Epistles 1.14 (Fairclough)

Bailiff of my woods and of the little farm which makes me myself again—while you disdain it, though the home of five households and wont to send to Varia their five honest heads—let us have a match to see whether I more stoutly root out thorns from the mind or you from the land, and whether Horace or his farm is in a better state.

For me, though kept here by the love and grief of Lamia, who is sighing for his brother, grieving for his lost brother inconsolably, yet thither thought and feeling bear me longing to burst the barriers that block the track. I call him happy who lives in the country; you him who dwells in the city. One who likes another’s lot, of course dislikes his own. Each is foolish and unfairly blames the undeserving place; what is at fault is the mind, which never escapes from itself.

You, as a common drudge, used to sigh in secret for the country; now as a bailiff you long for the town, its games and baths: as for me, you know that I’m consistent with myself, and depart in gloom, whenever hateful business drags me to Rome. Our tastes are not the same: therein lies the difference between you and me. What you hold to be desert and inhospitable wilds, he who shares my views calls lovely, and hates what you believe so beautiful. ’Tis the brothel, I see, and greasy cookshop that stir in you a longing for the city, and the fact that that poky spot will grow pepper and spice as soon as grapes, and that there is no tavern hard by that can supply you with wine and no flute-playing courtesan, to whose strains you can dance and thump the ground. And yet you toil over fields long untouched by the hoe, you care for the ox after he is unyoked, and you fill him up with fodder you have stripped; when you are dead tired, the brook brings fresh work, for if rain has fallen, it must be taught by many a mounded dam to spare the sunny meadow. Now come, hear what makes the discord in our common song. One whom fine-spun clothes became, and shining locks, one who, as you know, though empty-handed, found favour with greedy Cinara, and in midday hours would drink the clear Falernian, now takes pleasure in a simple meal, and a nap on the grass beside the stream: nor is it shameful to have once been foolish, but not to cut folly short. Where you live, no one with eye askance detracts from my comforts, or poisons them with the bite of secret hate. As I move sods and stones the neighbours laugh. You would rather be munching rations with the slaves in town; it is their number you fain would join: my sharp-witted groom envies you the use of fuel, flock, and garden. The ox longs for the horse’s trappings: the horse, when lazy, longs to plough. What I shall advise is that each contentedly practise the trade he understands.