1Not because, Maecenas, of all the Lydians who have settled the Etruscan lands, no one is of nobler birth than you, nor because your grandfathers on your mother's and your father's side once commanded great legions, do you, as most people do, turn up your nose at men of unknown birth, such as me, the son of a freedman. 7When you say it does not matter from what parent each man is born, provided he is freeborn, you rightly persuade yourself of this, that before the power of Tullius and his lowborn reign many men often sprang from no ancestors at all and yet lived upright lives and were raised to high honours; 12while Laevinus, on the contrary, of the stock of Valerius, by whom Tarquin the Proud was driven from his throne and fled, was never valued at a penny more, even in the estimation of the judge you know, the people, who foolishly often give honours to the unworthy and are stupidly slaves to reputation, who gape at inscriptions and ancestral masks.
17What should we do, who are far, far removed from the common herd? 19For grant it: the people would rather entrust office to Laevinus than to Decius, a new man, and Appius as censor would strike me off, if I were not born of a freeborn father: and rightly so, since I had not stayed quiet in my own skin. 23But Glory drags along, bound to her glittering chariot, the unknown no less than the well-born. 24What good was it to you, Tullius, to take up again the stripe you had laid aside and become a tribune? 26Envy has grown upon you, which would be less if you were a private man.
27For as soon as any madman has bound the middle of his leg with black leather and let the broad stripe fall down his chest, he hears at once, 'Who is this man? 29Who was his father?' Just as, if someone suffering from Barrus' disease longs to be thought handsome, wherever he goes he makes the girls curious to inquire into each detail, what his face is like, his calf, his foot, his teeth, his hair: so the man who promises to take care of the citizens, the city, the empire and Italy, the shrines of the gods, compels all mortals to take an interest and ask who his father was, whether he is disgraced by an unknown mother.
38'Do you, the son of Syrus, Dama or Dionysius, dare to hurl citizens from the Rock or hand them over to Cadmus?' 'But my colleague Novius sits one row behind me; 41for he is what my father was.' 'Do you think yourself a Paulus and a Messalla on that account? 42But this man, if two hundred wagons and three funerals were to clash in the forum, will make a great noise that would drown horns and trumpets: that at least holds our attention.' Now I return to myself, the son of a freedman, whom everyone carps at as the son of a freedman, now because, Maecenas, I am your companion, but formerly because a Roman legion obeyed me as tribune.
49This case is unlike that, because, though anyone might perhaps rightly begrudge me the office, he should not likewise begrudge me you as a friend, especially as you are careful to take on only the worthy, far from crooked ambition. 52I could not call myself lucky in this, that I won you as a friend by chance; 54for it was no chance that put you in my way: excellent Virgil some time ago, and after him Varius, told you what I was. 56When I came before you, I said a few halting words — for speechless modesty kept me from saying more — I do not tell you that I was born of a famous father, nor that I ride round my estates on a Saturian nag, but I tell you what I was.
60You reply, as is your way, briefly; 61I leave, and you call me back nine months later and bid me be among your friends. 62I count it a great thing that I pleased you, who distinguish the honourable from the base not by an illustrious father, but by a life and a heart that are pure. 65And yet if my nature is flawed by moderate faults, and few of them, but otherwise upright, as if you were to find fault with moles scattered over a fine body, if no one will truly charge me with greed or meanness or haunting low dens, if — to sing my own praises — I live pure and blameless, and am dear to my friends, my father was the cause of this; 71who, though poor, with a lean little farm, refused to send me to the school of Flavius, where the grand sons of grand centurions used to go, their satchels and tablets hanging from their left arms, bringing their eight coppers on the Ides, but dared to take his boy to Rome to be taught the arts which any knight or senator would have his own offspring taught.
78If anyone had seen my clothes and the slaves attending me, as is done in a great city, he would have believed that such expense was supplied to me from an ancestral fortune. 81He himself, the most incorruptible of guardians, was with me at all my teachers. 82Why say more? 82He kept me chaste, which is the first honour of virtue, not only from every deed but also from shameful reproach, and he was not afraid that someone would hold it against him if one day I were to pursue small fees as an auctioneer or, as he himself had been, a collector; 87nor would I have complained. 87But as it is, for this he is owed greater praise and greater thanks from me.
89Never while I am sane could I be ashamed of such a father, and so I shall not defend myself as a great many do, who say it is no fault of theirs that they do not have freeborn and famous parents. 92Both my words and my thinking differ widely from theirs. 93For if nature were to bid us, from a certain age, to retrace the years already lived and to choose other parents, whatever ones each would wish for himself to suit his pride, I, content with my own, would not wish to take parents honoured with the rods and chairs of office, mad in the judgement of the crowd, but perhaps sane in yours, because I would not want to bear a troublesome burden I was never used to carrying.
100For at once I would have to acquire a larger fortune and receive more callers, take along one or two companions so as not to go off to the country or abroad alone, feed more stable-boys and horses, and take along carriages. 104As it is, I may go on a bobtailed mule, even as far as Tarentum if I like, with saddlebags galling its loins with their weight and its rider galling its shoulders. 107No one will charge me with meanness, as they do you, Tullius, when on the road to Tibur five slaves follow you, a praetor, carrying a chamber pot and a wine jar. 110In this, and in a thousand other ways, I live more comfortably than you, illustrious senator.
111Wherever the fancy takes me, I go alone; I ask the price of vegetables and flour; I often stroll round the cheating Circus and the Forum in the evening; I stand by the fortune-tellers; then I take myself home to a dish of leeks, chickpeas and pancakes; 116dinner is served by three slaves, and a white stone slab holds two cups with a ladle; beside them stands a cheap bowl, a jug with a saucer, Campanian ware. 119Then I go to sleep, not worried that I must get up early tomorrow and visit Marsyas, who says he cannot bear the face of the younger Novius. 122I lie in bed till the fourth hour; 122after that I wander about, or, having read or written something that pleases me in quiet, I am rubbed with oil, not such as filthy Natta steals from the lamps.
125But when the fiercer sun has warned me, tired, to go and bathe, I flee the Campus and the game of three-handed ball. 127Having lunched lightly, just enough to keep me from going through the day on an empty stomach, I idle at home. 128This is the life of those freed from wretched and burdensome ambition; 130with these things I console myself that I shall live more pleasantly than if my grandfather had been a quaestor, and my father and my uncle too.