1You who were sung by my first Muse and must be sung by my last, Maecenas, you seek to shut me up again in the old school, though I have been watched enough and have already been presented with the wooden sword. 4My age is not the same, nor my mind. 4Veianius, having fixed his arms to the doorpost of Hercules, lies hidden away in the country, so as not to beg the crowd so often from the edge of the arena; there is someone who keeps sounding in my well-rinsed ear: 'Be sensible and unyoke the ageing horse in good time, lest at the end he stumble, a laughing-stock, and heave his flanks.' 10So now I lay aside both verses and all other playthings; 11what is true and fitting is my care and my question, and I am wholly taken up with this; 12I store up and set in order what I may soon draw out for use.
13And in case you happen to ask under what leader, under what roof I shelter: bound to swear by the words of no master, wherever the storm sweeps me, there I am carried as a guest. 16Now I become active and plunge into the waves of public life, a guardian and unbending attendant of true virtue; 18now I slip back stealthily into the precepts of Aristippus, and try to subject things to myself, not myself to things. 20As the night seems long to those whose mistress plays them false, and the day long to those who owe work, as the year drags for wards whom the strict guardianship of their mothers keeps down; 23so slow and thankless flow the times for me which delay my hope and plan of doing energetically that which profits the poor equally and the rich equally, and, if neglected, will harm boys and old men equally. It remains for me to guide and comfort myself with these first principles: you may not be able to strain your eyesight as far as Lynceus, yet you would not on that account, if your eyes were sore, scorn to have them anointed; 30nor, because you despair of the limbs of unconquered Glycon, would you refuse to keep your body free from knotty gout.
32It is possible to advance some distance, if one is not allowed to go further. 33Your breast burns with avarice and wretched desire: there are words and sayings with which you can soothe this pain and lay aside a great part of the disease. 36You swell with love of praise; 36there are sure rites of cleansing which can restore you once a little book has been read three times with a pure heart. 38The envious, the irascible, the idle, the drunkard, the lover: no one is so savage that he cannot be tamed, if only he lends a patient ear to cultivation. 41Virtue is to flee vice, and the beginning of wisdom is to be free of folly. You see with how much toil of mind and body you avoid what you believe the greatest evils, a meagre fortune and a shameful defeat at the polls; 45tireless, you run as a trader to the farthest Indians, fleeing poverty through sea, through rocks, through fires: so that you may stop caring for the things you foolishly admire and desire, will you not learn and listen and trust one who is better?
49What brawler round the villages and round the crossroads would scorn to be crowned at the great Olympic games, if he had the hope, if he had the prospect, of the sweet palm without the dust? 52Silver is cheaper than gold, gold than the virtues. 53'O citizens, citizens, money must be sought first; 54virtue after cash!' 54This the arcade of Janus teaches from top to bottom, this young and old repeat like lessons dictated to them, with satchels and slate hanging from the left arm. 57You have a mind, you have morals, you have eloquence and good faith, but you are six or seven thousand short of the four hundred; 59you will be one of the common people.
59But boys at play say, 'You will be king if you do right.' 60Let this be your wall of bronze: to be conscious of nothing wrong, to turn pale at no fault. 62Tell me, please, is the Roscian law better, or the boys' chant which offers kingship to those who do right, the chant sung by the manly Curii and the Camilli? 65Does he advise you better who says, 'Make money, money, honestly if you can, if not, by any means, money,' so that you may have a closer view of the tearful poems of Pupius, or he who, standing by you, urges and fits you to answer proud Fortune back, free and upright?
70But if the Roman people should perhaps ask me why I do not enjoy the same opinions as I enjoy the same colonnades, nor pursue or flee what it loves or hates, I shall reply as the cautious fox once replied to the sick lion: 'Because the footprints frighten me, all of them facing towards you, none facing back.' 76You are a beast of many heads; for what or whom am I to follow? 77Some men are eager to take up public contracts; 77there are those who hunt greedy widows with titbits and fruit and catch old men to put in their preserves; 80for many, wealth grows by hidden interest.
80But granted that different men are held by different affairs and pursuits: can the same men last a single hour approving the same things? 83'No bay in the world outshines delightful Baiae': if a rich man has said this, the lake and sea feel the love of their impatient master; 85but if a morbid whim has given him the omen, 'Tomorrow, workmen, you will carry your tools to Teanum!' 87The marriage bed stands in his hall: he says nothing is preferable, nothing better than the single life; 89if it does not, he swears that only husbands live well. 90With what knot could one hold this Proteus as he changes his shapes?
91What of the poor man? 91Laugh: he changes garrets, beds, baths, barbers, and in a hired boat he is as seasick as the rich man whom his own trireme carries. 94If I meet you with my hair cut by an uneven barber, you laugh; 95if by chance a worn shirt is under a freshly napped tunic, or if my toga sits awry and uneven, you laugh: what, when my judgement fights with itself, scorns what it sought, seeks again what it lately cast off, surges and is out of tune with the whole order of life, pulls down, builds up, changes square for round? 101You think I am mad in the ordinary way, and you do not laugh, nor think I need a doctor or a guardian assigned by the praetor, although you are the protector of my affairs and are vexed at a badly pared nail of the friend who depends on you and looks to you.
106In sum: the wise man is less only than Jupiter, rich, free, honoured, handsome, in short a king of kings, above all sound, except when phlegm troubles him.