Book XII, Epigram 17 (Ker)

You ask, Laetinus, why, after so many days, your fever doesn't leave you, and you are incessantly groaning. It rides in your litter with you, and with you it bathes; it dines on mushrooms, oysters, sow's paps, boar; it often gets drunk on Setine, and often on Falernian, and drinks Caecuban only when strained through snow-water; wreathed with roses and dark with balsam it hes at board, and it sleeps in down and on a purple bed. Seeing it is so welloff, seeing it lives so comfortably with you, do you wish your fever to migrate in preference to Dama?