1When I had left great Rome, Aricia received me with modest lodging; 2my companion was the rhetorician Heliodorus, by far the most learned of the Greeks; 3then Forum Appii, crammed with boatmen and grasping innkeepers. 5This stretch we lazily divided in two, though for travellers girt higher than we it is a single day: the Appian Way is less hard on the slow. 7Here, because of the water, which was utterly foul, I declare war on my belly, waiting with no good grace for my companions as they dined. 9Already night was preparing to draw her shadows over the earth and to spread the constellations across the sky: then the slaves began to heap abuse on the boatmen, the boatmen on the slaves: 'Bring her in here!'; 12'You're packing in three hundred!'; 12'Whoa, that's enough now!' While the fares are collected, while the mule is harnessed, a whole hour goes by.
14Wretched gnats and marsh frogs drive away sleep; 15a boatman, soaked in plenty of sour wine, sings of his absent girl, and a traveller vies with him; 17at last the traveller, tired out, begins to sleep, and the lazy boatman turns the mule out to graze, ties its tether to a stone, and snores on his back. 20And now day was at hand when we notice that the barge is making no progress, until one hot-headed fellow jumps out and belabours the mule's and the boatman's head and loins with a willow cudgel: at long last, at the fourth hour, we are put ashore. 24We washed our faces and hands, Feronia, in your stream.
25Then, after breakfast, we crawl on three miles and climb up to Anxur, perched on its far-gleaming rocks. 27Here excellent Maecenas was to come, and Cocceius, both sent as envoys on matters of great importance, practised in reconciling estranged friends. 30Here, suffering from sore eyes, I smeared black ointment on them. 31Meanwhile Maecenas arrives, and Cocceius, and with them Fonteius Capito, a man perfect to the fingertip, a friend to Antony like no other. 34Fundi, with Aufidius Luscus as praetor, we gladly leave behind, laughing at the regalia of the crazy clerk, his bordered toga and broad stripe and pan of coals. 37Then, tired, we stay in the city of the Mamurrae, Murena providing the house, Capito the kitchen.
39The next day dawns, by far the most welcome; 39for at Sinuessa Plotius and Varius and Virgil meet us, souls than whom the earth has borne none purer, nor is anyone more bound to them than I. 43Oh, what embraces there were, and what great joy! 44While I am in my right mind, I would compare nothing to a pleasant friend. 45The little villa nearest to the Campanian bridge gave us shelter, and the purveyors gave the wood and salt that they are bound to provide. 47From here the mules lay down their packs at Capua in good time. 48Maecenas goes off to play, Virgil and I to sleep; 49for ball games are bad for sore eyes and for weak stomachs.
50From here the well-stocked villa of Cocceius takes us in, which lies above the inns of Caudium. 51Now, Muse, I would have you recall for me in brief the fight between Sarmentus the jester and Messius Cicirrus, and from what fathers each was born that entered the quarrel. 54Messius comes of the famous Oscan stock; 55Sarmentus' mistress is still alive: sprung from such ancestors they came to the fight. 56Sarmentus first: 'I say you're like a wild horse.' We laugh, and Messius himself says 'Agreed,' and tosses his head. 58'Oh, if the horn had not been cut out of your forehead,' says Sarmentus, 'what would you do, when you threaten like this, dehorned as you are?' And indeed an ugly scar had disfigured the bristly forehead on the left side of his face.
62After many jokes about the Campanian disease and about his face, he asked him to dance the Shepherd Cyclops: he would need no mask or tragic buskins. 65Cicirrus had much to say to this: he asked whether he had yet given his chain to the household gods, as he had vowed; 66though he was a clerk, his mistress's claim on him was none the weaker; 67lastly he asked why he had ever run away, when one pound of meal would be enough for him, slight and puny as he was. 70Altogether merrily we draw that dinner out. 71From here we head straight for Beneventum, where our busy host was nearly burnt while turning lean thrushes over the fire.
73For as Vulcan slipped loose, the flame strayed through the old kitchen and was hurrying to lick the top of the roof. 75Then you could have seen the hungry guests and the frightened slaves snatching up the dinner and all trying to put out the fire. 77From there Apulia begins to show me her familiar mountains, which the Atabulus scorches, and which we would never have crept over, had not a villa near Trivicum taken us in, not without tear-making smoke, as the stove burnt damp branches, leaves and all. 82Here, utter fool that I am, I wait right up to midnight for a lying girl; 83sleep nonetheless carries me off, still intent on love; 84then dreams with filthy visions stain my nightclothes and my belly as I lie on my back.
86From here we are whirled in carriages twenty-four miles, to stop at a little town which cannot be named in verse, but is very easily described by signs: here water, the cheapest of things, is sold, but the bread is by far the finest, so that the knowing traveller usually carries it on his shoulders for the road beyond. 91For at Canusium it is gritty, and the town is not a jug richer in water: a place founded long ago by brave Diomedes. 93Here Varius sadly leaves his weeping friends. 94Then we reach Rubi, tired out, since we were covering a long stretch of road, made worse by rain. 96The next day's weather was better, the road worse, right up to the walls of Barium, rich in fish; 97then Gnatia, built under the anger of the water nymphs, gave us laughter and jokes, as it tried to persuade us that incense melts without fire on its sacred threshold.
100The Jew Apella may believe it, not I; 101for I have learnt that the gods lead a carefree life, and that if nature does anything wonderful, it is not the gods who send it down in ill humour from the high roof of heaven. 104Brundisium is the end of a long page and a long road.