1Hey, you! 1You promise to come to dinner, and then you do not come? 1Here is the judgement: you will repay the expense to the last penny, and that is no small sum. 2There had been prepared a lettuce each, three snails apiece, two eggs each, spelt-cake with honeyed wine and snow (for you will reckon this in too, indeed this above all, since it melts away on the dish), olives, beetroot, gourds, onions, and a thousand other things no less elegant. 2You would have heard comic actors, or a reader, or a lyre-player, or (such is my generosity) all of them. 3But you preferred oysters, sow's wombs, sea-urchins and Spanish dancing-girls at the house of I know not whom.
3You will pay the penalty, I do not say what. 3You have behaved harshly: you have cheated, I do not know whether yourself, certainly me, but still yourself as well. 3How we would have joked, laughed and studied! 4You can dine more lavishly at many houses, but nowhere more cheerfully, simply and freely. 4In short, try it, and unless afterwards you excuse yourself to others instead, always excuse yourself to me. 4Farewell.