Book III, Epigram 38 (Ker)

What reason or what confidence draws you to Rome, Sextus? What do you either hope or look for from that quarter? tell me. "I will conduct cases," you say, "more eloquently than Cicero himself, and there shall be in the three Forums no man my match." Atestinus and Civis each conducted cases — you knew both — but neither made his full rent. "If nothing-comes from this source, I will compose poems; hear them, you will call them Maro's work." You are crazy; in all those fellows there with their chill mantles you see Nasos and Virgils. "I will court the halls of great men." Barely three or four has that procedure supported; all the rest of the crowd are pale with hunger. "What shall I do? Advise me, for I am bent on living in Rome." If you are a good man you may live, Sextus, by accident.