1This year has brought a great crop of poets: in the whole month of April there was scarcely a day on which someone was not giving a recitation. 1I am glad that literary studies thrive, that men's talents put themselves forward and show themselves off, even though people gather sluggishly to listen. 2Most of them sit in the lounging-places and waste the time for listening in gossip, and every so often have word brought to them whether the reciter has come in yet, whether he has given his preface, whether he has unrolled most of the book; 2only then, and even then slowly and hesitantly, do they come, and yet they do not stay, but leave before the end, some discreetly and stealthily, others openly and without ceremony.
3Yet, by Hercules, they say that in our parents' memory Claudius Caesar, while he was walking in the Palace and heard shouting, asked the cause, and when he was told that Nonianus was reciting, came to the reciter suddenly and unexpectedly. 4Now even the man with the most leisure, though invited long beforehand and reminded again and again, either does not come or, if he does come, complains that he has wasted a day, just because he has not wasted it. 5But all the more are those to be praised and approved whom this idleness or arrogance of listeners does not hold back from their eagerness to write and recite.
5For my part, I have failed hardly anyone. 5Most of them, it is true, were friends; 6for there is hardly anyone who loves literary studies without loving me as well. 6For these reasons I have spent longer in the city than I had intended. 6I can now return to my retreat and write something which I shall not recite, so as not to seem to have been, at the recitations of those I attended, not a listener but a creditor. 6For as in other things, so in the duty of listening, the favour is lost if it is demanded back. 6Farewell.