1What did you think of Chios, Bullatius, and famous Lesbos, what of elegant Samos, what of Sardis, Croesus' royal seat, what of Smyrna and Colophon? 3Are they greater or less than their fame? Do they all look shabby beside the Campus and the river Tiber? 5Or has one of the cities of Attalus come into your prayers, or do you praise Lebedus out of loathing for the sea and the roads? 7You know what Lebedus is: a village more deserted than Gabii and Fidenae; 8yet there I would wish to live, forgetting my friends and to be forgotten by them, and to watch from the land Neptune raging far off.
11But neither will the man who travels from Capua to Rome, spattered with rain and mud, want to live in an inn; 12nor does one who has caught a chill praise ovens and baths as fully providing a happy life; 15nor, if the strong south wind has tossed you on the deep, would you for that reason sell your ship on the far side of the Aegean sea. 17To one who is sound, Rhodes and lovely Mytilene do what a heavy cloak does at midsummer, athletic shorts in snowy winds, the Tiber in midwinter, a stove in the month of August. 20While it is allowed, and Fortune keeps her face kind, let Samos and Chios and Rhodes be praised at Rome from afar. Whatever hour the god has blessed you with, take it with a grateful hand, and do not put off pleasant things to another year; 24so that, in whatever place you have been, you may say you have lived gladly. For if it is reason and good sense that take away cares, not a place commanding a view of the wide-spreading sea, they change their sky, not their mind, who rush across the sea. A busy idleness wears us out: with ships and four-horse chariots we seek to live well. What you seek is here, it is at Ulubrae, if a balanced mind does not fail you.