1The guilds of flute-girls, the drug-sellers, beggars, actresses, buffoons, all this tribe is grieving and anxious at the death of the singer Tigellius. 4He was generous, you see. 4This man, on the other hand, afraid of being called a spendthrift, would refuse to give a needy friend the means to drive off cold and harsh hunger. 7If you ask that one why, the wretch, he strips away the splendid fortune of his grandfather and father with thankless gluttony, buying up every delicacy with borrowed money, he answers that it is because he would not want to be thought mean and small-spirited. 11He is praised by some, blamed by others. 12Fufidius fears the name of a wastrel and good-for-nothing: this man cuts five times the usual interest out of the principal, and the more desperate each man is, the more fiercely he presses him; 16he hunts down the bonds of young men who have just put on the toga of manhood and live under strict fathers.
17Who, on hearing this, does not cry out 'Great Jupiter!'? 18'But surely he spends on himself in proportion to his profit?' You could hardly believe how little a friend he is to himself, so much so that the father whom Terence's play brings on, who lived wretchedly after driving his son away, did not torment himself worse than this man. 23If anyone should now ask, 'What is the point of all this?', it is this: while fools avoid vices, they run into their opposites. 25Maltinus walks with his tunic trailing low; there is another who wears his hitched right up to his obscene groin; 26dapper Rufillus smells of lozenges, Gorgonius of goat: there is no middle way.
28There are some who would not touch any women except those whose ankles are covered by a flounce stitched to their dress; another, on the contrary, none but one standing in a stinking brothel. 31When a certain well-known man was coming out of a brothel, 'Blessings on your virtue!' said the godlike wisdom of Cato; 33'for as soon as foul lust has swollen the veins, it is right for young men to come down here, rather than to grind away at other men's wives.' 'I should not like to be praised for that,' says Cupiennius, admirer of the cunt in white. 37It is worth your while to hear, you who do not wish adulterers to prosper, how they struggle on every side, and how their pleasure is spoilt by much pain, and, rare as it is, comes amid often cruel dangers.
41One has thrown himself headlong from a roof, another has been flogged to death, one in flight has fallen among a fierce gang of robbers, another has paid money to save his skin, another the stable-boys have pissed on; 44indeed it even happened that they cut off one man's balls and lustful tail with a blade. 46'Rightly so,' said everyone: Galba disagreed. 47But how much safer is the merchandise in the second class — the freedwomen, I mean — though Sallustius is no less mad for them than the man who commits adultery. 49But if he wished to be good and generous, as far as his means and reason would advise and as far as one may be bountiful in moderation, he would give as much as was enough and would bring neither loss nor disgrace upon himself.
53But he hugs himself on this one point, loves and praises this: 'I touch no married lady,' just as Marsaeus once, the famous lover of Origo, who gives his ancestral farm and home to an actress, said, 'Let me never have anything to do with other men's wives.' But he has to do with actresses, with prostitutes, from whom his reputation takes more harm than his fortune. 59Or is it quite enough for you to avoid the role, and not the thing that does harm wherever it is? 61To lose your good name and to sink your father's estate in the mud is bad wherever it happens. 62What difference does it make whether you sin with a married lady or with a maid in a toga?
64Villius, Sulla's son-in-law through Fausta, poor man, deceived by this one name, paid a penalty more than enough and beyond, beaten with fists and attacked with steel, shut out of doors while Longarenus was inside. 68If, as he saw such great troubles, his mind were to say to him in the words of his cock, 'What do you want? 69Do I ever demand of you a cunt descended from a great consul and veiled in a matron's robe, when my passion has boiled up?' what would he answer? 72'The girl is the daughter of a great father.' But how much better, and how contrary to this, is the advice of nature, rich in her own resources, if only you would manage them rightly and not mix what should be avoided with what should be sought.
76Do you think it makes no difference whether you suffer through your own fault or through circumstances? 77So, that you may not regret it, stop chasing married women, from whom one draws more trouble and pain than one plucks profit from the business. 80Nor, though she may be decked in snow-white and green gems (that may be your taste, Cerinthus), is the lady's thigh any softer or her leg any straighter, and the girl in the toga's is very often better still. 83Add to this that she carries her wares without paint, openly shows what she has for sale, and, if she has anything fine, does not boast of it and hold it up to view while she looks for a way to hide what is ugly.
86Great men have this custom when they buy horses: they inspect them covered, so that, if a handsome form rests, as often happens, on a soft hoof, it may not take in the gaping buyer because the haunches are beautiful, the head short, the neck high. 90They are right in this: do not gaze at the body's best points with the eyes of Lynceus, and look at what is bad blinder than Hypsaea. 92'O what a leg, O what arms!' But she has no buttocks, a big nose, a short waist and long feet. 94Of a married lady you could see nothing but the face, since, unless she is Catia, she covers the rest with a dress hanging low.
96If you seek forbidden things, ringed round with a rampart — for that is what drives you mad — many things will then be in your way: guards, litter, hairdressers, hangers-on, a robe let down to the ankles and a mantle wrapped round, very many things which grudge you a clear view of the goods. 101With the other, nothing stands in the way: in Coan silks you can see her almost as if naked, so you can see that she has no bad leg or ugly foot; 103you could measure her flank with your eye. 103Or would you rather have a trap laid for you and the price wrung from you before the goods are shown?
105He sings how the hunter chases the hare in the deep snow, but would not touch it when it is laid out like that, and adds: 'My love is like this; 107for it flies past what lies in the open, and chases what flees.' Do you hope that by little verses like these the pains and passions and heavy cares can be driven from your breast? 111Would it not be more useful to inquire what limit nature sets to desires, what she will bear to go without, what she will grieve to be denied, and to separate the empty from the solid? 114When thirst burns your throat, surely you do not look for golden cups?
115When you are hungry, surely you do not scorn everything but peacock and turbot? 116When your groin is swelling, if a maid or a home-born slave boy is at hand whom you could set upon at once, surely 118you would not rather burst with lust? 119Not I; 119for I like a love that is ready to hand and easy. 120The woman who says 'In a little while', 'But more money', 'If my husband goes out', Philodemus says is for the eunuch priests; for himself, he says, he wants the one who neither costs a great price nor delays when she is told to come. 123Let her be fair and straight, and smart only so far as not to want to look taller or fairer than nature makes her.
125When she has put her left side beneath my right, she is Ilia and Egeria; 126I give her any name I please. 127Nor am I afraid, while I am fucking her, that her husband will rush back from the country, the door be broken, the dog bark, the house ring all round, battered with a great din, the woman, deathly pale, leap from the bed, the maid in the secret cry that she is ruined, she fearing for her legs, the wife caught in the act for her dowry, and I for myself. 132One must run with tunic unbelted and feet bare, so as not to lose one's money or one's buttocks or at least one's good name.
134To be caught is wretched: I could prove it even with Fabius as judge.