Martial, : the twelve books of Epigrams,.

BOOK THREE
* LXII
TO QUINTUS
FOR a slave you will pay a cool thousand, or double;
For a cup forty pounds: to pay gives you no trouble.
King Numa laid down the choice wine that you drink;
Your furniture cost you ten thousand, I think.
For the price of your carriage a farm you might own;
Your hackney is worth a fine mansion in town.
You imagine that taste just depends on your purse;
But the truth is, my friend, it is just the reverse.
LXIII
TO COTILUS
YOU'RE quite a pretty spark I heard, for many folk maintain it;
What is the meaning of the word? pray, Cotilus, explain it.
'Observe,' you say, 'my curly hair-the style is just
inventedWith cinnamon and balsams rare I'm elegantly scented,
I hum the last Egyptian song, the newest dance from Cadiz,
And loll in boudoirs all day long to gossip with the ladies:
My pretty nothings soft and low I whisper with devotion,
My lily hands and gestures show the poetry of motion.
To read and answer little notes make up my daily labours,
In horror of their vulgar coats I always shun my neighbours,
And at the races I can tell the sires of all the winners.'
That all, my friend? You can't go on? Then I don't want
to see one,
And save in Little Peddington would any choose to be one?
* LXIV
THE CLUB BORE
THE sirens, who on sailors brought
The jocund death themselves had sought,
Their spite Ulysses knew to foil:
He heard, yet robbed them of their spoil.
Great is his fame; but greater glory
'Twere to escape old John when he begins a story.
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