Epistles 1.15 (Fairclough)

What’s the winter like, my Vala, at Velia, what’s the climate at Salernum, what sort of people live there, what kind of road is it—for Antonius Musa makes Baiae useless to me, and yet puts me in ill favour there, now that in midwinter I drench myself in cold water. Of course the town murmurs at its myrtle-groves being deserted, and its sulphur baths despised, so famous for driving a lingering disorder from the sinews, and takes offence at invalids who dare to plunge head and stomach under the showers from Clusium’s springs, or who repair to Gabii and its cold country-side. I must change my resort, and drive my horse past the familiar lodgings. “Where are you going? I’m not bound for Cumae or Baiae,” so will the rider say as he tugs in anger at the left rein—but the horse’s ear is in its bridled mouth—which town has the better supply of food, do they drink rain-water from tanks, or have they spring-water, welling forth all the year—(for that region’s wines I put out of court: in my country home I can stand and suffer anything; but when I go to the seaside I need something generous and mellow, to drive care away, to flow with rich hope into veins and heart, to find me a flow of words, and to give me the grace of youth with the ladies of Lucania)—which country rears more hares, which, more boars, which one’s seas give more hiding to fish and sea-urchins, so that I may return home from there a fat Phaeacian—all this you must write us, and we must credit you in full.

Maenius gallantly used up all his mother and father had left him, then came into note as a city wit, a parasite at large, with no fixed fold, a man who when dinnerless knew not friend apart from foe, but would savagely trump up scandal against anybody, the market’s ruin, a cyclone and abyss—and so, whatever he gained, he gave to his greedy maw. This fellow, whenever he got little or nothing from those who applauded or feared his wicked wit, would sup on plates of tripe and cheap lamb, enough to satisfy three bears, so as actually to proclaim that prodigals should have their bellies branded with white-hot iron—he, a Bestius reformed! Yet the same man, if he ever got hold of some larger booty, would turn it into smoke and ashes, and then, “In faith, I don’t wonder,” he would say, “if some devour their substance, since there is nothing better than a fat thrush, nothing finer than a large sow’s paunch.”

Such a man, in truth, am I. When means fail, I cry up a safe and lowly lot, resolute enough where all is paltry: but when something better and richer comes my way I, the same man, say that only men like you are wise and live well—whose invested wealth is displayed in garish villas.