Book XI, Epigram 24 (Ker)

While I escort you and bring you home, while I lend my ear to your babbling, and praise whatever you say and do, how many verses, Labullus, might have seen the light! Does not this seem to you an injury if, what Rome reads, the stranger asks for, the knight does not laugh at, the senator knows by heart, the pleader praises, the poet carps at — this because of you is lost .'' Is this fair, Lal)ullus? Is this what any man would endure? That the number of your wretched clients should increase, of my books the number decrease? 'Tis now almost thirty days, and scarce a single page has been finished. This is the result when a poet does not wish to dine at home!