Book X, Epigram 76 (Ker)

Does this. Fortune, seem to you to be fair? Here is a citizen, not of Syria or Parthia, no knight from Cappadocian slave-stands, but home-born, one of the crowd of Remus and of Numa, a friend pleasant, honest, blameless, learned in either tongue, whose one fault — and tliat a great one— is that he is a poet: 'tis Maevius, who shivers in a black cowl. Incitatus, the mule-driver, shines in scarlet. field. Torquatus built warm baths bi-ight with variegated marble: Otacilius set up a geyser. On his land Torquatus laid out a laurel-grove: Otacilius planted a hundred chestnuts. When Torquatus was if consul the other was a vestryman in such a dignity ' deeming himself no lesser man. Just as the huge ox in the fable caused the frog to burst himself, so, I think, Torquatus will burst Otacilius.