1Yes, I did say that Lucilius' verses run on with clumsy feet. 2Who is so foolishly partial to Lucilius as not to admit this? 3But on the same page the same man is praised because he scoured the city with plenty of salt. 5Yet while granting this I would not grant the rest as well; 5for at that rate I would admire the mimes of Laberius too as fine poems. 7So it is not enough to make your listener's mouth gape with laughter; 8and yet there is some merit in this too. 9There is need of brevity, so that the thought may run on and not entangle itself in words that weigh down tired ears; and there is need of a style now grave, often playful, taking the part now of orator and poet, at times of the wit, who spares his strength and deliberately makes it thin.
14Ridicule often cuts through great matters more forcefully and better than sharpness. 16The men by whom the Old Comedy was written stood firm on this; in this they should be imitated; 17men whom neither pretty Hermogenes has ever read, nor that ape of yours, trained to sing nothing but Calvus and Catullus. 20'But he did a great thing in mixing Greek words with Latin.' O late learners, can you really think it hard and wonderful, what came easily to Pitholeon of Rhodes? 23'But a style blended of both languages is pleasanter, as when a Chian vintage is mixed with Falernian.' When you are making verses, I ask you yourself — or also when you have to plead a hard case for Petillius?
27No doubt, forgetting your fatherland and father Latinus, while Pedius Poplicola and Corvinus sweat over their cases, you would prefer to mix words fetched from abroad with your native speech, like a bilingual man of Canusium. 31And when I, born this side of the sea, was making little Greek verses, Quirinus forbade me, appearing after midnight, when dreams are true, with words like these: 'You would not carry wood into a forest more madly than if you chose to swell the great throngs of the Greeks.' While bombastic Alpinus murders Memnon and while he misshapes the muddy head of the Rhine, I play at these things, which are not to be heard competing in the temple with Tarpa as judge, nor to return again and again to be watched in the theatres.
40You alone of living men, Fundanius, can chat away in genial little books in which a sharp-witted courtesan and Davus trick old Chremes; Pollio sings the deeds of kings in triple-beat feet; 43keen Varius leads on the strong epic as no one else can; to Virgil the Muses who delight in the countryside have granted tenderness and grace: this was what I could write better, after Varro of Atax and certain others had tried it in vain, though lesser than its inventor; 48nor would I dare to pull from his head the crown that clings there with much praise. 50But I said that he flows muddy, often carrying more that should be removed than should be left.
51Come, I ask you, do you, a learned man, find nothing to criticise in great Homer? 53Does genial Lucilius change nothing in the tragedian Accius? 54Does he not laugh at verses of Ennius as falling short of their dignity, while speaking of himself as no greater than those he has censured? 56What forbids us too, as we read the writings of Lucilius, to ask whether it was his own nature or the harsh nature of his subjects that denied him verses more finished and more smoothly flowing than if someone, content merely to enclose something in six feet, loves to have written two hundred lines before dinner and as many after dining, like the talent of Tuscan Cassius, more seething than a rushing river, who, so the story goes, was burnt on a pyre of his own book-boxes and books?
64Grant, I say, that Lucilius was genial and urbane, grant that he was also more polished than the author of a rough verse untouched by the Greeks, and than the crowd of older poets; 67yet he, if fate had brought him down into this age of ours, would rub away much from his work, would cut back everything that trailed on beyond perfection, and in making his verse would often scratch his head and bite his nails to the quick. 72You must often turn your stylus, if you are going to write things worth reading a second time, and not toil to make the crowd admire you, but be content with a few readers.
74Or would you be mad enough to prefer your poems to be dictated in cheap schools? 76Not I; 76for it is enough for me that the knights applaud, as bold Arbuscula said when hissed off the stage, scorning the rest. 78Should I be troubled by that bug Pantilius? 78Or tormented because Demetrius carps at me behind my back? 79Or because silly Fannius, the dinner guest of Hermogenes Tigellius, attacks me? 81Let Plotius and Varius, Maecenas and Virgil, Valgius, and excellent Octavius approve these writings, and Fuscus, and would that both the Visci praised them, ambition set aside. 84You I can name, Pollio, you, Messalla, with your brother, and with you, Bibulus and Servius, and with them you, candid Furnius, and many others, learned men and friends, whom I knowingly pass over, on whom I would like these writings, such as they are, to smile, and should be grieved if they pleased less than I hope.
90Demetrius, and you, Tigellius, I bid you go and whine among the chairs of your girl pupils. 92Go, boy, and quickly add this to my little book.