1You seem, my book, to be looking towards Vertumnus and Janus, no doubt so that you may be put on sale, smoothed by the Sosii's pumice. 3You hate the keys and seals dear to the modest; 4you groan at being shown to few and praise public places, though you were not brought up so. Run off where you long to go down. 6Once you are let out, there will be no return for you. 6'What have I done, wretch that I am? 7What did I want?' 7you will say, when someone hurts you, and you know that you are rolled up tight when your sated lover grows languid. 9But if the augur is not made foolish by resentment at your offence, you will be dear at Rome until your youth deserts you; 11when, handled by the hands of the crowd, you have begun to grow grubby, either you will silently feed idle moths, or you will run away to Utica, or be sent bound to Ilerda.
14Your adviser, unheeded, will laugh, like that man who angrily pushed his disobedient donkey over the cliffs: for who would toil to save someone against his will? 17This too awaits you, that stammering old age will come upon you teaching boys their letters in the outlying streets. 19When the mild sun has brought you more listeners, you will tell them that I, born of a freedman father and in slender means, spread wings too big for my nest, so that what you take from my birth you may add to my merits; 23that I pleased the first men of the city in war and at home; that I was of small stature, prematurely grey.
24fond of the sun, quick to anger, yet easily appeased. 26If anyone happens to ask you my age, let him know that I completed four times eleven Decembers in the year when Lollius took Lepidus as his colleague.