1Having promised you that I would be in the country for five days, I am missed, a liar, for the whole of August. 2And yet, if you want me to live sound and in good health, the indulgence you grant me when I am ill you will grant me, Maecenas, when I am afraid of falling ill, while the first figs and the heat adorn the undertaker with his black lictors, while every father and fond mother turns pale for the children, and dutiful attentiveness and petty business in the forum bring on fevers and unseal wills. 10But if winter smears snow on the Alban fields, your bard will go down to the sea, take care of himself and read, huddled up; 12he will visit you again, dear friend, with the west winds, if you allow, and the first swallow.
14You have made me rich, not in the way a Calabrian host bids you eat his pears. 15'Eat up, please.' 16'That's enough now.' 16'Then take as many as you like.' 16'No, thank you.' 17'They won't be unwelcome little presents to take to your little children.' 18'I am as obliged by the gift as if I were sent away loaded.' 19'As you like; 19you'll leave them today for the pigs to eat.' 20The spendthrift and the fool give away what they despise and hate; 21this crop has produced ungrateful men, and will do so every year. The good and wise man says he is ready to help the deserving, yet he knows how coins differ from lupins.
24I will show myself worthy, too, as befits the credit of my benefactor. 25But if you will not let me go away anywhere, you must give back my strong lungs, the black hair on a narrow brow; give back sweet talk, give back graceful laughter, and lamenting over wine the flight of saucy Cinara. 29Once a slender little fox had crept through a narrow chink into a bin of grain, and having fed, was trying in vain to get out again with its full body; 32a weasel some way off said to it: 'If you want to escape from there, you must go back thin to the narrow hole you went in by when thin.' 34If I am challenged by this parable, I give everything back; 35I neither praise the sleep of the common people when stuffed with fowls, nor exchange my leisure, free as it is, for the riches of the Arabs.
37You have often praised my modesty, and have heard yourself called 'king' and 'father' to your face, and not a word more sparingly behind your back: see whether I can cheerfully give back what you have given. 40Not badly did Telemachus speak, offspring of long-suffering Ulysses: 'Ithaca is no place fit for horses, as it neither stretches out in level spaces nor is lavish with much grass: son of Atreus, I shall leave your gifts, which are more fitting for you.' 44Small things suit the small: royal Rome no longer pleases me, but quiet Tibur or peaceful Tarentum. 46Philippus, vigorous and brave and famous for pleading cases, while returning from business about the eighth hour and complaining, now advanced in years, that the Carinae were too far from the forum, caught sight, as they say, of a man close-shaven in a barber's empty booth, quietly cleaning his own nails with a little knife.
52'Demetrius' (this slave took Philippus' orders not clumsily), 'go, ask and bring back word where he is from, who he is, of what standing, who is his father or patron.' 55He goes, returns and reports: Volteius Mena by name, an auctioneer, of slender means, of blameless character, known to work hard and to rest in season, to earn and to spend, delighting in humble companions and a home of his own, and in the games and, when business is done, the Campus. 60'I would like to learn from the man himself all that you report: tell him to come to dinner.' 61Mena could hardly believe it, and marvelled silently to himself; why say more?
62'No, thank you,' he answers. 63'Would he refuse me?' 63'He does refuse, the rascal, and either slights you or fears you.' 64In the morning Philippus comes upon Volteius selling cheap trash to the tunic-clad common folk, and greets him first; he pleads to Philippus his work and the ties of his trade as excuse for not having come to his house that morning, and finally for not having seen him first. 69'Consider that I have forgiven you on this condition, if you dine with me today.' 70'As you like.' 70'Then you will come after the ninth hour: now go, and work hard to increase your means.' 72When he came to dinner, after saying things fit and unfit to say, he is at last sent off to bed.
73When he had often been seen to dart like a fish at the hidden hook, a client in the morning and now a regular guest, he is bidden to come as companion to the estate near the city when the Latin festival is proclaimed. Set up on ponies, he does not stop praising the Sabine soil and sky. Philippus sees and laughs, and, seeking for himself relaxation and amusement from every quarter, he gives him seven thousand sesterces, promises a loan of seven more, and persuades him to buy a little farm. 82He buys it. 82Not to delay you with long digressions beyond what is enough, from a smart townsman he becomes a rustic and prattles of nothing but furrows and vineyards, prepares his elms, kills himself with zeal and grows old with the love of possession.
86But when his sheep are lost to theft and his goats to disease, his crop has cheated his hope, his ox is worn to death by ploughing, vexed with his losses he seizes his nag in the middle of the night and makes angrily for Philippus' house. 90As soon as Philippus saw him rough and unshorn, 'Volteius,' he says, 'you seem to me too hard on yourself and too careful.' 92'By Pollux, patron,' he said, 'you would call me wretched, if you wished to give me my true name.' 94'So by your Genius and your right hand and your household gods I beg and beseech you, restore me to my former life!' 96Let him who has once seen how far what he left surpasses what he sought go back in good time and seek again what he abandoned.
98It is right that each should measure himself by his own rule and foot.