Book X, Epigram 48 (Ker)

Her crowd of priests announces to the Egyptian heifer the eighth hour, and the praetorian guard now returns to camp and another takes its place. This hour tempers the warm baths, the hour before breathes heat too great, and the sixth is hot with the excessive heat of Nero's baths. Stella, Nepos, Canius, Cerialis, Flaccus, do you come? My crescent couch takes seven: we are six, add Lupus. My bailiff's wife has brought me mallows that will unload the stomach, and the various wealth the garden bears; amongst which is squat lettuce and clipped leek, and flatulent mint is not wanting nor the salacious herb; sliced eggs shall garnish lizard-fish served with rue, and there shall be a paunch dripping from the tunny's brine. Herein is your whet: the modest dinner shall be served in a single course — a kid rescued from the jaws of a savage wolf, and meat-balls to require no carver's knife, and beans, the food of artisans, and tender young sprouts; to these a chicken, and a ham that has already suri ived three dinners, shall be added. When you have had your fill I will give you ripe apples, wine without lees from a Nomentan flagon, which was three years old in Frontinus' second consulship. To crown these shall be jests without gall, and a freedom not to be dreaded the next morning, and no word you would wish unsaid; let my guest converse of the Green and the Blue; my cups do not make any man a defendant.