Book IV, Epigram 55 (Ker)

Lucius, the glory of your time, who let not hoary Gaius and our native Tagus yield to eloquent Arpi, let him who was born amid Argive cities chant in his song Thebes, or Mycenae, or illustrious Rhodes, or of the wanton wrestling-grounds of Ledaean Lacedaemon. Let not us, sprung from Celts and from Iberians, be ashamed to recall in grateful verse the harsher names of our native land, Bilbilis, excellent in steel for war, that surpasses the Chalybes and the Noricans, and Platea ringing with her native iron, which with its small but troublous stream, Salo, armour's temperer, encircles; and the guardian god and choruses of Rixamae, and the festive feasts of Carduae, and Peteris blushing with twined roses, and Rigae, our fathers' ancient theatre, and the Silai unerring with the light javelin, and the lakes of Turgontum and'Perusia, and the clear shallows of small Tuetonissa, and Buradon's hallowed oak-wood, wherethrough even a lazy wayfarer is fain to walk, and the fields of Vativesca on the slope which Manlius tills with sturdy steers. Do you laugh, nice reader, at these names as so rustic? You may laugh: these names, so rustic, I prefer to Butunti.