Book IV, Epigram 66 (Ker)

You have lived a provincial life always, Linus, and nothing in the world can be more inexpensive than that. On the Ides, and now and again on the Kalends, your poor toga has been shaken out, and a single dinner-suit has gone through ten summers. The glade has sent you boar, the field the unbought hare; the wood, when beaten, has given plump fieldfares. The captured fish has come from the river's eddies, a red jar has poured out no foreign wine. No boy-slave has been sent from an Argolic tribe, but a country troop has stood by a homely hearth. You have intrigued with your housekeeper, or with a rough tenant-farmer's wife oft as your passions pricked have warmed with wine. Fire has not harmed your house nor the Dog-star your fields, nor has your ship — there swims no ship of yours — sunk in the sea. You have never substituted the die for the alluring knuckle-bone, but your sole stake has been a few nuts. Tell me, where is the million your grasping mother left you? 'Tis nowhere; you have achieved, Linus, a difficult feat!