Martial, : the twelve books of Epigrams,.

BOOK TWO

XLIV
ON HUNKS
IF Hunks should see me buy a coat,
A slave, or something worth a groat,
He shudders at my spendthrift whim,
And lest I beg a loan of himThough I have known him many a yearHe whispers so that I may hear: —
' Four thousand Sesterces are due
To Phoebus, and Secundus too
Is pressing for his debt, 'tis seven;
Philetus duns me for eleven:
I've not a farthing left to spend.'
How clever, my ingenious friend!
Were I to ask, refusing me
Would wound your generosity;
It needs must be a harder task
Refusing what I do not ask.
* XLV
TO GL YPTUS
WHEN your duty you never could do to your wife,
Why offer yourself to the surgeon's sharp knife?
* XLVI
TO NAEVOL US
GAY as the flowers that Hybla shows in spring,
What time the bees are plundering on the wing,
So shine your presses with their mantles bright,
So gleams your chest with evening wrappers white,
Spoils of her flocks Apulia sent to you,
Enough to clothe a Roman tribe anew.
And yet-O shame-you look with careless eye
Upon your friend who passes shivering by
In threadbare coat, and do not think to give
A rag or two to keep him just alive.,
You would not feel the loss, you need not fear:
The moths alone would be the sufferers here.
59