1Resolve my perplexity: I hear that I read badly — verse, that is; 1speeches I read well enough, but verse all the worse. 1So, as I am about to give a recital to my close friends, I am thinking of trying out my freedman. 1This too is a mark of intimacy, that I have chosen one who will read not well, but better than I — I know it — provided he does not get flustered. 2For he is as new a reader as I am a poet. 2I myself do not know what I am to do while he is reading, whether to sit fixed and silent and like an idle onlooker, or, as some do, to accompany what he recites with murmur, eyes and hand.
2But I think I dance no less badly than I read. 2I say it again: resolve my perplexity, and write back truthfully whether it is better to read very badly than either to do those things or not to do them. 2Farewell.