1If you rightly enjoy, Iccius, the Sicilian produce of Agrippa which you collect, there is no way that greater abundance could be given you by Jupiter. 3Stop your complaints: for he is not poor who has enough for his use. If it is well with your belly, your sides and your feet, royal riches can add nothing greater. 7If perhaps, abstaining from what is set before you, you live on herbs and nettles, you will go on living the same way, even if Fortune's flowing stream should suddenly gild you, either because money cannot change one's nature, or because you think all things lower than virtue alone. 12We wonder that Democritus' cattle ate his fields and crops while his mind, swift without the body, was travelling abroad; 14when you, amid so great an itch and contagion of gain, have no petty thoughts and still care for sublime things: what causes confine the sea, what regulates the year, whether the stars roam and wander of their own accord or by command, what obscures the moon's orb, what brings it forth, what the discordant harmony of things means and can do, whether Empedocles or the keen wit of Stertinius is raving.
21But whether you are slaughtering fish or leeks and onions, make use of Pompeius Grosphus, and if he asks for anything, offer it freely; 23Grosphus will ask nothing but what is right and fair. The market price of friends is low when good men lack something. 25But that you may not be ignorant of how Roman affairs stand, the Cantabrian has fallen to the valour of Agrippa, the Armenian to that of Claudius Nero; 27Phraates on bended knee has accepted Caesar's law and rule; 28golden Plenty has poured her fruits on Italy from her full horn.