Martial, : the twelve books of Epigrams,.

BOOK NINE

LXXXV
THE SICK HOST
HE is ill he states,
But he violates
All medical orthodoxy,
And so to atone
He gorges alone
And fasts as it were by proxy.
On the evidence
It is all pretence,
So quickly the illness rose up;
But I see it quite
In a serious light,
For my dinner has turned its toes up!
* LXXXVI
ON THE DEATH OF SE VER US
WHEN Siius, twofold lord of Latin tongue,
The fate untimely of Severus sung,
I to the Muses made my mournful cry
And thus did great Apollo give reply'I wept for Linus, and Calliope
Who stands hard by, has borne like grief with me.
Yea, cruel Fate has ventured e'en to move
With bitter grief the heart of either Jove,
The Thunderer in his Tarpeian shrine
And the great dweller on the Palatine.
Since then e'en they to fate relentless bow,
Forbear to charge the gods with envy now.'
LXXXVII
TO LUPERCUS
SEVEN goblets of Opimian, a bumper full was each,
I quaffed, and that will make a man a trifle thick of speech.
You chose this hour to come and say, 'My Nasta I have freed,
He was my father's servant, pray just sign and seal the deed.'
My seal is busy; if you call to-morrow 'twill be right,
The seal upon a cork is all that it can mark to-night.
289 T