Book XII, Epigram 26 (Ker)

Inasmuch as you, though a senator, tread innumerable thresholds in the morning, I, a knight, appear to you slothful because I do not scour the city from early dawn, and wearily bring home with me a thousand kisses. But you do this that you may add a new name to the purple records, or be sent to govern Numidian or Cappadocian tribes. But I, whom you compel to break ofF my slumber in the middle, and to bear and endure the morning mud, what do I look for? When my protruding foot gapes out of a broken shoe, and a sudden downpour of heavy rain falls, and my home-born slave, who has taken away my cloak, does not appear when I bawl for him, a slave approaches my frozen ear and "Laetorius asks you to dine with him," he says. For twenty sesterces a head? Not I: I prefer starvation to getting a dinner as reward, while you get a province, and to our perfoi-ming the same services and not earning the same recompense.