1I have received your letter in which you complain that a dinner, however sumptuous, was tedious to you because buffoons, effeminates and fools were wandering among the tables. 2Will you not relax your frown a little? 2For my part I keep nothing of the kind, yet I put up with those who do. 2Why then do I not keep them? 2Because it gives me no pleasure at all, as something unexpected or amusing, if something lewd comes from an effeminate, something impudent from a buffoon, something stupid from a fool. 3I am telling you not my reason but my taste. 3And indeed, how many do you think there are who are offended by the things that captivate and draw you and me, finding them partly silly and partly most tiresome!
3How many, when a reader or a lyre-player or a comic actor is brought in, call for their shoes or lie there with no less tedium than you endured those monstrosities — for so you call them! 4So let us grant indulgence to the amusements of others, so that we may obtain it for our own. 4Farewell.