Carmina

Furius, your little house is pitted not against the southern breeze nor the western wind nor cruel Boreas nor sunny east, but fifteen thousand two hundred sesterces. O horrible and baleful wind.

Boy cupbearer of old Falernian, pour me more pungent cups as bids the laws of Postumia, mistress of the feast, drunker than a drunken grape. But off with you, as far as you please, crystal waters, bane of wine, depart you to the sober: here the Thyonian juice is pure.

Piso's Company, a penniless staff, with lightweight knapsacks, scantly packed, most dear Veranius you, and my Fabullus too, how goes it with you? Have you borne frost and famine enough with that sot? Which in your tablets appear—the profits or expenses? So with me, who when I followed a praetor, inscribed more gifts than gains. "0 Memmius, well and slowly did you bone me, supine, day by day, with the whole of that beam." But, from what I see, in like case you have been; for you have been crammed with no smaller a poker. Courting friends of high rank! But may the gods and goddesses heap ill upon you disgraces to Romulus and Remus.

Who can see this, who can stand it, save the shameless, the glutton, and gambler, that Mamurra Mentula should possess what long-haired Gaul had and remotest Britain had before? You sodomite Romulus, will you see this and bear it? Then you are shameless, a glutton and a gambler. And will he now, proud and overflowing, saunter over each one's bed, like a little white dove or an Adonis? You sodomite Romulus, will you see this and bear it? Then you are shameless, a glutton and a gambler. For such a name, Generalissimo, have you been to the furthest island of the west, that this love-weary Mentula of yours should squander twenty or thirty million? What is it but a skewed liberality? Perhaps he spent too little, or perhaps he was washed clean? First he wasted his patrimony; second the loot from Pontus; then third the loot from Spain, which even the goldbearing Tagus knows. Now he is feared by Gauls and Britain. Why do you indulge this scoundrel? What can he do but devour well-fattened inheritances? Was it for such a name, † most wealthy father-in-law and son-in-law, that you have destroyed everything?