Book VI, Epigram 64 (Ker)

Although you are not born of the stern Fabian race, nor are such a one as Curius' wife, taken in labour while she was carrying his midday meal to him at the plough, brought forth under a shaggy oak, but the son of a father shorn in front of a mirror and of a harlot mother, and though your own wife might well call you wife, you take upon yourself to amend my poems that Fame knows well, and to carp at my happy triflings — these triflings, I say, to which the chief men of state and courts of law do not disdain to turn an attentive ear; these which the bookcases of immortal Silius think worthy of them, and Regulus with eloquent tongue repeats so often, and Sura commends, he who views hard by the struggles of the mighty Circus, Sura, the neighbour of Aventine Diana; these which our lord, though he bears so vast a weight of empire, does not disdain twice and thrice to unroll, Caesar himself. But you have more understanding, Minerva sharpened your mind to a keener point, and subtle Athens shaped your intellect! May I hang if there is not fuller flavour in that heart which, together with protruding guts, and huge hoof, and gory lights, decayed and a terror to the nose, the unfeeling butcher carries from street to street. You dare besides to write against me your paltry verses, which no one will know of, and to spoil your wretched paper. But if the heat of my wrath sets a brand upon you, that will remain and cling to you and be read all over the town, and Cinnamus, for all his cunning skill, will not efface the marks. Nay, take pity on yourself, and do not, lost man, tempt with your rabid tooth the foaming snout of a live bear. He may be gentle and lick your fingers and your hands, yet if pain, and wrath, and righteous anger compel him, he will be a bear. Weary out your fangs on an empty hide, and look out for some flesh to gnaw that cannot reply.