Book XI, Epigram 52 (Ker)

You will dine nicely, Julius Cerialis, at my house; if you have no better engagement, come. You will be able to observe the eighth hour; we will bathe together: you know how near Stephanus' baths are to me. First, there will be given you lettuce useful for relaxing the bowels, and shoots cut from their parent leeks; then tunny salted and bigger than a small lizard-fish, and one too which eggs will garnish in leaves of rue. Other eggs will not be wanting, roasted in embers of moderate heat, and a lump of cheese ripened over a Velabran hearth, and olives that have felt the Picenian frost. These are enough for a whet: do you want to know the rest? I will deceive you to make you come: fish, mussels, sow's paps, and fat birds of the poultry-yard and the marsh, which even Stella is not used to serve except at a special dinner. More I promise you: I will recite nothing to you, even although you yourself read again your "Giants" straight through, or your "Pastorals" that rank next to immortal Virgil,