1If you believe old Cratinus, learned Maecenas, no poems can please for long or live which are written by drinkers of water. 3Ever since Liber enrolled poets, half-mad, among his Satyrs and Fauns, the sweet Muses have usually smelled of wine in the morning. 6Homer is convicted of being a winebibber by his praises of wine; 7father Ennius himself never leapt forth to sing of arms unless he had been drinking. 8'I shall assign the forum and the Well-head of Libo to the sober, and forbid the strait-laced to sing': as soon as I had issued this edict, poets did not stop competing in neat wine by night and reeking of it by day. What then?
12If someone, wild with a grim face and bare feet and the weave of a scanty toga, were to imitate Cato, would he represent the virtue and character of Cato? 15His tongue, trying to rival Timagenes, burst Iarbitas, while he strove and strained to be thought urbane and eloquent. 17A model imitable in its faults deceives: but if I happened to grow pale, they would drink bloodless cumin. 19O imitators, slavish herd, how often your fuss has stirred my bile, how often my laughter! 21I was the first to set free footsteps through empty ground; I did not tread with my foot where others had. 22He who trusts himself will lead and rule the swarm.
23I was the first to show Parian iambics to Latium, following the rhythms and spirit of Archilochus, not his subjects and the words that hounded Lycambes. 26And lest you crown me with scantier leaves because I feared to change his metres and his poetic art, masculine Sappho tempers the Muse of Archilochus with her metre, and Alcaeus tempers it too, but different in subjects and arrangement, who neither looks for a father-in-law to smear with black verses, nor weaves a noose for his bride with a defamatory song. Him, never sung by another mouth before, I, the Latin lyrist, have made known. 33It delights me, bringing things unsung, to be read by the eyes and held in the hands of the freeborn.
35You would like to know why the ungrateful reader praises and loves my little works at home, but unjustly disparages them outside his door: I do not hunt the votes of the fickle mob at the cost of dinners and gifts of worn clothing; 39I, a hearer and champion of noble writers, do not deign to canvass the tribes of critics and their platforms. 41Hence those tears. 41'I am ashamed to recite in crowded theatres writings unworthy of them and to give weight to trifles,' if I say this, someone says, 'You are joking, and are keeping these for the ears of Jupiter; for you are confident that you alone distil poetic honey, handsome in your own eyes.' 45To this I am afraid to sneer, and, lest I be scratched by my opponent's sharp nail, I cry 'This place does not suit me' and ask for an interval; for play has produced anxious rivalry and anger, and anger fierce enmities and deadly war.