Martial, : the twelve books of Epigrams,.

MARTIAL'S EPIGRAMS
* XLVI
TO CANDIDUS
MY attendance as client you claim without end.
I don't come myself, but my freedman I send.
'That's not the same thing'-Nay, it's more, I will swear it.
I can scarcely keep up with your chair; he will bear it,
He will thrust people back if you get in a crush;
My elbows are weak and too well-bred to push.
At your stories in court I find nothing to say;
But he'll shout 'bravo' with a deafening bray.
If a law-suit you have, he will bellow abuse;
My shyness forbids me strong language to use.
You will say-' You, my friend, have an easy task got 'Not so: I will do all my freedman can not.
* XLVII
'FRESH FROM THE TOWN '
WHERE drips the Capene gate with drops of rain,
Where Almo cleans the Mother's knife of stain,
Where the Horatian field with crops is green,
Where young Alcides' shrine is crowded seen;
There Bassus in his travelling carriage rode,
Bringing of country crops a mighty load;
Great cabbages, and leeks of either kind,
Coss lettuces and beets you there might find,
Useful to sluggish stomachs, fat field-fares
Strung on a hoop, and with them Gallic hares
And sucking pigs; the very footmen bore
Eggs wrapped in hay, as they ran on before.
' Bassus was coming back to town? '-you say:
No: in the country he was going to stay.
* XLVIII
A POOR INVESTMENT
FRIEND Olus sold his land, that he might get
The cash to build a dainty maisonette.
The bill came in; and now, as he confesses,
That miaisonette is all that he possesses.
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