to outdo the blessed country? Is there anywhere winters are milder, where a kinder breeze soothes both the Dog-star’s rage and the onsets of the Lion, once, in fury, it has caught the keen Sun? Is there anywhere envious Care tears sleep less apart? Does the grass smell or shine worse than Libyan mosaics? Is the water in the city streets, straining to burst its lead pipes, purer than that which trembles, murmuring, down the sloping brook? Why, a wood is reared among the varied columns, and the house is praised that looks out over long fields. Drive Nature out with a pitchfork, and still she will keep running back, and, victorious, will break in secret through your sickly disdain. The man who does not know, for all his skill, to match the wool that drinks the dye of Aquinum against Sidonian purple will take no surer harm, none nearer the marrow, than the man who cannot tell the false from the true. Whom prosperity has delighted more than enough, its turning will shake. If you admire anything, you will lay it down unwillingly. Flee great things: under a poor roof one may outrun, in living, kings and the friends of kings. A stag, the better in a fight, used to drive the horse from their shared pasture, until the loser, in the long contest, begged the help of man and took the bridle; but after he had parted, fierce victor, from his foe, he could not shake the rider from his back, nor the bit from his mouth. So the man who, fearing poverty, goes without liberty — worth more than metals — will carry a master, wretch, and serve forever, because he will not know how to use a little. The man whose means do not suit him, like a shoe of old, will trip if it is too big for the foot, and chafe if too small. Glad of your lot, you will live wisely, Aristius, and you will not let me off uncorrected, when I seem to gather more than is enough and not to rest. Money piled up is master or slave to each man, and fitter to follow the twisted rope than to lead it. This I was dictating to you behind the crumbling shrine of Vacuna, happy in all but that you were not with me.

What did you make of Chios, Bullatius, and famous Lesbos, what of trim Samos, what of Croesus’ royal Sardis, what of Smyrna and Colophon? Greater or less than their fame, do they all look shabby beside the Campus and the river Tiber? Or does one of Attalus’ cities come into your prayers, or do you praise Lebedus, out of loathing for sea and roads? You know what Lebedus is: a village more deserted than Gabii and Fidenae; yet there I would be willing to live, and, forgetting my own and forgotten by them, to watch from the land, far off, Neptune raging. But the man who makes for Rome from Capua, spattered with rain and mud, will not want to live in an inn; nor does the man who has caught a chill cry up stoves and baths as furnishing, in full, a happy life; nor, if a strong South wind has tossed you on the deep, would you on that account sell your ship across the Aegean sea. For a man unharmed, Rhodes and lovely Mytilene are what a heavy cloak is at the solstice, a loincloth in snowy winds, the Tiber in midwinter, a furnace in the month of August. While it is allowed, and Fortune keeps her face kind, let Samos and Chios and far-off Rhodes be praised — at Rome; do you take with grateful hand whatever hour god has prospered for you, and do not put sweet things off a year; so that, in whatever place you have been, you may say you have lived gladly. For if it is reason and good sense that take cares away, and not a site commanding a wide stretch of sea, they change their sky, not their soul, who race across the sea. A busy idleness drives us hard: by ships and four-horse teams we go seeking to live well. What you seek is here, is at Ulubrae, if a balanced mind does not fail you.

With Agrippa’s Sicilian fruits that you gather, Iccius, if you make right use of them, no greater abundance can be granted you by Jove. Away with complaints: for that man is not poor who has the use of what he needs; if your stomach is well, your side and feet, no kingly riches will be able to add anything greater. If by chance, amid plenty set before you, you live abstemious on herbs and nettles, so you will go on living, even should a clear stream of Fortune suddenly gild you over — either because money cannot change a man’s nature, or because you think all things less than virtue alone. We marvel that the cattle eat up Democritus’ little fields and crops, while his swift mind is abroad without its body; when you, amid such an itch and such a plague of gain, relish nothing small, and still care for things sublime: what causes hold the sea in check, what tempers the year, whether the stars wander and stray of their own will or by command, what darkens the moon’s orb, what brings it forth, what the discordant concord of things means and can do, whether Empedocles raves, or the acumen of Stertinius. But whether you butcher fish, or leeks and onions, make use of Pompeius Grosphus, and, if he asks anything, offer it unbidden; Grosphus will beg nothing but what is true and fair. Cheap is the market-rate of friends, when good men want for something. Yet, that you not be ignorant in what state Rome’s affairs stand: the Cantabrian has fallen by Agrippa’s valor, the Armenian by Claudius Nero’s; Phraates, on his knees, has accepted the law and rule of Caesar; golden Plenty has poured out the fruits of Italy from a brimming horn.

As I taught you, often and at length, when you set out, you will deliver to Augustus the sealed scrolls, Vinius, if he is strong, if he is in good humor, if, in short, he asks for them; lest you blunder out of zeal for me, and bring my little books into hatred, an officious servant with overstrenuous service. If by chance the heavy load of my paper galls you, throw it down, rather than dash the pack down, like a brute, where you are bidden to carry it, and turn your father’s surname, Asina — “she-ass” — into a joke, and become the talk of the town. Use your strength over the gods’ shrines, the rivers, the bogs. The moment you, victor over your task, have arrived there, you will keep the burden so placed that you do not, perhaps, carry the little bundle of books under your arm like a rustic with a lamb, like tipsy Pyrria with her ball of stolen wool, like a fellow-tribesman guest with his slippers and felt cap. And do not tell the crowd you have sweated carrying poems that may stay the eyes and ears of Caesar. Begged with much entreaty, press on still; go; farewell; take care you do not stumble and smash your orders.

Bailiff of my woods and of the little farm that gives me back to myself — the farm you scorn, though it is home to five hearths and used to send five good householders to Varia — let us hold a contest: whether I tear the thorns from my mind, or you from the field, with the greater spirit, and whether Horace or his estate is in better trim. Though Lamia’s devotion and his care keep me here — grieving for his brother, mourning his lost brother past all comfort — yet my mind and heart are carried yonder, and long to burst the barriers that block the open road. I call the man who lives in the country happy, you the man in town. He who likes another’s lot, of course, hates his own. Each of us, a fool, blames the blameless place unfairly: the fault is in the mind, which never escapes itself. You, a drudge, used to pray, in silent prayer, for the country; now, a bailiff, you long for the city, the games, the baths: you know I am steady with myself, and go off downcast whenever hateful business drags me to Rome. We do not admire the same things; there is what makes the difference between me and you. For what you believe deserted and inhospitable wastes, the man who feels with me calls lovely, and hates what you think fine. The brothel and the greasy cookshop, I see, strike into you a longing for the city; and the fact that this corner of mine would grow pepper and incense sooner than grapes, that there is no tavern nearby that could serve you wine, no whore-flute-girl to whose strumming you might leap, heavy, on the ground; and yet you work fields long untouched by the mattock, and tend the unyoked ox and stuff it with the stripped leaves; the brook adds toil to the lazy man, if a shower has fallen, to be taught, with much labor, to spare the sunny meadow. Now come, hear what divides our harmony. The man whom fine-spun togas and glossy hair became, who — you know it — without a gift pleased the rapacious Cinara, who from midday would drink clear Falernian, a short dinner pleases now, and sleep on the grass beside a brook; nor am I ashamed to have played, but to have left off the play too late. There no one with a sidelong eye whittles down my comforts, no one poisons them with hidden hatred and a bite: my neighbors laugh at me, moving clods and stones. You would rather gnaw the city’s daily dole with the slaves; you rush, in your prayers, to join their number: the sharp-tongued lackey envies you the use of firewood and herd and garden. The ox longs for the saddle, the lazy nag longs to plow. My verdict: let each ply, and gladly, the craft he knows.

What the winter is at Velia, what the sky at Salernum, Vala, what the people of the region, and what the road is like (for Antonius Musa makes Baiae useless to me — and yet makes me hated there, when I am drenched in cold water through the dead of winter. To be sure, the village groans that its myrtle-groves are forsaken, and its sulphur-springs, said to drive the lingering disease from the sinews, are scorned — envious of the sick who dare to plunge head and stomach under the springs of Clusium and make for Gabii and the cold country. The place must be changed, and my horse driven on past the well-known inns. “Where are you heading? My road is not to Cumae or to Baiae,” the angry rider will say, pulling the left rein; but a horse’s ear is in its bridled mouth); which of the two feeds the people with a greater store of grain; whether they drink collected rain, or wells of running water from the heights (for the wines of that coast I do not care: on my own farm I can endure and put up with anything; when I have come to the sea, I look for something noble and smooth, to drive away cares, to flow with rich hope into my veins and my mind, to furnish me words, to commend me, young again, to my Lucanian mistress); which tract rears more hares, which more boars; which waters hide more fish and sea-urchins, so that I can come home fat from there, a Phaeacian — this you should write to me, and I should take it on your word. Maenius, when, having bravely run through his mother’s and his father’s means, he began to be counted a city wit, a vagrant clown, not one who kept a fixed stall, not one who, unbreakfasted, could tell a citizen from a foe, savage at framing any slander against anyone, the ruin and the storm and the bottomless pit of the meat-market, gave whatever he had got to his greedy belly. This man, when he had wrung nothing or little from the backers of his rascality and from the timid, would dine on platters of tripe and cheap lamb’s-meat, enough for three bears; so that, reformed, of course, like Bestius, he would say the bellies of spendthrifts ought to be branded with a white-hot iron. The same man, whenever he had caught some larger prey, once he had turned it all to smoke and ashes, would say, “By Hercules, I’m not surprised if some men eat up their goods, since there is nothing better than a fat thrush, nothing finer than a roomy sow’s womb.” Why, this is just what I am. For I praise the safe and small when means run short, brave enough among cheap fare: but when something better and richer falls to me, the very same man, I say that you alone are wise and live well, you whose money is on show, founded on gleaming villas.

Don’t keep asking, best Quinctius, whether my farm feeds its master with grain, or enriches him with the olive’s berry, with fruit, or meadows, or the elm clothed in vines: the shape and lie of the land shall be written you, at length. Unbroken hills, save where a shady valley parts them, but so that the rising sun looks on the right flank, and the departing, in his fleeing chariot, warms the left. You would praise the mild air. What if the kindly brambles bear ruddy cornel-berries and plums? if the oak and the holm-oak gladden the herd with much mast, the master with much shade? You would say Tarentum had been brought nearer and set out in leaf. A spring, too, fit to give its name to a stream, so that neither Hebrus winds colder nor purer through Thrace, flows healthful for an ailing head, healthful for the bowels. This sweet retreat — even, if you’ll believe it, lovely — keeps me safe and sound for you in the September hours. You live rightly, if you take care to be what you are called. All Rome, this long while, has cried you up as happy; but I fear you may trust someone about yourself more than yourself, may think anyone happy but the wise and good, may, if the people keep calling you sound and in good health, hide a secret fever, at dinner-time, until the trembling falls upon your greasy hands. Out of false shame, fools hide their unhealed sores. If someone should tell you of wars you have fought by land and sea, and stroke your idle ears with these words: “May Jupiter, who takes thought for both you and the city, keep it in doubt whether the people wish you more safe, or you the people” — you might recognize the praises of Augustus: when you let yourself be called wise and faultless, do you answer, tell me, please, to your own name? “Why, of course I delight to be called a good and prudent man — and so do you.” He who gave this today, tomorrow, if he wishes, will take it away, as, if he has handed the rods to one unworthy, the same will strip them off. “Lay it down, it’s mine,” he says: I lay it down, and retire downcast. If the same man should cry “Thief!,” deny that I am chaste, maintain that I had pressed the noose round my father’s neck, am I to be stung by his false reproaches, and change color? Whom does false honor delight, and lying disgrace alarm, but the flawed man who needs a cure? Who, then, is the good man? “He who keeps the fathers’ decrees, the laws, the statutes, by whom many great suits are decided, on whose surety property, on whose witness cases are upheld.” But every household and the whole neighborhood sees this man foul within, fair under his comely skin. “I have done no theft, I have not run off,” if a slave should say to me — “you have your reward,” I say; “you’re not flayed with the lash.” “I have killed no man.” “You’ll feed no crows on the cross.” “I am good and honest.” My Sabine neighbor shakes his head and says no. For the wary wolf dreads the pit, the hawk the suspected snares, the kite the hidden hook. The good hate to sin out of love of virtue; you will commit nothing, out of dread of punishment: let there be hope of going undetected, and you’ll mix sacred things with profane. For when, out of a thousand bushels of beans, you filch one, the loss to me is lighter by that much — but it is theft, not no crime. The “good man,” whom every forum and tribunal regards, whenever he appeases the gods with a pig or an ox, when he has cried aloud “Father Janus!,” aloud “Apollo!,” moves his lips, fearing to be heard: “Fair Laverna, grant me to deceive, grant me to seem just and holy, throw night over my sins and a cloud over my frauds.” How the miser is better than a slave, how he is freer, when he stoops, in the crossroads, for a coin stuck to the ground, I do not see; for the man who craves will fear as well; and further, the man who lives in fear will never be free, for me. He has thrown away his arms, deserted Virtue’s post, who forever hurries, and is buried, in the heaping-up of wealth. When you can sell a captive, do not kill him; he’ll serve you usefully; let him, tough, graze and plow, let him sail and winter, a trader, in the midst of the waves, help the food-supply, carry grain and stores. The good and wise man will dare to say: “Pentheus, ruler of Thebes, what unworthy thing will you force me to endure and suffer?” “I’ll take your goods.” “My cattle, my property, my couches, my plate, you mean? You may take them.” “In handcuffs and fetters I’ll keep you under a savage warder.” “The god himself, the moment I wish, will set me free.” I think he means this: “I shall die.” Death is the last line of all.

Although, Scaeva, you take counsel for yourself well enough, and know in what way, after all, one ought to deal with the great, learn what your little friend thinks, still in need of teaching — as if a blind man should wish to point the way; yet look whether we too say anything you might care to make your own. If welcome quiet and sleep till the first hour delight you, if dust and the din of wheels, if the inn offends you, I shall bid you go to Ferentinum; for joys do not fall to the rich alone, nor has that man lived ill who, born and dying, escaped notice. If you wish to help your own, and to treat yourself a little more kindly, you’ll come, dry, to the man of the unctuous table. “If Aristippus could dine, patient, on greens, he’d not care to deal with kings.” “If the man who taunts me knew how to deal with kings, he’d turn up his nose at greens.” Which of these two’s words and deeds you approve, instruct me — or, the younger, hear why Aristippus’ opinion is the better; for thus, they say, he used to fend off the snapping Cynic: “I play the clown for my own sake, you for the people’s; this is righter and far more splendid. That a horse should carry me, a king feed me, I do my service; you beg for cheap things, yet are less than the giver, though you bear yourself as needing no one.” Every complexion and station and circumstance became Aristippus, who, reaching for greater things, was generally content with the present; him, on the other hand, whom endurance clothes in a doubled rag, I shall marvel at, if the altered way of life becomes him. The one will not wait for the purple cloak, but, dressed in anything, will walk through the most crowded places, and will carry off either part, not without grace; the other will shun the cloak woven at Miletus worse than dog and snake, will die of cold, unless you give him back his rag. Give it back, and let him live, the fool. To carry out great deeds, and show the captured foe to the citizens, touches the throne of Jove and reaches for the heavens: to have pleased the foremost men is not the least of praises. It does not fall to every man to go to Corinth. He sat still who feared he would not succeed. “Granted. What of the man who got there — did he not act like a man?” And yet here, or nowhere, is the thing we seek. This man shrinks from the load as too great for his small spirit and small frame; that one takes it up and bears it through — or virtue is an empty name, or the man of trial rightly seeks his honor and reward. Those who keep silent before a king about their poverty will carry off more than the one who begs: it makes a difference whether you take modestly or snatch; and yet this was the head of the matter, this the source. “I have a sister without a dowry, a poor mother, and a farm neither saleable nor able to feed me,” the man who says this is crying, “Give me food!” Another chimes in, “And me!” The dole will be split, the loaf halved; but if the crow could feed in silence, it would have more of the feast, and far less of brawling and of envy. The man taken along to Brundisium, or to lovely Surrentum, who complains of the ruts and the bitter cold and the rains, or bewails his broken chest and his stolen travelling-funds, brings up the well-worn tricks of the whore, who often weeps that her bracelet, often that her anklet, has been snatched from her, so that soon no credit attends her real losses and her true griefs. And the man tricked once does not care to lift up, at the crossroads, the mountebank with the broken leg, though many a tear stands in his eyes, though, swearing by holy Osiris, he says, “Believe me, I’m not playacting; cruel men, lift up the lame!” “Look for a stranger,” the hoarse neighborhood cries back.

If I know you well, freest Lollius, you will fear to wear the look of a flatterer, having professed yourself a friend. As a matron will be unlike, and of a different color from, a whore, so the friend will differ from the faithless flatterer. Opposite to this fault there is a fault almost greater: a boorish harshness, graceless, oppressive, that commends itself by a close-shaved skin and black teeth, while it would be called pure liberty and true virtue. Virtue is the mean between vices, withdrawn from each extreme. The one, too prone, beyond what is fair, to compliance, the mocker of the lowest couch, so dreads the rich man’s nod, so echoes his words and catches up his falling phrases, that you’d think a boy was giving back his lesson to a savage master, or a mime playing the second part. The other brawls, often, over goat’s wool, and fights, in arms, for trifles: “So I’m not, of course, to be believed first, and not to bark out fiercely what truly pleases me! Another lifetime would be too cheap a price for that.” And what is the quarrel about? Whether Castor knows more, or Dolichos; whether the Minucian road leads better to Brundisium, or the Appian. The man whom ruinous Venus strips, whom headlong dicing, whom vainglory dresses and anoints beyond his means, whom a relentless thirst and hunger for silver holds, whom the shame and the flight of poverty grip — his rich friend, often equipped with ten worse vices, hates and dreads him; or, if he does not hate, governs him, and, like a fond mother, wishes him to be wiser than himself, and his better in virtues, and says what is nearly true: “My means (don’t try to compete) can bear folly; yours is a slender thing. A close-cut toga suits the sensible companion; stop contending with me.” Eutrapelus, whomever he wished to harm, would give costly garments: “for, happy now, with his fine tunics he’ll take up new plans and hopes, will sleep till daylight, set a whore above honorable duty, feed borrowed money at interest, and at the last turn Thracian gladiator, or drive a market-gardener’s nag for hire.” You will never pry into his secrets, and will hide what is entrusted, though racked by wine and anger. You will not praise your own pursuits, nor blame another’s, nor, when he wants to hunt, will you be knocking together poems. So the goodwill of the twin brothers, Amphion and Zethus, sprang apart, until the lyre, suspected by the stern one, fell silent. Amphion is thought to have yielded to his brother’s ways: you, yield to the gentle commands of your powerful friend, and whenever he leads out into the fields the draft-beasts and the dogs loaded with Aetolian nets, get up and lay aside the moroseness of the unsociable Muse, that you may dine, alongside him, on the dainties won by labor: the customary work of Roman men, useful to fame and to life and to limbs; especially since you are well, and could outrun the dog, or outmatch the boar in strength. Add that no one handles a man’s weapons more gracefully than you; you know with what shouting of the ring you bear up the battles of the Campus; in fine, as a boy you bore the savage soldiering and the Cantabrian wars under the leader who now takes the standards down from the Parthian temples, and, if anything is still wanting, awards it to Italian arms. And, that you not draw back and stay away without excuse, though you take care to do nothing out of measure and beat, now and then you trifle on your father’s land: the army divides the boats; the battle of Actium is fought again, with you as leader, by the boys in the manner of foes; your brother is the adversary, the pond the Adriatic, until swift Victory crowns one or the other with the leaf; whoever believes you in sympathy with his pursuits will, a backer, praise your game with both thumbs. And, to give you a word of counsel straightaway (if you need a monitor at all): look often at what you say of each man, and to whom; flee the questioner: for he is also a babbler, and ears that lie open do not keep what is entrusted faithfully, and a word once let go flies past recall. Let no maidservant or boy inflame your liver within the marble threshold of a friend to be revered, lest the master of the pretty boy or the dear girl make you happy with a trifling gift, or, tiresome, vex you. Look, again and again, at the sort of man you recommend, lest another’s sins soon strike shame into you. We are deceived, and sometimes pass on the undeserving: therefore, when you’ve been tricked, give up shielding the man his own fault weighs down, so that, if charges assail one truly known to you, you may keep and protect him, as he trusts in your safeguard. For when he is gnawed all round by Theon’s tooth, do you feel nothing of the dangers that, a little later, will come to you? For your own concern is at stake when the next wall burns, and neglected fires are wont to gather strength. Sweet, to the untried, is the courting of a powerful friend: the tried man fears it. While your ship is on the deep, see to this — lest the wind, changing, carry you backward. The gloomy hate the cheerful, the jesters the gloomy, the quick the sedate, the slack the brisk and busy; the drinkers, swilling Falernian from the middle of the night, hate the man who refuses the offered cups, though you swear you dread the night-fevers. Take the cloud from your brow: usually the modest man puts on the look of the secretive, the silent of the sour. Among all this, you will read, and question the learned, by what method you may draw your life along gently: whether ever-needy desire frets and harries you, whether fear, and hope for things of middling use; whether learning breeds virtue, or Nature bestows it; what lessens cares, what restores you to yourself as a friend, what truly brings you calm — honor, or sweet little gain, or a secluded path and the byway of a life that escapes notice. Whenever the chill Digentia revives me — the brook that Mandela drinks, that village wrinkled with cold — what do you think I feel? what do you believe, friend, I pray for? “Let me keep what I now have, even less, and let me live for myself what is left of life, if the gods will any be left; let me have a good store of books, and of provision laid in for the year, and not drift, hung upon the hope of the doubtful hour.” But it is enough to pray to Jove, who gives and takes away: let him give life, give means; a balanced mind I shall furnish for myself.

If you believe old Cratinus, learned Maecenas, no poems can please for long, or live, that are written by drinkers of water. Ever since Bacchus enrolled the half-mad poets among the Satyrs and the Fauns, the sweet Muses have, as a rule, smelled of wine in the morning. By his praises of wine, Homer is convicted a wine-bibber; Father Ennius himself never leapt out to sing of arms unless he had drunk. “The Forum and Libo’s Well I’ll make over to the dry; I’ll forbid the austere to sing”: the moment I proclaimed this, the poets did not cease to vie in wine by night, to reek of it by day. What? If a man, fierce in grim looks and bare of foot and in the weave of a scanty toga, should ape Cato, will he reproduce the virtue and the morals of Cato? The tongue that rivalled Timagenes burst Iarbita, while he strove to be thought a man of wit and eloquence. A model deceives by its imitable faults: for if I turned pale by chance, they’d be drinking bloodless cumin. O imitators, you slavish herd, how often your stir has roused my bile, how often my laughter! I was the first to set free footsteps over open ground, I pressed no others’ with my foot. He who trusts himself will rule the swarm as leader. I first showed Parian iambics to Latium, following the rhythms and the spirit of Archilochus, not the matter and the words that hounded Lycambes. And lest you crown me with scantier leaves for this, because I feared to change his measures and his art of song: manly Sappho tempers the Muse of Archilochus by her meter, Alcaeus tempers it — but unlike in matter and arrangement, seeking no father-in-law to smear with black verses, weaving no noose for a betrothed with a defaming song. Him, never named before by any other mouth, I, the Latin lyrist, made common coin. It delights me, bringing things unrecorded, to be read by freeborn eyes and held in freeborn hands. Would you know why the thankless reader praises and loves my little works at home, but, once past the door, carps at them unfairly? I do not hunt the votes of the windy mob at the cost of dinners and the gift of cast-off clothes; I, a hearer and avenger of noble writers, do not deign to canvass the grammarians’ tribes and platforms. Hence those tears. “I’m ashamed to recite writings unworthy of the packed theaters, and to lend weight to trifles,” if I have said this, “You’re laughing,” he says, “and keeping those for Jove’s ears: for you trust that you alone distil poetic honey, fine in your own eyes.” At this I am afraid to turn up my nose, and, lest I be cut by his sharp nail as we wrestle, “I don’t like this arena,” I cry, and call for a recess; for play has bred anxious rivalry and anger, anger fierce enmities and deadly war.

You seem, my book, to be gazing toward Vertumnus and Janus, eager, of course, to stand for sale, trim with the Sosii’s pumice. You hate the keys and the seals that please the modest; you groan at being shown to few, and praise the public spaces — not so reared. Off you go, where you itch to go down. There’ll be no return for you, once let out. “What have I done, poor wretch? What did I want?” you’ll say, when someone has hurt you, and you know you’re squeezed into a tight roll when the sated lover languishes. But if the augur is not made a fool by hatred of the sinner, you’ll be dear to Rome, until your youth deserts you; when, thumbed by the hands of the crowd, you begin to grow grimy, then either, silent, you’ll feed the slothful moths, or run off to Utica, or be sent, bound, to Ilerda. The monitor you didn’t heed will laugh, like the man who, in a rage, shoved his balking ass over the cliff: for who would labor to save one against his will? This too awaits you: that a stammering old age overtake you, teaching boys their letters in the outlying streets. When the warm sun has brought you more listeners, you’ll tell them that I, born of a freedman father, and in slender means, stretched wings too great for my nest — so that whatever you take from my birth you may add to my worth; that I pleased the first men of the city, in war and at home; small of body, prematurely gray, fit for the sun, quick to anger, yet such that I could be appeased. If by chance anyone asks you my age, let him know that I have rounded out four times eleven Decembers in the year that Lollius brought in Lepidus as his colleague.

Since you alone sustain so many and so great affairs, guard Italy’s interests with arms, grace them with morals, mend them with laws, I should offend against the public good if with a long discourse I held up your time, Caesar. Romulus, and father Bacchus, and Pollux with Castor, received, after their mighty deeds, into the temples of the gods, while they tended the earth and the race of men, settling harsh wars, allotting lands, founding towns, lamented that the goodwill they hoped for did not answer their deserts. He who crushed the dread Hydra and subdued the storied monsters by his appointed labor, found that envy is mastered only by the final end: for he scorches by his own brilliance who weighs down the talents ranked beneath him; once put out, that same man will be loved. On you, while present among us, we lavish ripe honors, and set up altars to swear by, in your name, confessing that nothing like you will arise, nothing has arisen. But this people of yours, wise and just in one thing — in setting you above our own leaders, above the Greeks — appraises everything else by no means with like reason and measure, and, unless it sees a thing far removed from the earth and done with its own times, scorns it and hates it; so partisan of the old that it keeps insisting the tablets forbidding sin, which the Ten Men ratified, the treaties of kings struck at Gabii, or with the stern Sabines, the books of the pontiffs, the aged scrolls of the seers, were spoken by the Muses on the Alban mount. If, because all the oldest of the Greeks’ writings are also the best, Roman writers are to be weighed in the same scale, there is no point in saying much: there’s nothing hard inside the olive, nothing hard outside the nut; we have come to the summit of fortune — we paint, and play the lyre, and wrestle more skillfully than the oiled Achaeans. If poems, like wines, are bettered by time, I’d like to know what year confers their value on the pages. A writer who died a hundred years ago — is he to be reckoned among the finished and the old, or among the cheap and the new? Let a limit shut out the wrangling. “He is old and sound who rounds out a hundred years.” What, then, of the one who perished short by a single month, or a year — among which is he to be reckoned? The old poets, or those whom both the present and the after-age reject? “He, surely, will be placed honorably among the old, who is younger by a short month, or even a whole year.” I use the leave: and, like the hairs of a horse’s tail, I pluck out, little by little, take away one, take away yet one more, until, fooled by the logic of the toppling heap, he falls — the man who falls back on the calendar, who appraises worth by years, and admires nothing but what Libitina has consecrated. Ennius — wise and brave, a second Homer, as the critics say — seems to care lightly where his promises and his Pythagorean dreams come to rest. Is not Naevius in our hands, and clinging to our minds, almost fresh? So sacred is every old poem. Whenever it is disputed which of two is the elder, Pacuvius carries off the fame of the learned old man, Accius of the lofty; Afranius’ toga, they say, would have fitted Menander, Plautus hurries on the model of the Sicilian Epicharmus, Caecilius wins by gravity, Terence by art. These mighty Rome learns by heart, these she watches, packed in her cramped theater; these she has and counts as poets from the age of the writer Livius down to our own time. Sometimes the crowd sees right; there are times it errs. If it so admires and praises the old poets that it sets nothing before them, compares nothing to them, it is wrong. If it grants that they say some things too archaically, very many things harshly, and confesses that much is slack, then it has taste, and is on my side, and judges with Jove’s consent. Not that I hound the poems of Livius, or think they ought to be destroyed — I remember them, the flogging Orbilius dictating them to me as a boy; but that they should seem polished, and lovely, and the least bit short of perfect — that I wonder at. Among them, if perhaps a graceful word has flashed out, and if one verse or another is a little more shapely, that, unjustly, carries off and sells the whole poem. I am indignant that anything should be faulted, not because it is thought coarsely or charmlessly composed, but because it is recent; and that for the old men, not pardon, but honor and rewards are claimed. Should I doubt whether Atta’s play walks aright amid the saffron and the flowers, nearly all the fathers would cry that shame had perished — when I try to fault what grave Aesopus, what learned Roscius performed; either because they think nothing right but what has pleased themselves, or because they think it base to obey their juniors, and to confess that what they learned beardless ought, as old men, to be unlearned. The man who now praises Numa’s Salian hymn, and that which he, like me, does not understand, but alone wishes to seem to know, is no friend and applauder of the buried geniuses, but assails ours: he, envious, hates us and what is ours. But had novelty been as hateful to the Greeks as it is to us, what now would be old? or what would the public, man by man, have to read and to thumb? The moment Greece, her wars laid by, began to trifle, and to slide, in prosperous fortune, into vice, she burned now for the pursuits of athletes, now of horses, loved the craftsmen of marble or ivory or bronze, hung her face and mind on a painted panel, delighted now in flute-players, now in tragedians; like an infant girl playing under her nurse, what she eagerly sought, she gave up, once sated, soon enough. What pleases, or is loathed, that you would not think changeable? This is what good peaces and favoring winds brought about. At Rome it was long sweet, and the custom, to be up early, the house thrown open, to set forth the law for the client, to pay out money carefully on sound securities, to hear the elders, to tell the younger by what means an estate might grow, ruinous appetite be cut down. The fickle people has changed its mind, and burns with one zeal — for writing; boys and grave fathers dine with leaves binding their hair, and dictate poems. I myself, who declare that I write no verses, am found a greater liar than the Parthians, and, awake before the risen sun, call for pen and paper and writing-cases. A man ignorant of ships fears to steer one; only the man who has learned dares give southernwood to the sick; what belongs to doctors the doctors promise; smiths handle the smith’s tools; but we, unlearned and learned alike, scribble poems, every one. Yet this error, and this light madness — reckon up so how many virtues it has: the poet’s mind is not lightly greedy; he loves his verses, studies this one thing; he laughs at losses, the flight of slaves, fires; he plots no fraud against a partner or a ward, a boy; he lives on husks and on second-grade bread; sluggish and poor at soldiering, he is of use to the city, if you grant this — that small things, too, help great ones. The poet shapes the tender, lisping mouth of the boy, turns his ear, even now, from indecent talk, soon, too, molds his heart with kindly precepts, a corrector of harshness and of envy and of anger; he tells of deeds rightly done, equips the dawning ages with famous examples, comforts the helpless and the sick. Whence would the chaste boys, and the girl who knows no husband, learn their prayers, had the Muse not given them a bard? The chorus begs aid, and feels the present divinities, implores the waters of heaven, coaxing with a learned prayer, turns aside diseases, drives off the perils to be feared, obtains both peace and a year rich in crops. By song the gods above are appeased, by song the Shades below. Our forefathers, the farmers, brave and blessed with little, when the grain was stored, easing, at the festal time, the body — and the very soul that bears hardship in the hope of an end — along with the partners of their toil, their children, and their faithful wife, used to appease Earth with a pig, Silvanus with milk, with flowers and wine the Genius, mindful of life’s brief span. Through this custom came the Fescennine license, which in alternating verses poured out its rustic abuse; and that freedom, welcomed through the recurring years, sported amiably, until the jest, now savage, began to turn to open frenzy, and to range through honorable homes, threatening, unpunished. Those galled by its bloody tooth felt the smart; there was concern, too, for the untouched, over the common lot; and so a law and a penalty were brought in, forbidding that any man be drawn in a spiteful song: they changed their tune, recalled, by the fear of the cudgel, to speaking well and giving delight. Captured Greece took captive her fierce conqueror, and brought the arts into rustic Latium; so that rough Saturnian measure drained away, and refinement drove out the gross poison; yet for a long age, still, there remained — and remain today — traces of the countryside. For only late did the Roman turn his wits to Greek pages, and, quiet after the Punic wars, began to ask what Sophocles and Thespis and Aeschylus might bring of use. He tried the thing, too, whether he could render it worthily, and pleased himself, sublime by nature and keen: for he breathes the tragic spirit well enough, and dares with luck, but, untaught, thinks the erasure shameful, and dreads it. Comedy, because it fetches its matter from common life, is believed to cost the least of sweat; but it carries the more burden, by as much as it gets the less indulgence. Look — Plautus, in what fashion he sustains the part of the lovesick youth, of the close-fisted father, of the wily pimp; how great a Dossennus he is among his greedy parasites, how he scurries across the stage in a slipper none too tight. For he is eager to drop the coin in his cash-box, and after that careless whether the play falls flat or stands square on its heel. The man whom Glory has borne to the stage in her windy car, the listless spectator deflates, the eager puffs up: so light, so small a thing it is that overturns or revives the mind greedy of praise. Farewell to the playwright’s trade, if a palm denied sends me home lean, a palm granted home fat. Often, too, this routs and frightens even the bold poet: that those more in number, less in worth and honor, unlettered and stupid, and ready to fight it out if the knights disagree, demand, in the very middle of the verses, either a bear or boxers: for in these the rabble delights. But even the knights’ pleasure, all of it, has now migrated from the ear to the wandering eyes and their empty joys. The curtain is held down four hours or more, while squadrons of cavalry and hordes of foot stream by in flight; soon the fortune of kings is dragged past, their hands wrenched behind, chariots hasten, coaches, wagons, ships; captive ivory is borne along, captive Corinth. Were he on earth, Democritus would laugh, whether a panther crossed with a camel, a mongrel breed, or a white elephant turned the faces of the crowd; he would watch the people more keenly than the shows themselves, as offering him spectacles by far the more numerous; but the writers — he would think they were telling their little tale to a deaf ass. For what voices have prevailed to master the din that our theaters resound with? You’d think the Garganian wood was bellowing, or the Tuscan sea; with so great an uproar are the shows watched, and the arts, and the foreign riches — with which, when the actor, smeared all over, has taken his stand on the stage, the right hand claps the left. “Has he said anything yet?” Nothing at all. “What pleases, then?” The wool that apes violets with its Tarentine dye. And lest you chance to think that I, when others handle rightly what I myself refuse to do, praise it grudgingly: that poet seems to me able to walk along a stretched rope who, with nothing, wrings my breast, goads it, soothes it, fills it with false terrors, like a magician, and sets me down now in Thebes, now in Athens. But come, to these too — who would rather entrust themselves to a reader than bear the disdain of a haughty spectator — give a brief care, if you wish to fill with books the gift worthy of Apollo, and to put a spur to the bards, that they may seek green Helicon with greater zeal. We poets, indeed, often do ourselves much harm (that I may slash my own vineyards), when we hand you a book while you are anxious or weary; when we are wounded if one of our friends has dared to fault a single verse; when, unrecalled, we read over passages already recited; when we lament that our labors do not show, nor our poems, drawn out on their fine-spun thread; when we hope the thing will come to this — that, the moment you have learned we are shaping songs, you, obliging, of your own accord, will send for us, forbid us to want, and force us to write. But still it is worth knowing what sort of keepers Virtue, tested in war and at home, should have — not to be entrusted to an unworthy poet. Dear to great king Alexander was that Choerilus, who, for uncouth and ill-born verses, took in payment Philippi — royal coin; but, just as ink, once handled, leaves a mark and a smear, so writers, as a rule, with foul song besmear splendid deeds. That same king, who so lavishly bought a poem so ridiculous at so dear a price, forbade, by edict, that any but Apelles paint him, or any but Lysippus cast in bronze the features that counterfeited brave Alexander. But had you called that judgment, so subtle in surveying the arts, to books and to these gifts of the Muses, you’d swear it was born under the thick air of Boeotia. But your judgments do you no discredit, nor your gifts — which, with much praise of the giver, they carried off, the poets dear to you, Vergil and Varius; nor do features cast in figures of bronze stand out more clearly than the characters and minds of famous men appear through the bard’s work. Nor would I rather compose talk that creeps along the ground than tell of great deeds done, recount the lay of lands and rivers, and citadels set upon mountains, and barbarous kingdoms, and the wars brought to an end, under your auspices, through the whole world, and the bars that pen in Janus, the guardian of peace, and Rome made a terror to the Parthians under your rule, if I could do as much as I would wish; but neither does your majesty admit of a small poem, nor does my modesty dare to attempt a thing my strength would refuse to bear. But zeal, foolishly, presses hard on the one it loves, above all when it commends itself by meter and art; for a man learns more quickly, and remembers more gladly, what he derides than what he approves and reveres. I want no service that weighs me down, nor wish to be set up anywhere in wax, my features feigned for the worse, nor to be honored with verses badly made, lest I blush at the gross gift, and, together with my author, stretched out in a closed box, be carried off to the street that sells frankincense and perfumes and pepper and whatever is wrapped up in useless paper.

Florus, faithful friend of good and famous Nero, if by chance someone should wish to sell you a boy born at Tibur or Gabii, and bargain with you thus: “This one, fair, and handsome from the crown to the very soles, will become — and be — yours, for eight thousand in coin, a house-bred slave handy at his duties, quick to his master’s nod, steeped a little in Greek letters, fit for any craft; out of moist clay you’ll mold him to whatever you like; he’ll even sing, untaught but sweetly, to a man at his cups. Too many promises weaken trust, when one who wants to unload his wares cries them up beyond what is fair. No need presses me; poor as I am, my money is my own. No dealer would do this much for you; not lightly, from me, would just anyone get the same. He loafed once and, as happens, hid on the stairs, in dread of the dangling strap: pay the money, if the one flight I have excepted does you no harm.” That man, I think, would take his price, safe from any penalty: you bought a faulty slave with your eyes open; the terms were stated to you; yet you hound him, and tie him up with an unfair suit? I told you, when you set out, that I was lazy, told you I was all but crippled for offices of the kind, lest you, savage, should scold me because no letter of mine came back to you. What did I gain by it, if you assail, even so, the law that stands on my side? You complain, on top of this, as well, that, a liar, I do not send you the poems you expected. A soldier of Lucullus, his savings hoarded with much hardship, while, worn out, he snored at night, had lost them to the last penny: after this, a ravening wolf, in equal rage at himself and the foe, fierce with his famished teeth, dislodged a royal garrison from its post, as they tell — a post most strongly fortified, and rich in many things. Famous for that feat, he is decked with honorable gifts, and gets, besides, twice ten thousand sesterces. Just about this time the praetor, eager to throw down some fort or other, began to urge the same man with words that could put heart into a coward, even: “Go, good fellow, where your valor calls you, go with a lucky foot, to bear off the great rewards of merit — why do you stand there?” At this the man, shrewd for all his rusticity: “He’ll go, he’ll go where you want, the one who has lost his money-belt.” It fell to my lot to be reared at Rome, and taught how much Achilles’ wrath had harmed the Greeks. Kindly Athens added a little more art, so that I’d wish, of course, to tell the straight from the crooked, and to seek the truth among the groves of Academus. But hard times moved me from that pleasant spot, and the tide of civil war swept me, a raw recruit, into arms that would not stand against the muscles of Caesar Augustus. From there, the moment Philippi discharged me, brought low, my wings clipped, stripped of my father’s hearth and land, bold poverty drove me on to make verses: but, now that I lack for nothing, what doses of hemlock could ever cleanse me enough, if I did not think it better to sleep than to write verses? The passing years plunder us of our things, one by one; they have snatched away jests, love, feasts, play; they strain to wrest away the poems too: what would you have me do? And, in the end, not all men admire and love the same things: you delight in lyric, this man takes pleasure in iambics, that one in Bionean talks and their black salt. Three dinner-guests, it seems to me, are near to falling out, calling, with varied palate, for things much diverse. What am I to give? what not to give? You refuse what the other bids; what you ask, that, to be sure, is hateful and sour to the other two. Besides all else, do you reckon I can write poems at Rome, amid so many cares, so many toils? This one calls me to go bail, this to hear his writings, all my other duties dropped; one lies sick on Quirinus’ hill, this on the far Aventine — both to be visited; the distances, you see, charmingly convenient. “But the streets are clear, so nothing blocks the man at his thoughts.” A hot contractor hurries by with his mules and porters, the great hoist heaves now a stone, now a beam, mournful funerals jostle with the sturdy wagons, this way a mad dog bolts, that way a muddy sow rushes: go now, and turn over tuneful verses to yourself. The whole chorus of writers loves the grove and flees the city, duly a client of Bacchus, who delights in sleep and shade: do you want me, amid the din by night and by day, to sing, and to follow the close-trodden track of the bards? A talent that has picked out empty Athens for itself, and given seven years to study, and grown old over books and cares, comes out, mostly, more dumb than a statue, and shakes the people with laughter: here, in the midst of the surge of affairs and the storms of the city, am I to think fit to string together words that will stir the lyre’s sound? There was at Rome a brother — a rhetorician and a lawyer — so that each heard, from the other’s lips, nothing but honors, this a Gracchus to that, that a Mucius to this. Does that same frenzy harry the tuneful poets any less? I compose songs, this man elegies. “A marvel to behold, a work chiselled by the nine Muses!” See, first, with what hauteur, with what great labor, we look round at the temple standing empty for Roman bards! Then, too, if you happen to be free, follow, and listen from afar, to what each brings, and why each weaves himself a crown. We are struck, and wear down the foe with as many blows, slow Samnites, in our duel, till the first lamp-lighting. By his verdict I come off Alcaeus; by mine, he — who? Who but Callimachus? if he seems to demand still more, he turns Mimnermus, and swells with the surname he chose. I bear much, to appease the touchy tribe of bards, when I write, and, a suppliant, court the people’s votes; the same man, my studies done and my wits recovered, may stop my open ears, unpunished, against the readers. Men are laughed at who put together bad poems; yet they rejoice in the writing, revere themselves, and, if you keep silent, of their own accord praise whatever they have written, happy. But the man who longs to have made a poem by rule will take up, with his tablets, the spirit of an honest censor; he’ll dare to shift from their place whatever words have too little splendor, and will lack weight, and be judged unworthy of honor, though they draw back unwillingly and still linger within the inmost shrine of Vesta; words long dark to the people he’ll dig out, good man, and bring into the light the telling names of things, which, voiced by the old Catos and Cethegi, now a shapeless mold and a deserted age weighs down; he’ll take in new ones, which use, their begetter, has brought forth. Forceful and clear, most like a pure stream, he’ll pour out his riches and bless Latium with a wealthy tongue; he’ll prune the rank growth, smooth the over-harsh with wholesome cultivation, strike out the strengthless, give the look of one at play, and yet be racked — like one who is moved now as a Satyr, now as the rustic Cyclops. I’d sooner be thought a doting and idle writer, while my faults delight me, or at least escape me, than be wise and gnash my teeth. There was at Argos a man, not obscure, who believed he was hearing wonderful tragedians, a glad sitter and applauder in the empty theater; who, for the rest, would keep life’s duties by the right rule — truly a good neighbor, a lovable host, kind to his wife, one who could forgive his slaves, and not run mad over the broken seal of a flask, one who could steer clear of a precipice or an open well. This man, when, mended by his kinsmen’s means and care, he had driven out the disease and the bile with neat hellebore, and came back to himself: “By Pollux, you’ve killed me, friends, not saved me,” he said, “you, who have wrung my pleasure from me so, and taken from me, by force, the mind’s most welcome error.” To be sure, it is profitable to be wise, the trifles flung aside, and to leave play to the boys, for whom it is in season, and not to chase after words to be set to the Latin lyre, but to learn by heart the rhythms and the measures of the true life. And so I say these things to myself, and silently recall: If no abundance of water could put an end to your thirst, you’d tell the doctors of it: that, the more you have got, the more you crave — do you dare confess this to no one? If a wound were made no lighter by a root or herb prescribed, you’d give up being doctored with the root or herb that did no good. You had heard that the man to whom the gods grant wealth has his crooked folly fall away; and, since you are no whit the wiser now that you are fuller, do you still use the same advisers? But if riches could make a man prudent, could make you less greedy, less fearful — then, of course, you’d blush if anyone alive were greedier than you, by one. If a thing is one’s own that a man has bought with scale and bronze, some things — if you believe the lawyers — use, too, makes over: the field that feeds you is yours; and Orbius’ bailiff, when he harrows the crops that will soon yield you grain, feels you for his master. You give money, you get back grapes, chickens, eggs, a jar of wine: by that means, surely, little by little you are buying the farm — bought, perhaps, for three hundred thousand in coin, or even more. What does it matter whether you live on what was paid out lately or long ago? The man who once bought the Aricine and the Veientine field dines on bought greens, though he thinks otherwise; with bought firewood he heats his kettle against the chill of nightfall; but he calls it all his own, up to where the poplar, planted on the fixed boundaries, fends off the neighbors’ quarrels; as though anything were one’s own which, in the point of a fleeting hour, now by entreaty, now by price, now by force, now by death at the last, changes its masters and passes into another’s right. So, since lasting use is granted to none, and heir follows on another’s heir as wave overtakes wave, what good are estates, or granaries? or Lucanian pastures joined to Calabrian glades, if Orcus mows down the great with the small, not to be coaxed off with gold? Gems, marble, ivory, Tuscan figurines, paintings, silver, robes dyed with Gaetulian purple — there are men who do not have them; there is one who does not care to. Why, of two brothers, one prefers lounging and play and the oil-flask to the rich palm-groves of Herod, while the other, wealthy and restless, from the rising of the light to the shade, subdues his woodland field with flame and iron — the Genius knows, the companion who governs our natal star, the god of human nature, who dies with each single head, changeable of countenance, white and black. I’ll use my modest heap, and take from it as much as the need asks, nor will I dread what my heir may judge of me — that he found no more than what was given; and yet, the same man, I’ll want to know how far the open-handed and cheerful man differs from the spendthrift, and how far the thrifty is at odds with the miser. For there is a difference whether you scatter your goods, a prodigal, or neither grudge the outlay nor labor to lay up more, but rather, as a boy once at the festal Quinquatrus, enjoy the scant and welcome time in haste. Let squalid poverty be far from the house: I, whether I’m carried in a great ship or a small, am carried one and the same. We are not driven on by swelling sails with the North wind astern, yet we do not draw our life out with the South wind against us; in strength, talent, looks, virtue, station, means, last of the foremost, and ever ahead of the last. You are not greedy: be off. What, then? Have the rest of the vices fled, by now, along with that one? Is your breast free of empty ambition? free of the dread and the rage at death? Dreams, magic terrors, marvels, witches, night-walking ghosts and Thessalian portents — do you laugh at them? Do you count your birthdays gratefully? Do you forgive your friends? Do you grow gentler and better as old age comes on? What good is it to you to have one thorn drawn from among the many? If you do not know how to live rightly, give way to those who do. You’ve played enough, eaten enough, and drunk enough: it is time for you to leave, lest, having drunk more than your fill, an age that wears it more becomingly laugh at you, and jostle you off.