Martial, : the twelve books of Epigrams,.

BOOK ONE

* LXXIII
TO CAECILIANUS
WHEN you offered your wife to each passer-by free,
Not a soul ever wanted to try her.
You have learnt wisdom now: kept beneath lock and key
She has crowds.of men waiting to buy her.
LXXIV
TO PAULA
You had some chance to disavow
What rumour said of him and you
Until you married him: but now
Will any hold the tale untrue?
LXXV
PRUDENCE
WHEN Linus begged a loan, his friend,
A prudent soul, declined to lend
But gave him half, because he found
That saved ten shillings in the pound.
* LXXVI
THE POET'S IWA4GES
DEAR Flaccus, you the best reward of all my anxious thought,
To manhood grown in that far town that once Antenor sought,
Have done with those Pierian strains the Muses love to sing;
Of all the band none to your hand a shilling e'er will bring.
What from Apollo will you get? Let Pallas be your friend,
A maid of sense without pretence, and lots of cash to lend.
What can the Bacchic ivy give? But the Palladian tree
Still useful grows with bending boughs in grey-green harmony.
On Helicon you naught will find-a lyre perhaps or rose,
Or a bright gleam of babbling stream, and noise of vain
' bravos.'
Why court the nymphs that in Permess or Cirrha have their
home?
Richer by far and nearer are the markets of our Rome.
There you will hear the chink of coin: with poets only misses
Send through the air to our poor chair the sound of empty
kisses.
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