Martial, : the twelve books of Epigrams,.

MARTIAL'S EPIGRAMS
* LXXV
THE CLIMAX
WITH Galla it once was-' Two hundred, mon cher 'And I will confess it, she did not seem dear.
A year passed away, and one hundred seemed more,
When she sank to that figure, than two had before.
Another half-year and 'twas-' Twenty I'll make it ':
I offered her ten, but she said-' I can't take it'.
Two or three months went by and I got a short note' Five pounds I am asking '-the good lady wrote.
I did not respond, so she came to a pound,
And even a sovereign too much I found.
When we met the next time, she was willing to have
The paltry half-crown I had given my slave.
Do you think she was able much lower to go?
Yes. ' Take me for nothing'. My answer was-' No'.
LXXVI
THE POET'S REWARD
Now, Fortune, is this fair in you?
Here's one, no Parthian or Jew,
No abject slave, re-made as knight,
But Roman both by blood and right;
Learned in Greek and Latin, kind,
A trustier friend were hard to findYet he was shivering, while in scarlet
Mule-drivers flaunt. You say ' the varlet
Is guilty of a crime '? I know it;
A sad one too-he is a poet.
LXXVII
ON CAR US
CARUS is dead; the infamous deceiver;
To crown his many crimes he died of fever!
That fever too was cruel and malignant,
It should have been a quartan, more benignant;
For had it brought the germs of that to fill him,
He might have lived to let the doctor kill him.
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