1What the winter is like at Velia, Vala, what the climate at Salernum, what kind of people the region has and what sort of road (for Antonius Musa says Baiae is useless for me, and yet makes me hateful to it, now that I am drenched in cold water in mid-winter. Of course the town groans that its myrtle groves are abandoned and its sulphur baths, said to drive lingering disease from the sinews, are scorned, jealous of the sick who dare to put head and stomach under the springs of Clusium and make for Gabii and the cold countryside. 10I must change my resort, and the horse be driven past his familiar inns. 'Where are you going?
11My road is not to Cumae or Baiae,' the rider will say angrily, pulling the left rein; 13but a horse's ear is in his bridled mouth); 14which people a larger supply of grain feeds; 15whether they drink collected rainwater or wells of ever-flowing water (for the wines of that coast I care nothing about: at my country place I can put up with and endure anything; 18when I have come to the sea, I need something generous and mellow, to drive away cares, to flow with rich hope into my veins and my heart, to supply words, to commend me as young to a Lucanian sweetheart); 22which district rears more hares, which boars; 23which seas hide more fish and sea-urchins, so that I may return home from there fat as a Phaeacian: it is right for you to write to us, and for us to trust you.
26Maenius, when, having bravely run through his mother's and his father's property, he began to be thought a wit about town, a wandering buffoon with no fixed manger, who, when unfed, would not tell citizen from enemy, savage at inventing any insult against anyone, the ruin and tempest and abyss of the meat market, used to give whatever he had got to his greedy belly. 33This man, when he had taken nothing or little from those who favoured or feared his wickedness, would dine on platters of tripe and cheap lamb, enough to satisfy three bears; 36so that he would say, like Bestius reformed, that the bellies of spendthrifts should be branded with a red-hot plate.
37Yet the same man, whenever he had come upon some bigger plunder and had turned it all to smoke and ash, used to say: 'By Hercules, I am not surprised if some people eat up their property, since there is nothing better than a fat thrush, nothing finer than a large sow's womb.' 42Clearly I am this man. 42For I praise what is safe and lowly when resources fail, stout enough amid cheap things; but when something better and richer comes my way, I, the same man, say that you alone are wise and live well, whose money is seen to be founded in gleaming villas.