1If you can bear to recline as a guest on couches made by Archias, and are not afraid to dine on a dish of greens of every kind from a modest platter, I shall wait for you at home at sunset, Torquatus. You will drink wine bottled in Taurus' second consulship, between marshy Minturnae and Petrinum near Sinuessa. 6If you have anything better, send for it, or submit to my orders. 7The hearth has long been gleaming and the furniture is tidy for you. Put away light hopes and the contest for riches and Moschus' case: tomorrow, the day made festive by Caesar's birth grants leave to lie in; 10we may, without penalty, prolong the summer night with kindly talk.
12What is fortune to me, if I am not allowed to use it? 13The man who scrimps and is too strict out of concern for his heir sits next to a madman. I shall begin to drink and scatter flowers, and I shall even put up with being thought reckless. 16What does drunkenness not unlock? 16It opens what is hidden, bids hopes come true, pushes the coward into battle, takes the burden from anxious minds, teaches new skills. 19Whom have brimming cups not made eloquent? 20Whom, pinched by poverty, have they not set free? 21These things I am charged to see to, and I am both fit and not unwilling: that no unsightly coverlet, no dirty napkin make you wrinkle your nose, that tankard and dish show you yourself, that among faithful friends there be no one to carry what is said out of doors, that like may meet and be joined with like.
26For you I shall bring Butra and Septicius, and Sabinus, unless an earlier dinner and a girl he prefers detain him. 28There is room for several 'shadows' too; but the smell of goats oppresses parties too crowded. Write back how many you would like to be, and, leaving business aside, give the slip by the back door to the client guarding your hall.