Book II, Epigram 64 (Ker)

While you are shaping yourself, now into a pleader, now into a teacher of rhetoric, and don't decide, Taurus, what you want to be, the age of Peleus and of Priam and of Nestor has passed, and by now 'twere late for you even to be retiring. Begin — three rhetoricians have died in a single year — if you have any spirit, if any proficiency in your calling. If your vote is against the schools, all the courts are alive with suits: even Marsyas himself may turn into a pleader. Up, then! put off delay; how long shall we be waiting for you? While you cannot resolve what you are, at last you may be nothing.