1Are you, with such perseverance, now in Lucania, now in Campania? 1'Why,' you say, 'I am a Lucanian myself, and my wife is Campanian.' 2A fair reason for a longer absence, but not for a permanent one. 2Why then do you not come back to the city some time? 2where there are rank, office, and friendships with those above you as well as those below. 2How long will you play the king? 2how long will you stay awake when you like, and sleep as long as you like? 2how long will there be no shoes anywhere, your toga on holiday, the whole day free? 3It is time for you to revisit our troubles, if only so that those pleasures of yours do not grow faint from surfeit.
3Pay calls for a little while, so that it may be more pleasant for you to receive them; 3be jostled in this crowd, so that solitude may delight you. 4But why do I thoughtlessly hold back the man I am trying to call out? 4For perhaps by these very words you are being prompted to wrap yourself more and more in leisure; 4and that leisure I want not broken off but interrupted. 5For just as, if I were giving you dinner, I would mix sharp and tangy dishes with sweet ones, so that a stomach dulled and cloyed by the latter might be roused by the former, so now I urge you to season your most pleasant way of life from time to time with a few sharp flavours, as it were.
5Farewell.