§ 10.1  BOOK X: THE HORTATORY AND ADMONITORY EPIGRAMS
LEONIDAS
It is the season for sailing; already the chattering swallow has come, and the pleasant Zephyr, and the meadows bloom, and the sea with its boiling waves lashed by the rough winds has sunk to silence. Weigh the anchors and loose the hawsers, mariner, and sail with every stitch of canvas set. This, O man, I, Priapus, the god of the harbour, bid thee do that thou mayst sail for all kinds of merchandise.

§ 10.2  ANTIPATER OF SIDON
It is the season for the ship to travel tearing through the waves; no longer does the sea toss, furrowed by dreadful fret. Already the swallow is building her round houses under the roof, and the tender leaves of the meadows smile. Therefore, ye sailors, coil your wet hawsers and drag the anchors from their nests in the harbour. Haul up your wellwoven sails. This is the bidding of me, Priapus of the harbour, the son of Bromius.

§ 10.3  Anonymous
The way down to Hades is straight, whether you start from Athens or whether you betake yourself there, when dead, from Meroe. Let it not vex thee to die far from thy country. One fair wind to Hades blows from all lands.

§ 10.4  MARCUS ARGENTARIUS
Loose the long hawsers from your well-moored ships, and spreading your easily-hoisted sails set to sea, merchant captain. For the storms have taken flight and tenderly laughing Zephyr now makes the blue wave gentle as a girl. Already the swallow, fond parent, is building with its lisping lips its chamber out of mud and straw, and flowers spring up in the land; therefore listen to Priapus and undertake any kind of navigation.

§ 10.5  THYILLUS
Already the swallows build their mud houses, already on the flood Zephyr is bosomed in the soft sails. Already the meadows shed flowers over their green leaves, and the rough strait closes its lips in silence. Wind up your hawsers and stow the anchors on shipboard, and give all your canvas to the sheets. This is the advice that Priapus of the harbour writes for you who sail the seas seeking merchandise.

§ 10.6  SATYRUS Already the moist breath of Zephyr, who giveth birth to the grass, falls gently on the flowery meads. The daughters of Cecrops call, the becalmed sea smiles, untroubled by the cold winds. Be of good heart, ye sailors, loose your hawsers and spread out the delicate folds of your ships' wings. Go to trade trusting in gracious Priapus, go obedient to the harbour god.

§ 10.7  ARCHIAS
Stranger, I, Priapus, was set up on this sea-beaten rock to guard the Thracian strait, by the sailors, whom I had often rushed to help when they called upon me, bringing from astern the sweet Zephyr. Therefore, as is meet and right, thou shalt never see my altar lacking the fat of beasts or crowns in the spring, but ever smoking with incense and alight. Yet not ever a hecatomb is so pleasing to the gods as due honour.

§ 10.8  ARCHIAS
Little am I to look on, Priapus, who dwell on this spur by the beach, companion of the gulls, denizens of land and sea, with a peaked head and no feet, just such as the sons of toiling fishermen would carve on the desert shore. But if any netsman or rod-fisher call on me for help, I hie me to him quicker than the wind. I see, too, the creatures that move under the water, and indeed the character of us gods is known rather from our actions than from our shapes.

§ 10.9  Anonymous
Ye fishermen who pulled your little boat ashore here (Go hang out your nets to dry) having had a haul of many sea-swimming gurnard (?) and scarus, not without thrissa, honour me with slender firstfruits of a copious catch, the little Priapus under the lentisc bush, the sea-blue god, the revealer of the fish your prey, established in this grove.

§ 10.10  ARCHIAS THE YOUNGER
The fishermen dedicated me. Pan, here on this holy cliff, Pan of the shore, the guardian of this secure haven. Sometimes I care for the weels, and sometimes for the fishers who draw their seine on this beach. But, stranger, sail past, and in return for this beneficence I will send a gentle south-west wind at thy back.

§ 10.11  SATYRUS
Whether thou walkest over the hills with birdlime spread on the reeds to which the birds resort, or whether thou killest hares, call on Pan. Pan shows the hound the track of velvet-paw, and Pan guides higher and higher, unbent, the jointed reeden rod.

§ 10.12  Anonymous
Come and rest your limbs awhile, travellers, here road — not a mixed crowds but those of you whose knees ache from heavy toil and who thirst after accomplishing a long day's journey. There is a breeze and a shady seat, and the fountain under the rock will still the weariness that weighs on your limbs. Escaping the midday breath of Autumn's dog-star, honour Hermes of the wayside as is meet.

§ 10.13  SATYRUS
How lovely are the laurels and the spring that gushes at their feet, while the dense grove gives shade, luxuriant, traversed by Zephyrs, a protection to wayfarers from thirst and toil and the burning sun !

§ 10.14  AGATHIAS SCHOLASTICUS
The deep lies becalmed and blue; for no gale whitens the waves, ruffling them to a ripple, and no longer do the seas break round the rocks, retiring again to be absorbed in the depth. The Zephyrs blow and the swallow twitters round the strawglued chamber she has built. Take courage, thou sailor of experience, whether thou journeyest to the Syrtis or to the beach of Sicily. Only by the altar of Priapus of the harbour burn a scarus or ruddy gurnards.

§ 10.15  PAULUS SILENTIARIUS
Now the heart-entrancing spring in all the beauty of her meadows opens the closed folds of her bosom to the Zephyrs; now the ship slides down the wooden rollers, pulled from the beach into the deep. Go forth fearlessly, ye sailors, your sails strutting with the wind, to the gentle task of loading the merchandise ye gain by barter. I, Priapus, am faithful to ships, since I boast that Thetis was the hostess of my father Bromius.

§ 10.16  THEAETETUS SCHOLASTICUS
Already the fair-foliaged field, at her fruitful birth-tide, is aflower with roses bursting from their buds; already on the branches of the alleyed cypresses the cicada, mad for music, soothes the sheaf-binder, and the swallow, loving parent, has made her house under the eaves and shelters her brood in the mud-plastered chamber. The sea sleeps, the calm dear to the Zephyrs spreads tranquilly over the expanse that bears the ships. No longer do the waters rage against the high-built poops, or belch forth spray on the shore. Mariner, roast first by his altar to Priapus, the lord of the deep and the giver of good havens, a slice of a cuttle-fish or of lustred red mullet, or a vocal scarus, and then go fearlessly on thy voyage to the bounds of the Ionian Sea.

§ 10.17  ANTIPHILUS
Blest god of the harbour, accompany with gentle breeze the departing sails of Archelaus through the undisturbed water as far as the open sea, and thou who rulest over the extreme point of the beach, save him on his voyage as far as the Pythian shrine. From thence, if all we singers are dear to Phoebus, I will sail trusting in the fair western gale.

§ 10.18  MARCUS ARGENTARIUS
Gobrys, let Dionysus and Aphrodite, who loves dalliance, delight thee, and the sweet Muses too with their letters. Their wisdom thou hast plucked; but enter now on her loves and drain his dear bowls.

§ 10.19  APOLLONIDES
Shear on this day, Gaius, the first sweet harvest of thy cheeks and the young curls on thy chin. Thy father Lucius will take in his hand what he had prayed to see, the down of thee who shalt grow to look on many suns. Others give golden presents, but I joyful verses; for indeed the Muse is not the inferior of wealth.

§ 10.20  ADDAEUS
If you see a beauty, strike while the iron is hot. Say what you mean, testiculos manibus totis attrecta. But if you say "I reverence you and will be like a brother," shame will close your road to accomplishment.

§ 10.21  PHILODEMUS
Cypris of the Calm, lover of bridegrooms; Cypris, ally of the just; Cypris, mother of the tempest-footed Loves; save me, Cypris, a man but half torn away from my saffron bridal chamber, and chilled now to the soul by the snows of Gaul. Save me, Cypris, thy peaceful servant, who utters no vain words to any, tossed as I am now on thy deep blue sea ! Cypris, who lovest to bring ships to port, who lovest the solemn rites of wedlock, save me now, my queen, and bring me to the haven of my Naias.

§ 10.22  BIANOR
Fowler in search of reeds, move not with naked feet in the forest paths of Egypt, but fly far from the grey-eyed snakes; and hastening on thy way to shoot the birds of the air, beware of being poisoned by the earth.

§ 10.23  AUTOMEDON
Nicetes, like the breeze, when a ship has little sail up, begins with gentle rhetoric, but when he blows strongly and all sails are let out, he stiffens the canvas and races across the middle of the ocean, like a ship of vast burden, till he reaches the end of his discourse in the unruffled harbour.

§ 10.24  CRINAGORAS
Holy spirit of the mighty Earth-shaker, be gracious to others, too, who cross the Aegean brine. For to me, driven swiftly by the Thracian breeze, gently hast thou granted the harbour I was fain to reach.

§ 10.25  ANTIPATER OF THESSALONICA
Phoebus, guardian of the Cephallenians' harbour, dwelling on the beach of Panormus that faces rough Ithaca, grant that I may sail to the Asian land through favouring waves in the wake of Piso's long ship. And attune my doughty emperor to be kind to him and kind to my verses.

§ 10.26  LUCIAN
Enjoy thy possessions as if about to die, and use thy goods sparingly as if about to live. That man is wise who understands both these commandments, and hath applied a measure both to thrift and unthrift.

§ 10.27  LUCIAN
If thou doest any foul thing it may perchance be hidden from men, but from the gods it shall not be hidden, even if thou but thinkest of it.

§ 10.28  LUCIAN
For men who are fortunate all life is short, but for those who fall into misfortune one night is infinite time.

§ 10.29  LUCIAN
It is not Love that wrongs the race of men, but Love is an excuse for the souls of the dissolute.

§ 10.30  Anonymous
Swift gratitude is sweetest; if it delays, all gratitude is empty and should not even be called gratitude.

§ 10.31  LUCIAN
All that belongs to mortals is mortal and all things pass us by; or if not we pass them by.

§ 10.32  [PALLADAS]
There's many a slip 'twixt the cup and the lip.

§ 10.33  Anonymous
It is good to speak ever well of all; but to speak ill is a shame, even if men merit what we say.

§ 10.34  PALLADAS
If concern avail aught, take thought and let things concern thee; but if God is concerned for thee, what does it concern thee? Without God thou shalt neither take thought nor be unconcerned; but that aught concern thee is the concern of God.

§ 10.35  LUCIAN
If thou art fortunate thou art dear to men and dear to gods, and readily they hear thy prayers; but if thou meetest with ill-fortune thou hast no longer any friend, but everything goes against thee, changing with the gusts of fortune.

§ 10.36  LUCIAN
Nothing more noxious hath Nature produced among men than the man who simulates pure friendship; for we are no longer on our guard against him as an enemy, but love him as a friend, and thus suffer more injury.

§ 10.37  LUCIAN
Slow-footed counsel is much the best, for swift counsel ever drags repentance behind it.

§ 10.38  DIONYSIUS
A time to love, and a time to wed, and a time to rest.

§ 10.39  Anonymous
A good friend, Heliodorus, is a great treasure to him who knows also how to keep him.

§ 10.40  Anonymous
Never give up the friend you have and seek another, listening to the words of worthless men.

§ 10.41  LUCIAN
The wealth of the soul is the only true wealth; the rest has more trouble than the possessions are worth. Him one may rightly call lord of many possessions and wealthy who is able to use his riches. But if a man wears himself out over accounts, ever eager to heap wealth on wealth, his labour shall be like that of the bee in its many-celled honeycomb, for others shall gather the honey in his old age.

§ 10.42  LUCIAN
Let a seal be set on the tongue concerning words that should not be spoken; for it is better to guard speech than to guard wealth.

§ 10.43  Anonymous
Six hours are most suitable for labour and the four that follow when set forth in letters, say to men "Live."

§ 10.44  PALLADAS
If a friend receives a present he at once writes beginning "Lord brother" but if he gets nothing he only says "Brother." For these words are to be bought and sold. I at least wish no "Lord," for I have nothing to give.

§ 10.45  PALLADAS
If thou rememberest, O man, how thy father sowed thee, thou shalt cease from thy proud thoughts. But dreaming Plato hath engendered pride in thee, calling thee immortal and a "heavenly plant." "Of dust thou art made. Why dost thou think proudly?" So one might speak, clothing the fact in more grandiloquent fiction; but if thou seekest the truth, thou art sprung from incontinent lust and a filthy drop.

§ 10.46  PALLADAS
Silence is men's chief learning. The sage Pythagoras himself is my witness. He, knowing himself how to speak, taught others to be silent, having discovered this potent drug to ensure tranquillity.

§ 10.47  PALLADAS
Eat and drink and keep silence in mourning; for we should not, as Homer said, mourn the dead with our belly. Yes, and he shows us Niobe, who buried her twelve dead children all together, taking thought for food.

§ 10.48  PALLADAS
It is a proverb, that no woman who has been a slave should ever become a mistress. I will tell you something similar. "Let no man who has been an advocate ever become a judge, not even if he be a greater orator than Isocrates. For how can a man who has served for hire in a fashion no more respectable than a whore judge a case otherwise than dirtily.?"

§ 10.49  PALLADAS
They say that even ants and gnats have bile. So, while the most insignificant beasts have bile, do you bid me have no bile and lie exposed to the attacks of all the world, not even wronging by mere words those who wrong me by deeds? I have for the rest of my life to stop up my mouth with a rush — and not even breathe.

§ 10.50  PALLADAS
I deny that Circe, as Homer says, changed those who visited her from men into pigs or wolves. No I she was a cunning courtesan, and made them who took her bait poorest of the poor. Stripping them of their human sense, she now, when they could gain nothing for themselves, reared them in her house like senseless animals. But Ulysses, having his wits about him and avoiding the folly of youth, possessed a counter-charm to enchantment, his own nature, not Hermes, emplanting reason in him.

§ 10.51  PALLADAS
Envy, says Pindar, is better than pity. Those who are envied lead a splendid life, while our pity is for the excessively unfortunate. I would be neither too fortunate nor too badly off; for the mean is best, since the height of fortune is apt to bring danger, while the depth of misery exposes to insult.

§ 10.52  PALLADAS
Well didst thou say it, right well, Menander, and like a true nursling of the Muses and Graces, that Opportunity is a god; for often a thought that occurs opportunely of itself finds something better than much reflection.

§ 10.53  PALLADAS
That we see murderers blest by fortune does not surprise me much. It is the gift of Zeus. For he would have killed his father, whom he hated, had Cronos chanced to be mortal. Now, instead of killing him, he punishes him in the same place as the Titans, casting him bound like a robber into the pit.

§ 10.54  PALLADAS
Consumption is not the only cause of death, but extreme obesity often has the same result. Dionysius, tyrant of the Pontic Heraclea, testifies to this, for it is what befel him.

§ 10.55  PALLADAS
If you boast that you don't in any way obey your wife's orders, you are talking nonsense: for you are not made of tree or stone, as the saying is, and you suffer what most or all of us suffer, you are ruled by a woman. But if you say, "She does not smack me with her slipper, nor have I an unchaste wife whom I must put up with and shut my eyes," I say your servitude is milder than that of others, as you have sold yourself to a chaste and not very severe mistress.

§ 10.56  PALLADAS
There is no manifest sign of chastity: this I tell husbands who are made fools of. Neither are ill looks quite free from suspicion, nor is every pretty woman naturally vicious. For a woman may refuse to yield to those who are ready to pay a high price owing to her beauty, and we see many who are not good-looking never satisfied with amorous intercourse, and giving large presents to those who possess them. Nor if a woman is always frowning and is never seen to laugh, and avoids showing herself to men, is this behaviour a pledge of chastity. On the contrary, the most grave of them may turn out to be whores in secret, and the merry ones who are amiable to everyone may be virtuous, if any woman is entirely virtuous. Is age, then, a criterion? But not even old age has peace from the goad of Aphrodite. We trust then to oaths and her religious awe. But after her oath she can go and seek out twelve newer gods.

§ 10.57  PALLADAS
May God look with hatred on the belly and its food; for it is owing to them that chastity breaks down.

§ 10.58  PALLADAS
Naked I alighted on the earth and naked shall I go beneath it. Why do I toil in vain, seeing the end is nakedness?

§ 10.59  PALLADAS
The expectation of death is a trouble full of pain, and a mortal, when he dies, gains freedom from this. Weep not then for him who departs from life, for there is no suffering beyond death.

§ 10.60  PALLADAS
You are wealthy. And what is the end of it? When you depart do you trail your riches after you as you are being pulled to your tomb? You gather wealth spending time, but you cannot pile up a heavier measure of life.

§ 10.61  PALLADAS
Avoid the rich; they are shameless, domestic tyrants, hating poverty, the mother of temperance.

§ 10.62  PALLADAS
Fortune knows neither reason nor law, but rules men despotically, carried along without reason by her own current. She is rather inclined to favour the wicked, and hates the just, as if making a display of her unreasoning force.

§ 10.63  PALLADAS
A poor man has never lived, and does not even die, for when he seemed to be alive the unfortunate wretch was like a corpse. But for those who enjoy great prosperity and much wealth death is the ruin of life.

§ 10.64  AGATHIAS SCHOLASTICUS
On a former Magistrate Where, I ask, is that vast insolence? And where have they suddenly departed, the crowds of flatterers who used to walk by your side? Now you are gone to exile far from the city, and Fortune has made those whom you formerly pitied judges to condemn you. Great thanks to thee. Fortune, performer of glorious deeds, for that thou ever mockest all alike, and we have that to amuse us.

§ 10.65  PALLADAS
Life is a perilous voyage; for often we are tempesttossed in it and are in a worse case than shipwrecked men. With Fortune at Life's helm we sail uncertainly as on the open sea, some on a fair voyage, others the reverse: but all alike reach one harbour under the earth.

§ 10.66  AGATHIAS SCHOLASTICUS
When a man rises from poverty to wealth and office, he no longer recognizes what he once was. For he repudiates his former friendships, and in his folly learns not how playful slippery fortune is. You were once a miserable pauper, and now you who used to "beg for a pittance " refuse it to others. My friend, everything that is man's passes away, and if you will not believe it, you will go begging again and testify to it yourself.

§ 10.67  MACEDONIUS THE CONSUL
Memory and Oblivion, all hail ! Memory I say in the case of good things, and Oblivion in the case of evil.

§ 10.68  AGATHIAS
It is good to have a mind that hates sexual intercourse, but if you must, let not the love of males ever disturb you. It is a small evil to love women, for gracious Nature gave them the gift of amorous dalliance. Look at the race of beasts; not one of them dishonours the laws of intercourse, for the female couples with the male. But wretched men introduce a strange union between each other.

§ 10.69  AGATHIAS
Why fear death, the mother of rest, death that puts an end to sickness and the pains of poverty? It happens but once to mortals, and no man ever saw it come twice. But diseases are many and various, coming first to this man, then to that, and ever changing.

§ 10.70  MACEDONIUS THE CONSUL
If the Hopes, the companions of Fortune, make sport of human life, delaying to grant every favour, I am their plaything if I am human, and being mortal, I well know I am human. But being the sport of long-deferred hopes, I am willing and pleased to be deceived, and would not in judging myself be as severe as Aristotle, for I bear in mind Anacreon's advice that we should not let care abide with us.

§ 10.71  MACEDONIUS THE CONSUL
I smile when I look on the picture of Pandora's jar, and do not find it was the woman's fault, but is due to the Goods having wings. For as they flutter to Olympus after visiting every region of the world, they ought to fall on the earth too. The woman after taking off the lid grew pale-faced, and has lost the splendour of her former charm. Our present life has suffered two losses; woman is grown old and the jar has nothing in it.

§ 10.72  PALLADAS
All life is a stage and a play: either learn to play laying your gravity aside, or bear with life's pains.

§ 10.73  PALLADAS
If the gale of Fortune bear thee, bear with it and be borne; but if thou rebellest and tormentest thyself, even so the gale bears thee.

§ 10.74  PAULUS SILENTIARIUS
Neither be lifted up by the strong blast of opulent fortune, nor let care bend thy freedom. For all thy life is shaken by inconstant breezes and is constantly dragged this way and that; but virtue is the steadfast and constant support on which alone thou canst travel boldly over the waves of life.

§ 10.75  PALLADAS
We live — all who live as this life is — and gaze on the flame of the sun, breathing through our nostrils delicate air; we are organs which receive health as a gift from the life-creating breezes. But if anyone with his hand presses tightly a little of our breath, he robs us of our life and brings us down to Hades. So being nothing we are fed with vanity, pasturing on air drawn from a breath of wind.

§ 10.76  PAULUS SILENTIARIUS
There is no natural pleasure in life itself, but in casting off from our mind anxieties that whiten the temples. I wish for sufficient wealth, but mad lust for gold is a superfluous care that ever devours the heart. Therefore among men thou shalt often find poverty better than wealth, and death than life. Knowing this, make straight the ways of thy heart, looking to one hope, even to wisdom.

§ 10.77  PALLADAS
Why dost thou labour in vain, O man, and disturb everything, being, as thou art, the slave of the lot that fell to thee at birth? Resign thyself to this, and struggle not against Fate, but content with thy fortune, love tranquillity. Yet strive thou rather, even against Fate, to lead thy delighted spirit to mirth.

§ 10.78  PALLADAS
Cast away complaint and be not troubled, for how brief is the time thou dwellest here compared with all the life that follows this! Ere thou breedest worms and art cast into the tomb torment not thy soul, as if it were damned while thou still livest.

§ 10.79  PALLADAS
We are born day by day when night departs, retaining nothing of our former life, estranged from the doings of yesterday and beginning today the remainder of our life. Do not then, old man, say thy years are too many, for today thou hast no part in those that have gone by.

§ 10.80  PALLADAS
The life of men is the plaything of Fortune, a wretched life and a vagrant, tossed between riches and poverty. Some whom she had cast down she casteth on high again like a ball, and others she brings down from the clouds to Hades.

§ 10.81  PALLADAS
Alas for the brevity of life's pleasure ! Mourn the swiftness of time. We sit and we sleep, toiling or taking our delight, and time is advancing, advancing against us wretched men, bringing to each the end of life.

§ 10.82  PALLADAS
Is it not true that we are dead and only seem to live, we Greeks/ fallen into misfortune, fancying that a dream is life? Or are we alive and is life dead?

§ 10.83  PALLADAS
Even wisdom to the wealthy is a difficulty, a trouble, a necessity ....

§ 10.84  PALLADAS
In tears I was born and after tears I die, finding the whole of life a place of many tears. O race of men tearful, weak, pitiful, scarce seen on earth and straight dissolved !

§ 10.85  PALLADAS
We are all kept and fed for death, like a herd of swine to be slain without reason.

§ 10.86  PALLADAS
I too rear, not sumptuously, but still I rear children, a wife, a slave, poultry and a dog — for no flatterer sets foot in my house.

§ 10.87  PALLADAS
If we do not laugh at life the runaway, and Fortune the strumpet shifting with the current, we cause ourselves constant pain seeing the unworthy luckier than ourselves.

§ 10.88  PALLADAS
The body is an affliction of the soul, it is Hell, Fate, a burden, a necessity, a strong chain and a tormenting punishment. But when the soul issues from the body as from the bonds of death, it flies to the immortal God.

§ 10.89  PALLADAS
If Rumour be a goddess, she too as well as the other gods is wroth with the Greeks and cozens them with deceptive words. Rumour, if any evil befall thee, at once is proved to be true, and often the rapidity of events anticipates her.

§ 10.90  PALLADAS
Alas for the extreme malice of envy ! A man hates the fortunate whom God loves. So senselessly are we led astray by envy; so ready are we to be the slaves of folly. We Greeks are men reduced to ashes, having the buried hopes of the dead; for today everything is turned upside down.

§ 10.91  PALLADAS
He who detests a man whom God loves, is guilty of the greatest folly, for he manifestly takes up arms against God himself, being gifted by envy with excessive spite. One should rather love him whom God loves.

§ 10.92  PALLADAS To a Magistrate
Since thou givest judgments and art a subtle speaker, I bring thee too this grave epigram of my nightingale worthy of one who speaks freely; for he who sings of thee pours forth the praises of Justice.

§ 10.93  PALLADAS
It is better to endure even straitened Fortune rather than the arrogance of the wealthy.

§ 10.94  PALLADAS
I think God is a philosopher too, as he does not wax wroth at once with blasphemy, but with the advance of time increases the punishment of wicked and miserable men.

§ 10.95  PALLADAS
I hate the man who is double-minded, kind in words, but a foe in his conduct.

§ 10.96  PALLADAS
When I think over things, observing the inopportune changes of life and the fickle current of unfair Fortune, how she makes the poor rich and deprives its possessors of wealth, then blinded in my own mind by the error I hate everything owing to the obscurity of all. For how shall I get the better of Fortune, who keeps on appearing in life from no one knows where, behaving like a harlot.

§ 10.97  PALLADAS
Having lived a pound of years with toiling Grammar I am sent to Hell to be senator of the dead.

§ 10.98  PALLADAS
Every uneducated man is wisest if he remains silent, hiding his speech like a disgraceful disease.

§ 10.99  PALLADAS
I often, Sextus, weighed on the balance your kindness and insolence, and finding your kindness much the lightest and your abusive speech ever sinking the scale, I abandoned your friendship, unable to support any longer your most dishonouring insults.

§ 10.100  ANTIPHANES
Brief would be the whole span of life that we wretched men live, even if grey old age awaited us all, and briefer yet is the space of our prime. Therefore, while the season is ours, let all be in plenty, song, love, carousal. Henceforth is the winter of heavy eld. Thou wouldst give ten minae to be a man, but no ! such fetters shall be set on thy manhood.

§ 10.101  BIANOR
Look, the heifer draws the instrument that cuts the earth, and is followed by the calf she is suckling ! She dreads the husbandman at her heels, and waits for her little one, sagaciously careful of both. Thou who followest the plough up and down the field, who turnest up the soil, hold thy hand, nor drive her who bears the double burden of two labours.

§ 10.102  BASSUS
I would not have the fierce sea drive me in storm, nor do I welcome the dull windless calm that follows. The mean is best, and so likewise where men do their business, I welcome the sufficient measure. Love this, dear Lampis, and hate evil tempests; there are gentle Zephyrs in life too.

§ 10.103  PHILODEMUS
Neither look into nor pass by (the place where they sell scarce delicacies?). Now be off to the tripe-stall to spend a drachma. One fig too at times may cost a drachma, but if you wait, it will buy you a thousand. Time is the poor man's god.

§ 10.104  CRATES THE PHILOSOPHER
Hail! divine lady Simplicity, child of glorious Temperance, beloved by good men. All who practise righteousness venerate thy virtue.

§ 10.105  SIMONIDES
A certain Theodorus rejoices because I am dead. Another shall rejoice at his death. We are all owed to death.

§ 10.106  Anonymous
Many are the thyrsus-bearers but few the initiated.

§ 10.107  EURIPIDES
No man is fortunate unless God will it. Alas ! how unequal is the lot of men. Some are prosperous and on others who reverence the gods fall cruel misfortunes.

§ 10.108  Anonymous
Zeus the king, give us good things whether we pray for them or not, and keep evil things away from us even if we pray for them.

§ 10.109  Anonymous
Every word is vain that is not completed by deed, and let every deed spring from reason.

§ 10.110  AESCHYLUS
A lion cub should not be reared in the city. First and foremost bring up no lion in the city, but if one be reared, submit to his ways.

§ 10.111  Anonymous
Envy slays itself by its own arrows.

§ 10.112  Anonymous
Wine and baths and venerean indulgence make the road to Hades more precipitous.

§ 10.113  Anonymous
I do not wish or pray to be wealthy, but I would live on a little, suffering no evil.

§ 10.114  Anonymous
Below in Hell are judgment and Tantalus. I do not disbelieve it, realising by my poverty the infernal torments.

§ 10.115  Anonymous
Live by reason, and thou shalt not be in want.

§ 10.116  Anonymous
"No married man but is tempest-tossed " they all say and marry knowing it.

§ 10.117  PHOCYLIDES
I am a genuine friend, and I know a friend to be a friend, but I turn my back on all evil-doers. I flatter no one hypocritically, but those whom I honour I love from beginning to end.

§ 10.118  Anonymous
How was I born? Whence am I? Why came I here? To depart again? How can I learn aught, knowing nothing? I was nothing and was born; again I shall be as at first. Nothing and of no worth is the race of men. But serve me the merry fountain of Bacchus; for this is the antidote of ills.

§ 10.119  Anonymous
To feed many slaves and erect many houses is the readiest road to poverty.

§ 10.120  Anonymous
Every woman loves more than a man loves; but out of shame she hides the sting of love, although she be mad for it.

§ 10.121  RARUS
He who says openly that he hates us does not hurt us so much as the man who simulates pure friendship. For having previous knowledge of him who hates us, we avoid him, but we do not guard ourselves against him who says he loves us. Him I judge a grievous enemy, who, when we trust him as a friend, does us injury by stealth.

§ 10.122  LUCILIUS
Heaven can do many things even though they be unlikely; it exalteth the little and casteth down the great. Thy lofty looks and pride it shall make to cease, even though a river bring thee streams of gold. The wind hurts not the rush or the mallow, but the greatest oaks and planes it can lay low on the ground.

§ 10.123  AESOP
Life, how shall one escape thee without death; for thou hast a myriad ills and neither to fly from them nor to bear them is easy. Sweet are thy natural beauties, the earth, the sea, the stars, the orbs of the sun and moon. But all the rest is fear and pain, and if some good befall a man, an answering Nemesis succeeds it.

§ 10.124  GLYCON
All is laughter, all is dust, all is nothing, for all that is cometh from unreason.

§ 10.124a  Anonymous
Children are a trouble; it is a great evil if anything happens to them, and even if they live they are no small trouble. A wife if she be good hath something in her that delights, but a bad one brings a man a bitter life.

§ 10.125  Anonymous
A friend is a very difficult thing to find, but many or nearly all are friends only in name.

§ 10.126  Anonymous
A useful servant is a good thing for him who makes use of him, but a man who is self-sufficient experiences less evil.

§ 11.1  BOOK XI THE CONVIVIAL AND SATIRICAL EPIGRAMS
NICARCHUS
At the feast of Hermes, Aphrodisius, as he was carrying six choes of wine, stumbled and threw us into deep mourning. Wine was the death even of the Centaurs." "Would it had been ours; but now it is it we have lost."

§ 11.2  CALLICTER
Theodorus, son of Aeschylus, why do the leaders fight with me? Won't you stop them? They all have stones.

§ 11.3  Anonymous
I would have liked to be as rich as Croesus once was, and to be king of great Asia. But when I look at Nicanor the coffin-maker and learn what these flute-cases he is making are meant for, I sprinkle my flour no matter where, and moistening it with my pint of wine I sell Asia for scent and garlands.

§ 11.4  PARMENION
A certain man, having married a woman who is complaisant to his neighbour only, snores and feeds. That was the way to get a living easily — not to go to sea, not to dig, but to snore off one's dinner with a comfortable stomach, fattened richly at the expense of another.

§ 11.5  CALLICTER
He who finds corn at home without buying it has a wife who is "a horn" of plenty.

§ 11.6  CALLICTER
A poor man's marriage is a dog-fight, at once the roar of battle, abuse, blows, damage, trouble and law-suits.

§ 11.7  NICARCHUS
No one, Charidemus, can constantly sleep with his own wife and take heart-felt pleasure in it. Our nature is so fond of titillation, such a luster after foreign flesh, that it persists in seeking intrigue with other women.

§ 11.8  Anonymous
Bestow not scent and crowns on stone columns, nor set the fire ablaze; the outlay is in vain. Give me gifts, if thou wilt, when I am alive, but by steeping ashes in wine thou wilt make mud, and the dead shall not drink thereof.

§ 11.9  LEONIDAS OF ALEXANDRIA
Set not before me after supper, when I can no longer persuade my belly, udders and slices of pork. For neither to labourers after harvest is rain out of season useful, nor the Zephyr to mariners in port.

§ 11.10  LUCILIUS
You know the rule of my little banquets. To-day, Aulus, I invite you under new convivial laws. No lyric poet shall sit there and recite, and you yourself shall neither trouble us nor be troubled with literary discussions.

§ 11.11  LUCILIUS
I never knew, Epicrates, that you were a tragedian or a choral flute-player or any other sort of person whose business it is to have a chorus with them. But I invited you alone; you, however, came bringing with you from home a chorus of dancing slaves, to whom you hand all the dishes over your shoulder as a gift. If this is to be so, make the slaves sit down at table and we will come and stand at their feet to serve.

§ 11.12  ALCAEUS OF MESSENE
"Wine slew the Centaur " too, Epicrates, not yourself alone and Callias in his lovely prime. Truly the one-eyed monster is the Charon of the wine-cup. Send him right quickly from Hades the same draught.

§ 11.13  AMMIANUS
Dawn after dawn goes by, and then, when we take no heed shall come the Dark One. Melting some of us, roasting some and puffing out others, he shall bring us all to the same pit.

§ 11.14  AMMIANUS
Invited to dinner yesterday, when it was time for my siesta, I rested my head on the Gorgon's pillow or Niobe's, a pillow which none wove, but someone sawed or hacked out of the quarry and brought to Proclus' house. If I had not woke up very soon and left it, Proclus would have made his pillow into a grave-stone or coffin for me.

§ 11.15  AMMIANUS
Lucius, if you have decided to bury only the senators whose names begin with Alpha, you have your brother (Ammianus) too. But if, as is reasonable to suppose, you proceed in alphabetical order, my name, I beg to state, is now Origenes.

§ 11.16  AMMIANUS
Cyllus and Leurus, two Thessalian spear-children, and Cyllus the more spear-childish of the two.

§ 11.17  -NICARCHUS Stephanus was poor and a gardener, but now having got on well and become rich, he has suddenly turned into Philostephanus, adding four fine letters to the original Stephanus, and in due time he will be Hippocratippiades or, owing to his extravagance, Dionysiopeganodorus. But in all the market he is still Stephanus.

§ 11.18  By the same
Philaenis without conceiving bore a girl child to Heliodorus spontaneously, and when he was vexed at its being a girl she let six days pass and said she had borne a boy. So it is all over with Bubastis; for if every woman is brought to bed like Philaenis, who will pay any attention to the goddess?

§ 11.19  STRATO
Drink and love now, Damocrates, for we shall not drink for ever or be for ever with the lads. Let us bind our heads with garlands and scent ourselves before others bear flowers and scent to our tombs. Now may my bones inside me drink all the more wine, and when they are dead let Deucalion's flood cover them.

§ 11.20  ANTIPATER OF THESSALONICA
Away with you who sing of loccae (cloaks) or lophnides (torches) or camasenes (fish), race of thorn-gathering poets; and you who practising effeminately decorative verse drink only simple water from the holy fount. To-day we pour the wine in honour of the birthday of Archilochus and virile Homer. Our bowl receives no water-drinkers.

§ 11.21  STRATO
Agathon's lizard was rosy-fingered the other day; now it is already even rosy-armed.

§ 11.22  STRATO
There is a certain youth Draco, extremely fair; but being a serpent how does he take another snake in his hole?

§ 11.23  ANTIPATER OF SIDON
Men learned in the stars say I am short-lived. I am, Seleucus, but I care not. There is one road down to Hades for all, and if mine is quicker, I shall see Minos all the sooner. Let us drink, for this is very truth, that wine is a horse for the road, while foot-travellers take a by-path to Hades.

§ 11.24  ANTIPATER OF SIDON
On a cup-bearer named Helicon
Boeotian Helicon once didst thou often shed from thy springs the water of sweet speech for Hesiod. But still for us does the boy who bears thy name pour out Italian wine from a fountain that causes less care. Rather would I drink one cup only from his hand than a thousand of Castalia from thine.

§ 11.25  APOLLONIDES
Thou art asleep, my friend, but the cup itself is calling to thee: "Awake, and entertain not thyself with this meditation on death." Spare not, Diodorus, but slipping greedily into wine, drink it unmixed until thy knees give way. The time shall come when we shall not drink — a long, long time; but come, haste thee; the age of wisdom is beginning to tint our temples.

§ 11.26  ARGENTARIUS
I feel drunk with wine; but who shall save me from Bacchus who makes my limbs totter? How unjust a god have I encountered, since while I carry thee, Bacchus, by thee, in return, I am carried astray.

§ 11.27  MACEDONIUS
Rough, sweet-scented dust of Sorrento, hail, and hail, thou earth of Pollentia's most honied and Asta's soil thrice desired from which the triple band of Graces knead for Bacchus the clay that is akin to wine! Hail, common possession of wealth and poverty, to the poor a necessary vessel, to the rich a more superfluous instrument of luxury!

§ 11.28  ARGENTARIUS
Dead, five feet of earth shall be thine and thou shalt not look on the delights of life or on the rays of the sun. So take the cup of unmixed wine and drain it rejoicing, Cincius, with thy arm round thy lovely wife. But if thou deemest wisdom to be immortal, know that Cleanthes and Zeno went to deep Hades.

§ 11.29  AUTOMEDON
Send and summon her; you have everything ready. But if she comes, what will you do? Think over that, Automedon. For this rather parsnipy vegetable, alive and unbending before, all dead hides inside your thighs. They will laugh at you much if you venture to put to sea without any tackle, an oarsman who no longer has his oar.

§ 11.30  PHILODEMUS
I who used to do it five and nine times, O Aphrodite, now barely do it once from the first hour of night until daybreak. And alas, this thing (it has often been half-dead) is gradually dying outright. This is the calamity of Termerus that I suffer. Old age, old age, what shalt thou do later, if thou comest, since already I am thus languid?

§ 11.31  ANTIPATER OF THESSALONICA
I dread not the setting of the Pleiads nor the waves of the sea that roar round the stubborn rock, nor the lightning of great heaven so much as I dread a wicked man and water-drinkers who remember all our words.

§ 11.32  HONESTUS
Bacchus, leading the rout of the Graces, instituted in thee, Sicyon, the sermons of the jolly Muse. Indeed, very sweet are his rebukes and in laughter is his sting. A man in his cups teaches wisdom to a clever man of the town.

§ 11.33  PHILIPPUS
Secretly advancing, O ivy, thy twisted creeping foot, thou throttlest me, the vine, sweet gift of Bacchus, mother of clusters. But thou dost not so much fetter me as thou dost destroy thine own honour; for who would set ivy on his brows without pouring out wine?

§ 11.34  PHILODEMUS
I wish no garlands of white violets again, no lyre-playing again, no Chian wine again, no Syrian myrrh again, no revelling again, no thirsty whore with me again. I hate these things that lead to madness. But bind my head with narcissus and let me taste the crooked flute, and anoint my limbs with saffron ointment, wet my gullet with wine of Mytilene and mate me with a virgin who will love her nest,

§ 11.35  PHILODEMUS
Artemidorus gave us a cabbage, Aristarchus caviare, Athenagoras little onions, Philodemus a small liver, and Apollophanes two pounds of pork, and there were three pounds still over from yesterday. Go and buy us an egg and garlands and sandals and scent, and I wish them to be here at four o'clock sharp.

§ 11.36  PHILIPPUS
When you were pretty, Archestratus, and the hearts of the young men were burnt for your wine-red cheeks, there was no talk of friendship with me, but sporting with others you spoilt your prime like a rose. Now, however, when you begin to blacken with horrid hair, you would force me to be your friend, offering me the straw after giving the harvest to others.

§ 11.37  ANTIPATER OF SIDON
It is already autumn, Epicles, and from the girdle of Bootes springs the bright flame of Arcturus. Already the vines bethink them of the pruning-hook and men build winter huts to shelter them. But you have no warm woollen cloak nor tunic indoors, and you will grow stiff, blaming the star.

§ 11.38  KING POLEMO
On a relief representing ajar, a loaf, a crown, and a skull This is the poor man's welcome armour against hunger — a jar and a loaf, here is a crown of dewy leaves, and this is the holy bone, outwork of a dead brain, the highest citadel of the soul. "Drink," says the sculpture, "and eat, and surround thee with flowers, for like to this we suddenly become."

§ 11.39  MACEDONIUS OF THESSALONICA
Yesterday a woman was drinking with me about whom an unpleasant story is current. Break the cups, slaves.

§ 11.40  ANTISTIUS
Cleodemus, Eumenes' boy, is still small, but tiny as he is, he dances with the boys in a little company of worshippers. Look! he has even girt on the skin of a dappled fawn and he shakes the ivy on his yellow hair. Make him big, Theban King, so that thy little servant may soon lead holy dances of young men.

§ 11.41  PHILODEMUS
Seven years added to thirty are gone already like so many pages torn out of my life; already, Xanthippe, my head is sprinkled with grey hairs, messengers of the age of wisdom. But still I care for the speaking music of the lyre and for revelling, and in my insatiate heart the fire is alive. But ye Muses, my mistresses, bring it to a close at once with the words "Xanthippe is the end of my madness."

§ 11.42  CRINAGORAS
Though thy life be always sedentary, and thou hast never sailed on the sea or traversed the high roads of the land, yet set thy foot on the Attic soil, that thou mayest see those long nights of Demeter's holy rites, whereby while thou art among the living thy mind shall be free from care, and when thou goest to join the greater number it shall be lighter.

§ 11.43  ZONAS
Give me the sweet beaker wrought of earth, earth from which I was born, and under which I shall lie when dead.

§ 11.44  PHILODEMUS
Tomorrow, dearest Piso, your friend, beloved by the Muses, who keeps our annual feast of the twentieth invites you to come after the ninth hour to his simple cottage. If you miss udders and draughts of Chian wine, you will see at least sincere friends and you will hear things far sweeter than the land of the Phaeacians. But if you ever cast your eyes on me, Piso, we shall celebrate the twentieth richly instead of simply.

§ 11.45  HONESTUS
Drink which we wish ourselves is ever the sweetest; what is forced on us does outrage to the wine as well as to the drinker. The drinker will spill the wine on the earth secretly, and, if he drink it, it will often take him under the earth to the bitter water of Lethe. Farewell, ye topers; as much as I like to drink is to me the sufficient measure of all enjoyment.

§ 11.46  AUTOMEDON OF CYZICUS
We are men in the evening when we drink together, but when day-break comes, we get up wild beasts preying on each other.

§ 11.47  ANACREON
I care not for the wealth of Gyges the King of Sardis, nor does 'gold take me captive, and I praise not tyrants. I care to drench my beard with scent and crown my head with roses. I care for today; who knows tomorrow?

§ 11.48  ANACREON
Moulding the silver make me, Hephaestus, no suit of armour, but fashion as deep as thou canst a hollow cup, and work on it neither stars nor chariots nor hateful Orion, but blooming vines and laughing clusters with lovely Bacchus.

§ 11.49  EVENUS
The best measure of wine is neither much nor very little; for it is the cause of either grief or madness. It pleases the wine to be the fourth, mixed with three Nymphs. Then it is most suited for the bridal chamber too but if it breathe too fiercely, it puts the Loves to flight and plunges us in a sleep which is neighbour to death.

§ 11.50  AUTOMEDON
Blest is he first who owes naught to anyone, next he who never married, and thirdly he who is childless. But if a man be mad enough to marry, it is a blessing for him if he buries his wife at once after getting a handsome dowry. Knowing this, be wise, and leave Epicurus to enquire in vain where is the void and what are the atoms.

§ 11.51  Anonymous
Enjoy the season of thy prime; all things soon decline: one summer turns a kid into a shaggy he-goat.

§ 11.52  Anonymous
Caught, Thrasybulus, in the net of a boy's love, thou gaspest like a dolphin on the beach, longing for the waves, and not even Perseus' sickle is sharp enough to cut through the net that binds thee.

§ 11.53  Anonymous
The rose blooms for a little season, and when that goes by thou shalt find, if thou seekest, no rose, but a briar.

§ 11.54  PALLADAS
The women mock me for being old, bidding me look at the wreck of my years in the mirror. But I, as I approach the end of my life, care not whether I have white hair or black, and with sweet-scented ointments and crowns of lovely flowers and wine I make heavy care to cease.

§ 11.55  PALLADAS Give me to drink, that wine may scatter my troubles, warming again my chilled heart.

§ 11.56  Anonymous
Drink and take thy delight; for none knows what is tomorrow or what is the future. Hasten not and toil not; be generous and give according to thy power, eat and let thy thoughts befit a mortal: there is no difference between living and not living. All life is such, a mere turn of the scale; all things are thine if thou art beforehand, but if thou diest, another's, and thou hast nothing.

§ 11.57  AGATHIAS SCHOLASTICUS
Old Oenopion had loaded his belly with sweet-scented wine, but yet he did not lay aside the cup, still thirsty and blaming his own hand for not having ladled anything out of the crater. But the young men are snoring, and none has strength to reckon the number of the cups he goes on drinking. Drink, old man, and live. It was a vain saying of divine Homer's that grey hairs are hard pressed by youth.

§ 11.58  MACEDONIUS THE CONSUL
I wish not for gold, nor for the myriad cities of the world, nor for all that Homer said Thebes contained, but I would have the rounded bowl overflow with wine and my lips be bathed by a perpetual stream. I would have the gossiping company of those I revere drink with me while over-industrious folk labour at the vines. That for me is the great wealth ever dear to me, and when I hold the bowl I care naught for consuls resplendent with gold.

§ 11.59  MACEDONIUS THE CONSUL
We deep drinkers, champions of Bacchus the king, will initiate the exploits of our banquet, the war of cups, pouring out copiously the gift of the Icarian god. Let the rites of Triptolemus be the concern of others, there where the oxen are and the ploughs and the pole and the share and the corn-ears, relics of the rape of Persephone. But if we are ever forced to put any food in our mouths, the raisins of Bacchus suffice for wine-bibbers.

§ 11.60  PAULUS SILENTIARIUS
We wine-drinkers will pour a libation to Bacchus the awakener of laughter, with the cups we will expel man-killing care. Let toiling rustics supply their bread-tolerating bellies with the mother of black-robed Persephone, and we will leave to wild beasts and birds that feed on raw flesh the copious and bloody banquets of meat of slain bulls. Let us surrender the bones of fish that cut the skin to the lips of men to whom Hades is dearer than the sun. But for us let wine the bountiful be ever food and drink, and let others long for ambrosia.

§ 11.61  MACEDONIUS THE CONSUL
A physician, a foeman, stood by me yesterday when I was ill, forbidding me the nectar of the cups, and told me to drink water, an empty-headed fellow who had never learnt that Homer calls wine the strength of men.

§ 11.62  PALLADAS
Death is a debt due by all men and no mortal knows if he shall be alive to-mon-ow. Take this well to heart, O man, and make thee merry, since thou possessest wine that is oblivion of death. Take joy too in Aphrodite whilst thou leadest this fleeting life, and give up all else to the control of Fortune.

§ 11.63  MACEDONIUS THE CONSUL
Ye men who care for the rites of harmless Bacchus, cast away poverty by the hope the vine inspires. Let me have a punch-bowl for a cup, and instead of a cask a wine-vat at hand, the home of bright jollity. Then straight when I have drunk a bowl of my wine I will fight with the giants, the sons of Canastra, if thou wilt. I dread not the ruthless sea nor the thunderbolt, having the sure courage of fearless Bacchus.

§ 11.64  AGATHIAS SCHOLASTICUS
We treading the plenteous fruit of Bacchus were weaving in a band the rhythmic revellers' dance. Already a vast flood was running down, and the cups like boats were swimming on the sweet surges. Dipping therewith we soon had improvised a carouse in no great need of the hot Naiads. But pretty Rhodanthe stooping over the vat made the stream glorious with the radiance of her beauty. The alert spirits of all were shaken from their seat, nor was there one who was not conquered by Bacchus and the Paphian. Poor wretches, his stream flowed at our feet in abundance, but we were mocked by hope alone of her.

§ 11.65  On Old Women (65-74)
PARMENION
It is difficult to choose between famine and an old woman. To hunger is terrible, but her bed is still more painful. Phillis when starving prayed to have an elderly wife, but when he slept with her he prayed for famine. Lo the inconstancy of a portionless son!

§ 11.66  ANTIPHILUS OF BYZANTIUM
Even if you smoothen the wrinkled skin of your many-trenched cheeks, and blacken with coal your lidless eyes, and dye your white hair black, and hang round your temples curly ringlets crisped by fire, this is useless and even ridiculous, and even if you go further . . .

§ 11.67  MYRINUS
The letter Ypsilon signifies four hundred, but your years are twice as much, my tender Lais, as old as a crow and Hecuba put together, grandmother of Sisyphus and sister of Deucalion. But dye your white hair and say "tata" to everyone.

§ 11.68  LUCILIUS
Some say, Nicylla, that you dye your hair, but you bought it as black as coal in the market.

§ 11.69  LUCILIUS
Themistonoe, three times a crow's age, when she dyes her grey hair becomes suddenly not young (nea) but Rhea.

§ 11.70  LEONIDAS OF ALEXANDRIA
Philinus when he was young married an old woman, in his old age he married a girl of twelve, but he never knew Venus at the right season. Therefore sowing formerly in barren land he remained childless, and now has married a wife for others to enjoy and is deprived of both blessings.

§ 11.71  NICARCHUS
Niconoe was once in her prime, I admit that, but her prime was when Deucalion looked on the vast waters. Of those times we have no knowledge, but of her now we know that she should seek not a husband, but a tomb.

§ 11.72  BASSUS OF SMYRNA
Cytotaris with her grey temples, the garrulous old woman, who makes Nestor no longer the oldest of men, she who has looked on the light longer than a stag and has begun to reckon her second old age on her left hand, is alive and sharp-sighted and firm on her legs like a bride, so that I wonder if something has not befallen Death.

§ 11.73  NICARCHUS
A handsome old woman (why deny it?) you know she was, when she was young; but then she asked for money while now she is ready to pay her mount. You will find her an artist, and when she has had something to drink then all the more you will have her submissive to whatever you want. For she drinks, if you consent, three or four pints, and then things are all topsy-turvy with her; she clings, she scratches, she plays the pathic; and if one gives her anything, she accepts, if not, the pleasure is her payment.

§ 11.74  NICARCHUS
Turn out that stone-deaf old woman, Onesimus, for God's sake, she is such a nuisance to me. If we tell her to bring soft cheeses (tyroi), she comes not with cheeses, but with fresh grains of wheat (pyroi). The other day I had a headache and asked her for rue (peganon) and she brought me an earthenware frying-pan (teganon); if I ask her for she brings me a rafter; if I say when I am hungry, "Give me some greens " (lachanon), she at once brings a nightstool (lasanon). If I ask for vinegar (oxy), she brings me a bow (toxon), and if I ask for a bow, she brings vinegar; in fact she does not comprehend a word I say. It would disgrace me to become a crier all for the sake of the old woman, and to get up at night and practise outside the town.

§ 11.75  On Prizefighters (75-81)
LUCILIUS
This Olympicus who is now such as you see him, Augustus, once had a nose, a chin, a forehead, ears and eyelids. Then becoming a professional boxer he lost all, not even getting his share of his father's inheritance; for his brother presented a likeness of him he had and he was pronounced to be a stranger, as he bore no resemblance to it.

§ 11.76  LUCILIUS
Having such a mug, Olympicus, go not to a fountain nor look into any transparent water, for you, like Narcissus, seeing your face clearly, will die, hating yourself to the death.

§ 11.77  LUCILIUS
When Ulysses after twenty years came safe to his home, Argos the dog recognised his appearance when he saw him, but you, Stratophon, after boxing for four hours, have become not only unrecognisable to dogs but to the city. If you will trouble to look at your face in a glass, you will say on your oath, "I am not Stratophon."

§ 11.78  LUCILIUS
Your head, Apollophanes, has become a sieve, or the lower edge of a worm-eaten book, all exactly like ant-holes, crooked and straight, or musical notes Lydian and Phrygian. But go on boxing without fear; for even if you are struck on the head you will have the marks you have — you can't have more.

§ 11.79  LUCILIUS
Cleombrotus ceased to be a pugilist, but afterwards married and now has at home all the blows of the Isthmian and Nemean games, a pugnacious old woman hitting as hard as in the Olympian fights, and he dreads his own house more than he ever dreaded the ring. Whenever he gets his wind, he is beaten with all the strokes known in every match to make him pay her his debt; and if he pays it, he is beaten again.

§ 11.80  LUCILIUS
His competitors set up here the statue of Apis the boxer, for he never hurt anyone.

§ 11.81  LUCILIUS
I, Androleos, took part in every boxing contest that the Greeks preside over, every single one. At Pisa I saved one ear, and in Plataea one eyelid, but at Delphi I was carried out insensible. Damoteles, my father, and my fellow-townsmen had been summoned by herald to bear me out of the stadion either dead or mutilated. On Runners (82-86)

§ 11.82  NICARCHUS
Charmus in Arcadia in the long race with five others came in (wonderful to say, but it is a fact) seventh. "As there were six," you will probably say, "how seventh? " A friend of his came in his overcoat calling out "Go it, Charmus," so that thus he ran in seventh and if he had had five more friends, Zoilus, he would have come in twelfth.

§ 11.83  LUCILIUS
Of late the great earth made everything quake, but only the runner Erasistratus it did not move from his place.

§ 11.84  LUCILIUS
None among the competitors was thrown quicker than myself and none ran the race slower. With the quoit I never came near the rest, I never was able to lift my legs for a jump and a cripple could throw the javelin better than I, I am the first who out of the five events was proclaimed beaten in all five.

§ 11.85  LUCILIUS
Marcus once running in armour went on until it was midnight, so that the course was closed on all sides; for the public servants all thought that he was one of the honorary stone statues of men in armour set up there. What happened? Why next year they opened, and Marcus came in, but a whole stadion behind.

§ 11.86  Anonymous
No one knows if Pericles ran or sat in the stadion race. Marvellous slowness! "The noise of the barrier's fall was in our ears" and another was receiving the crown and Pericles had not advanced an inch.

§ 11.87  Chiefly on Defects of Stature (87-111)
LUCILIUS
The house five fathoms long had room for tall Timomachus if he always lay on the floor; but if he ever wanted to stand, his slaves had to bore a hole in the roof in the morning five feet by five.

§ 11.88  LUCILIUS
A gnat carried off little Erotion as she was playing. "What is going to happen to me?" she said, "Dost thou want me, father Zeus?"

§ 11.89  LUCILIUS
Short Hermogenes when he lets anything fall on the ground pulls it down with a halbert.

§ 11.90  LUCILIUS
Do you know, Dionysius, that little Marcus, being angry with his father, set on end a probe and hanged himself on it.

§ 11.91  LUCILIUS
Thin Stratonicus fixed on a reed a spike of corn and attaching himself to it by a hair hanged himself. And what happened? He was not heavy enough to hang down, but his dead body flies in the air above his gallows, although there is no wind.

§ 11.92  LUCILIUS
Lean Gaius, when he breathed his last yesterday, left absolutely nothing to be carried to the grave, and finally going down to Hades just as he was when alive flutters there the thinnest of the skeletons under earth. His kinsmen bore on their shoulders his empty bier, writing above it "This is the funeral of Gaius."

§ 11.93  LUCILIUS
Lean Marcus once made a hole with his head in one of Epicurus' atoms and went through the middle of it.

§ 11.94  LUCILIUS
Lean Marcus sounding a trumpet just blew into it and went straight headforemost down it.

§ 11.95  LUCILIUS
A small mouse finding little Macron asleep one summer's day dragged him into its hole by his foot. But he in the hole, though unarmed, strangled the mouse and said, "Father Zeus, thou hast a second Heracles."

§ 11.96  NICARCHUS
The birds of Stymphalus vexed not so the Arcadians, as those dead thrushes vexed me with their dry bones, very harpies, ten of them, a dry drachma's-worth. Out on you, wretched creatures, true bats of the fields.

§ 11.97  AMMIANUS
Build another city for the man from Stratonicea, or build another for the inhabitants of this one.

§ 11.98  AMMIANUS
Let a city first be a metropolis and then be called so, but not now when it is not even a city.

§ 11.99  LUCILIUS
As thin little Proclus was blowing the fire the smoke took him up and went off with him from here through the window. With difficulty he swum to a cloud and came down through it wounded in a thousand places by the atomies.

§ 11.100  LUCILIUS
Gaius was so very light that he used to dive with a stone or lead hung from his foot.

§ 11.101  LUCILIUS
Demetrius, fanning slight little Artemidora in her sleep, fanned her off the roof.2

§ 11.102  AMMIANUS or NICARCHUS
Thin little Diodorus once in taking a thorn out made a hole in the needle with his foot.

§ 11.103  LUCILIUS
Epicurus wrote that all the world consisted of atoms thinking, Alcimus, that an atom was the most minute thing. But if Diophantus had existed then he would have written that it consisted of Diophantus, who is much more minute than the atoms. Or he would have written that other things were composed of atoms, but the atoms themselves, Alcimus, of Diophantus.

§ 11.104  LUCILIUS
Poor Menestratus once, riding on an ant as if it were an elephant, was suddenly stretched on his back. When it trod on him and he was breathing his last, "O Envy!" he exclaimed, "thus riding perished Phaethon too."

§ 11.105  LUCILIUS
I was looking for great Eumecius, and he was asleep with his arms stretched out under a small saucer.

§ 11.106  LUCILIUS
Chaeremon caught by a slight breeze was floating in the air, much lighter than a straw. He would soon have been swept away through the air, if he had not caught his feet in a spider's web and hung there on his back. Here he hung for five days and nights and on the sixth day came down by a thread of the web.

§ 11.107  LUCILIUS
Chaeremon fell flat on his back, struck by a poplar leaf carried by the wind, and he lies on the ground like Tityus or rather like a caterpillar, stretching on the ground his skeleton body.

§ 11.108  Anonymous
{By some attributed to Julian the Apostate) Conon is two cubits tall, his wife four. In bed, then, with their feet on a level, reckon where Conon's face is.

§ 11.109  Anonymous
Little Demetrius has not wherewith to stoop, but always lies flat on the ground trying to get up.

§ 11.110  NICARCHUS
Three thin men were competing the other day about thinness, to see which of them would be adjudged the very thinnest. The one, Hermon, exhibited great skill and went through the eye of a needle holding the thread. But Demas coming out of a hole stopped at a spider's web, and the spider spinning hung him from it. But Sosipater exclaimed, "Give me the prize, for I lose it if I am seen, since I am nothing but air."

§ 11.111  NICARCHUS
Lean Diophantus once wishing to hang himself took a thread from a spider's web and did so.

§ 11.112  On Physicians (112-126) NICHARCHUS
Before he anoints your eyes, Demostratus, say "Adieu dear light" so successful is Dion. Not only did he blind Olympicus, but through his treatment of him put out the eyes of the portrait of himself he had.

§ 11.113  By the same
The physician Marcus laid his hand yesterday on the stone Zeus, and though he is of stone and Zeus he is to be buried today.

§ 11.114  By the same
The astrologer Diophantus told Hermogenes the doctor that he had only nine months to live, and he, smiling, said, "You understand what Saturn says will happen in nine months, but my treatment is more expeditious for you." Having said so he reached out his hand and only touched him, and Diophantus, trying to drive another to despair, himself gave his last gasp.

§ 11.115  By the same
If you have an enemy, Dionysius, call not down on him the curse of Isis or Harpocrates or of any god who blinds men, but call on Simon and you will see what a god's power is and what Simon's is.

§ 11.116  By the same
Lord Caesar, as they tell, Eurystheus once sent down great Heracles to the house of Hades; but now Menophanes the physician has sent me. So let him be called Doctor Eurystheus and no longer Doctor Menophanes.

§ 11.117  STRATO
The physician Capito anointed Chryses' eyes then when he could see a high tower from a mile off and a man from a furlong and a quail from ten yards and a louse even from a foot. Now from a furlong he cannot see the town and from two hundred feet cannot see that the lighthouse is alight; he scarcely sees a horse from half a foot off; and as for the quail he once saw, he can't even see a large ostrich. If he manages to give him another dose, he won't ever after be able to see even an elephant standing close to him.

§ 11.118  CALLICTER
Phidon did not purge me with a clyster or even feel me, but feeling feverish I remembered his name and died.

§ 11.119  CALLICTER
Whether the doctor purged or strangled the old woman no one knows, but it was terribly sudden. The noise of the clyster was in our ears and her bier was being crowned and the rest prepared the pease-pudding.

§ 11.120  CALLICTER
Socres, promising to set Diodorus' crooked back straight, piled three solid stones, each four feet square, on the hunchback's spine. He was crushed and died, but he has become straighter than a ruler.

§ 11.121  CALLICTER
Agelaus by operating killed Acestorides, for he said, "If he had lived the poor fellow would have been lame."

§ 11.122  CALLICTER
Alexis the physician purged by a clyster five patients at one time and five others by drugs; he visited five, and again he rubbed five with ointment. And for all there was one night, one medicine, one coffin-maker, one tomb, one Hades, one lamentation.

§ 11.123  HEDYLUS
Agis neither purged Aristagoras, nor touched him, but no sooner had he come in than Aristagoras was gone. What aconite has such natural virtue? Ye coffin-makers, throw chaplets and garlands on Agis.

§ 11.124  NICARCHUS
A. Stranger, what dost thou seek to know. B. Who are here in earth under these tombs? A. All those whom Zopyrus robbed of the sweet daylight, Damis, Aristoteles, Demetrius Arcesilaus, Sostratus, and the next ones so far as Paraetonium. For with a wooden herald's staff and counterfeit sandals, like Hermes, he leads down his patients to Hell.

§ 11.125  Anonymous
The physician Crateas and the sexton Damon made a joint conspiracy. Damon sent the wrappings he stole from the grave-clothes to his dear Crateas to use as bandages and Crateas in return sent him all his patients to bury.

§ 11.126  Anonymous
Charinus anointed my eye not with a spatula, but with a three-pronged fork, and he had a new sponge like those used for paintings. In pulling out the spatula he tore out my eye from the roots and the whole spatula remained inside. But if he anoints me twice, I shall not trouble him any more by suffering from sore eyes; for how can a man who no longer has eyes do so?

§ 11.127  On Poets (127-137)
POLLIANUS
There are among the Muses too Avengers, who make you a poet, and therefore you write much and without judgment. Now, I entreat you, write still more, for no greater madness can I beseech the gods to give you than that.

§ 11.128  By the same
If I am not pleased, Florus, may I become a dactyl or a foot, one of those that you torture. Yes, I swear by the happy lot you drew in the contest, I am as pleased at your crown as if it were a joint of pork. Therefore be of good heart, Florus, and become cheerful again; in this fashion you can win the long race as well.

§ 11.129  CEREALIUS
A poet coming to the Isthmian games to the contest, when he found other poets there said he had paristhmia (mumps). He is going to start off for the Pythian games, and if he finds poets there again he can't say he has parapythia as well.

§ 11.130  POLLIANUS
I hate these cyclic poets who say "natheless eftsoon," filchers of the verses of others, and so I pay more attention to elegies, for there is nothing I want to steal from Callimachus or Parthenius. Let me become like an "eared beast " if ever I write "from the rivers sallow celandine." But these epic poets strip Homer so shamelessly that they already write "Sing, O Goddess, the wrath." "

§ 11.131  LUCILIUS
Not water in Deucalion's day when all became water, nor Phaethon who burned up the inhabitants of the earth, slew so many men as Potamon the poet and Hermogenes by his surgery killed. So from the beginning of the ages there have been these four curses, Deucalion, Phaethon, Hermogenes and Potamon.

§ 11.132  LUCILIUS
I hate, Lord Caesar, those who are never pleased with any young writer, even if he says "Sing, O Goddess, the wrath," but if a man is not as old as Priam, if he is not half bald and not so very much bent, they say he can't write a b c. But, Zeus most high, if this really be so, wisdom visits but the ruptured.

§ 11.133  LUCILIUS
Eutychides the lyric poet is dead. Fly, ye people who dwell under earth; Eutychides is coming with odes, and he ordered them to burn with him twelve lyres and twenty-five cases of music. Now indeed Charon has got hold of you. Where can one depart to in future, since Eutychides is established in Hades too?

§ 11.134  LUCILIUS
Shall we begin, Heliodorus? Shall we play thus at these poems together? Do you wish it, Heliodorus? "Go to Assos, that swifter thou mayst reach Death's goal"; for you will see in me a master of tedious twaddle more Heliodorian than yourself.

§ 11.135  LUCILIUS
No longer, Marcus, no longer lament the boy, but me, who am much more dead than that child of yours. Make elegies, hangman, now for me, make dirges for me who am slain by this versy death. For all for the sake of that dead child of yours I suffer what I would the inventors of books and pens might suffer.

§ 11.136  LUCILIUS
No sword so maleficent was ever forged by man for sudden treacherous attack as is the undeclared war of murderous hexameters, Callistratus, that you come to wage with me. Sound the retreat on the bugle at once, for even Priam by his tears gained his foes' consent (?) to an armistice.

§ 11.137  LUCILIUS
You serve me a slice of raw beef, Heliodorus, and pour me out three cups of wine rawer than the beef, and then you wash me out at once with epigrams. If sinning against heaven I have eaten one of the oxen from Trinacria, I would like to gulp down the sea at once — but if the sea is too far from here, take me up and throw me into a well.

§ 11.138  On Grammarians (138-140)
LUCILIUS
If I only think of the grammarian Heliodorus, my tongue at once commits solecisms and I suffer from impediment of speech.

§ 11.139  By the same
Zenonis keeps Menander the bearded grammar-teacher, and says she has entrusted her son to him; but he never stops at night making her practise cases, conjunctions, figures, and conjugations.

§ 11.140  By the same
To these praters, these verse-fighters of the supper table, these slippery dominies of Aristarchus' school who care not for making a joke or drinking, but lie there playing infantile games with Nestor and Priam, cast me not literally " to be their prey and spoil." To-day I don't sup on "Sing, O Goddess, the wrath."

§ 11.141  On Rhetors (141-152)
LUCILIUS
I lost a little pig and a cow and one nanny-goat, and on account of them you received your little fee, Menecles. I never had anything in common with Othryades nor do I prosecute the three hundred from Thermopylae for theft; my suit is against Eutychides, so that here how do Xerxes and the Spartans help me? I beg you just to mention me for form's sake or I will call out loud "One thing says Menecles, and another thing says the piggie."

§ 11.142  By the same
After having studied "Far be it" and sphinx and thrice in each period, "Gentlemen of the jury," and "Here, usher, repeat the law for me," and "This way," and "I put it to you," and "two score," and "certain alleged," and indeed "By heaven," and "'Sdeath," Crito is an orator and teaches numbers of children, and to these phrases he will add gru, phathi, and min.

§ 11.143  By the same
Pluto will not receive the rhetor Marcus when dead, saying, "Let our one dog Cerberus be enough here; but if thou wilt come in at any cost, declaim to Ixion, Melito the lyric poet, and Tityus. For I have no evil worse than thee, until the day when Rufus the grammarian shall come here with his solecisms."

§ 11.144  CEREALIUS
To use magniloquent words and four or five Attic ones is not to study with proper fervour and wisdom. For not even if you say "quaked" and "clangs," and " hisses," and "gurgled," will you be a Homer at once. Sense should underlie literature, and its phraseology be more vulgar so that people may understand what you say.

§ 11.145  Anonymous
Sextus' picture declaims, but Sextus is silent. The picture is a rhetor and the rhetor the image of his picture.

§ 11.146  AMMIANUS
I sent Flaccus the rhetor a present of seven solecisms and received back five times two hundred. And "Now," he says, "I send you these by the hundred, but in future when I get to Cyprus I will send them by the bushel."

§ 11.147  AMMIANUS
Asiaticus has suddenly become an orator. Nothing incredible in that! It is only another miracle in Thebes.

§ 11.148  LUCILIUS
Flaccus the rhetor made solecisms the other day without even speaking, and when he was about to yawn at once was guilty of a barbarism, and now goes on making solecisms by signs with his hand, and I, seeing him, am tongue-tied.

§ 11.149  Anonymous
I see the very image of you, Medon the rhetor. Well, what is there surprising in that? You have arranged your dress effectively and you are silent; Nothing could be more like.

§ 11.150  AMMIANIIS
"The rhetor Athenagoras in consequence of a dream dedicated an Arcadian hat to Arcadian Hermes." If he is a rhetor too, in a dream only, we will take it so inscribed to Hermes, but if he is a real one, let " Athenagoras dedicated this " suffice.

§ 11.151  Anonymous
This is the image of a rhetor, but the rhetor is the image of his image. How is that? He does not speak. Nothing could be more life-like.

§ 11.152  AMMIANUS
If you want, Paulus, to teach your son to be a rhetor like all these, don't let him learn his letters.

§ 11.153  On Philosophers (153-158)
LUCILIUS
No one at all denies, Menestratus, that you are a cynic and bare-footed and that you are shivering. But if you shamelessly steal loaves and broken pieces on the sly, I have a stick, and they call you a dog.

§ 11.154  By the same
Everyone who is poor and illiterate does not grind corn as formerly or carry burdens for small pay, but grows a beard and picking up a stick from the cross-roads, calls himself the chief dog of virtue. This is the sage pronouncement of Hermodotus, "If anyone is penniless, let him throw off his shirt and no longer starve."

§ 11.155  By the same
"This solid adamant of virtue, this rebuker of everyone, this fighter with the cold, with his long beard, has been caught." "At what?" "It is not proper to say at what, but he was caught doing things that foul-mouthed people do."

§ 11.156  AMMIANUS
Do you suppose that your beard creates brains and therefore you grow that fly-flapper? Take my advice and shave it off at once; for that beard is a creator of lice and not of brains.

§ 11.157  AMMIANUS
"Good Sir" and "Can it he?" and "Whence, sirrah, and whither? " and "Right off " and "Go to " and "Quite so " and "Hie ye " and cloakie and little lock and beardie, and "Keep your little shoulder bare " — that is what present-day philosophy flourishes on.

§ 11.158  ANTIPATER
The wallet laments, and the fine sturdy Heracles club of Sinopian Diogenes and the double coat, foe of the cold clouds, befouled all over with encrusted dirt, lament likewise because they are polluted by thy shoulders. Verily I take Diogenes himself to be the dog of heaven, but thou art the dog that lies in the ashes. Put off, put off the arms that are not thine The work of lions is one thing, and that of bearded goats another.

§ 11.159  On Prophets (159-164)
LUCILIUS
All the astrologers as it were with one voice prophesied to my father a ripe old age for his brother. Hermoclides alone foretold his premature death, but he foretold it when we were lamenting over his corpse in the house.

§ 11.160  By the same
All those who take horoscopes from observing Mars and Saturn are deserving of one cudgelling. I shall see them perhaps at no distant date really learning what a bull can do and how strong a lion is.

§ 11.161  By the same
Onesimus the boxer came to the prophet Olympus wishing to learn if he were going to live to old age. And he said, "Yes, if you give up the ring now, but if you go on boxing, Saturn is your horoscope."

§ 11.162  NICARCHUS
One came to ask the prophet Olympicus if he should take ship for Rhodes and how to sail there safely. And the prophet said, "First have a new ship and don't start in winter, but in summer. If you do this you will go there and back, unless a pirate catches you at sea."

§ 11.163  LUCILIUS
Onesimus the wrestler and the pentathlete Hylas and the runner Menecles came to the prophet Olympus wishing to know which of them was going to win at the games, and he, after inspecting the sacrifice, said, "You will all win — unless anyone passes you. Sir, or unless anyone throws you. Sir, or unless anyone runs past you. Sir."

§ 11.164  LUCILIUS
Aulus the astrologer, after making out his own nativity, said that the fatal hour had come and that he had still four hours to live. When it reached the fifth hour and he had to go on living convicted of ignorance, he grew ashamed of Petosiris and hanged himself, and there up in the air he is dying, but he is dying ignorant.

§ 11.165  On Misers (165-173)
LUCILIUS
Crito the miser, when he has a pain in his stomach refreshes himself by smelling not mint, but a penny piece.

§ 11.166  Anonymous
All say you are rich, but I say you are poor, for, Apollophanes, their use is the proof of riches. If you take your share of them, they are yours, but if you keep them for your heirs, they are already someone else's.

§ 11.167  POLLIANUS
You have money, but I will tell you how it is you have nothing. You lend all; so that in order that another may have some, you have none yourself.

§ 11.168  ANTIPHANES.
Thou reckonest up thy money, poor wretch; but Time, just as it breeds interest, so, as it overtakes thee, gives birth to grey old age. And so having neither drunk wine, nor bound thy temples with flowers, having never known sweet ointment or a delicate little love, thou shalt die, leaving a great and wealthy testament, and of all thy riches carrying away with thee but one obol.

§ 11.169  NICARCHUS
Yesterday, Glaucus, Dinarchus the miser being about to hang himself, did not die, poor fellow, all for the sake of sixpence; for the rope cost sixpence, but he tried to drive a hard bargain, seeking perhaps some other cheap death. This is the very height of wretched avarice, for a man to be dying, Glaucus, and not able to die, poor fellow, all for the sake of sixpence.

§ 11.170  NICARCHUS
Phido the miser weeps not because he is dying, but because he paid thirty pounds for his coffin. Let him off this, and as there is room in it, put one of his many little children into it besides.

§ 11.171  LUCILIUS
Hermocrates the miser when he was dying wrote himself his own heir in his will, and he lay there reckoning what fee he must pay the doctors if he leaves his bed and how much his illness costs him. But when he found it cost one drachma more if he were saved, "It pays," he said, "to die," and stiffened himself out. Thus he lies, having nothing but an obol, and his heirs were glad to seize on his wealth.

§ 11.172  LUCILIUS
Aulus the miser drowned in the sea a child that was born to him, reckoning how much it would cost him if he kept it.

§ 11.173  PHILIPPUS
If you have lent out some of it, and give some now, and are going to give some more, you are never master of your money.

§ 11.174  On Thieves (174-184)
LUCILIUS
Dio yesterday stole Cypris all of gold, just risen from her mother sea, and he also pulled down with his hand Adonis of beaten gold and the little Love that stood by. Even the best thieves that ever were will now say, "No longer do we enter into a contest of dexterity with you."

§ 11.175  LUCILIUS
Eutychides stole the god himself by whom he was about to swear, saying, "I can't swear by you."

§ 11.176  LUCILIUS
As he carried off the winged Hermes, the servant of the gods, the Lord of the Arcadians, the cattle-raider, who stood here as curator of this gymnasium, Aulus the night-thief said, "Many pupils are cleverer than their teachers."

§ 11.177  LUCILIUS
Eutychides stole Phoebus the detector of thieves, saying, "Speak not too much, but compare thy art with mine and thy oracles with my hands and a prophet with a thief and a god with Eutychides. And because of thy unbridled tongue thou shalt be sold at once, and then say of me what thou wilt to thy purchasers."

§ 11.178  LUCILIUS
Herdsman, feed thy flock far away, lest Pericles the thief drive thee and thy cattle off together.

§ 11.179  LUCILIUS
If Dio had feet like his hands, Dio, and Hermes no longer, would be distinguished among men as winged.

§ 11.180  AMMIANUS
On the Ides (or "if you give") Polemon does not decide the suit, on the Nones (or "if you say 'No') he condemns you. Whether you give or don't give, he is always Polemon.

§ 11.181  AMMIANUS
We all knew, Polemon, that your name was Antonius. How is it that three letters are suddenly missing?

§ 11.182  DIONYSIUS
You are killing me, a pig but not your own, and you call me "piggie" (or "our own pig"), knowing well that I am not your own.

§ 11.183  LUCILIUS
Heliodorus, hearing that Saturn troubles nativities, carried off the golden Saturn at night from the temple, saying: "Experience by fact, my Lord, which of us anticipated the other in working evil, and thou shalt know which of us is the Saturn of which. ' Who works evil for another, works it for his own heart.' Fetch me a good price and portend what thou wilt by thy rising."

§ 11.184  LUCILIUS
From the Hesperides' Garden of Zeus, Meniscus, as Heracles did formerly, carried off three golden apples. Well, what happened? When he was caught he became a famous spectacle for all, burning alive, like Heracles of old.

§ 11.185  On Singers and Actors (185-189)
LUCILIUS
Heoelochus, my Lord Caesar, once emptied a Greek city by appearing to sing the part of Nauplius. Nauplius is ever an evil to the Greeks either sending a great wave on their ships or having a lyre-singer to play his part.

§ 11.186  NICARCHUS
The night-raven's song bodes death, but when Demophilus sings the night-raven itself dies.

§ 11.187  LEONIDAS OF ALEXANDRIA
Simylus the lyre-player killed all his neighbours by playing the whole night, except only Origenes, whom Nature had made deaf, and therefore gave him longer life in the place of hearing.

§ 11.188  AMMIANUS
Nicetas when he sings is the Apollo of the songs, and when he doctors, of the patients.

§ 11.189  LUCILIUS
Apollophanes the tragedian sold for five obols the stage property of five gods the club of Heracles, Tisiphone's instruments of terror, the trident of Poseidon, the shield of Athena, and the quiver of Artemis, "And the gods that sit beside Zeus " were stripped to get a few coppers to buy a little bread and wine.

§ 11.190  On Barbers (190-191)
LUCILIUS
The barber is puzzled to know where to begin to shave the head of hairy Hermogenes, as he seems to be all head.

§ 11.191  By the same
"Ares, Ares, destroyer of men, blood-fiend," cease, barber, from cutting me, for you have no place left in which to cut me. But change now to my muscles and my legs below the knees, and cut me there, and I will let you. For even now the shop is full of flies, and if you persist, you will see the tribes of vultures and ravens here.

§ 11.192  On Envy (192-193)
LUCILIUS
Envious Diophon, seeing another man near him crucified on a higher cross than himself, fell into a decline.

§ 11.193  Anonymous
What an evil is Envy! but it has something good in it; for it wastes away the eyes and heart of the envious.

§ 11.194  LUCILIUS
To Pan who loves the cave, and the Nymphs that haunt the hills, and to the Satyrs and to the holy Hamadryads within the cave, Marcus . . . , having killed nothing with his dogs and boar-spears, hung up the dogs themselves.

§ 11.195  DIOSCORIDES
Aristagoras danced the part of a Gallus, while I, with great labour, went through the story of the warlike Temenidae. He was dismissed with honour, but one unceasing storm of rattles sent poor Hyrnetho off the boards. Into the fire with you, ye exploits of the heroes! for among the illiterate even a lark sings more musically than a swan.

§ 11.196  On Ugly People (196-204)
LUCILIUS
BITO, with a face three times worse than a monkey's, enough to make even Hecate hang herself for envy if she saw it, says, "I am chaste, Lucilius, and sleep alone; " for perhaps she is ashamed of saying "I am a virgin." But may whoever hates me marry such a horror and have children of similar chastity.

§ 11.197  By the same
HIERONYMUS formerly wanted to be too drimys (strict); now he has the dri, but the mys has turned into los.

§ 11.198  THEODORUS
"The nose's Hermocrates " — for if we say " Hermocrates' nose" we give long things to little ones.

§ 11.199  LEONIDAS OF ALEXANDRIA
Hook-nosed Sosipolis does not buy fish, but gets plenty of good fare from the sea for nothing; bringing no line and rod, but attaching a hook to his nose, he pulls out everything that swims.

§ 11.200  LEONIDAS OF ALEXANDRIA
Zenogenes' house was on fire, and he was toiling sore in his efforts to let himself down from a window. By fixing planks together he could not reach far enough, but at length, when it struck him, he set Antimachus' nose as a ladder and escaped.

§ 11.201  AMMONIDES
If anyone had shown Antipatra naked to the Parthians, they would have fled outside the Pillars of Heracles.

§ 11.202  Anonymous
After burying his old woman, Moschus very sensibly married a young girl, his first wife's whole dowry remaining intact in his house. Moschus deserves to be praised for his good sense, in that he alone knows whom to sleep with and from whom to inherit.

§ 11.203  Anonymous
Castor's nose is a hoe for him when he digs anything, a trumpet when he snores and a grape-sickle at vintage time, an anchor on board ship, a plough when he is sowing, a fishing-hook for sailors, a fleshhook for feasters, a pair of tongs for ship-builders, and for farmers a leek-slicer, an axe for carpenters and a handle for his door. Such a serviceable implement has Castor the luck to possess, wearing a nose adaptable for any work.

§ 11.204  PALLADAS
I was thunderstruck when I saw the rhetor Maurus, with a snout like an elephant, emitting a voice that murders one from lips weighing a pound each.

§ 11.205  On Gluttons (205-209)
LUCILIUS
Eutychides when he came to supper, Dionysius, did not leave Aulus a single scrap, but handed everything to his servant behind him, and now Eutychides has a great supper in his house, and Aulus, not invited, sits eating dry bread.

§ 11.206  By the same
So may you be able, Dionysius, to digest all these things you are eating, but for custom's sake give us something to eat here too. I was invited also, and Publius served some of these things for me too to taste, and my portion too is on the board. Unless, seeing that I am thin, you think I was ill when I sat down to table, and so watch me thus in case I eat something unnoticed by you.

§ 11.207  By the same
You eat as much as five wolves, Gamus, and you hand to your slave behind you all that is over, not only your own portion, but that of those round you. But come tomorrow with your slave's basket, and bring sawdust and a sponge and a broom.

§ 11.208  By the same
As a racer Eutychides was slow, but he ran to supper so quickly that they said, "Eutychides is flying."

§ 11.209  AMMIANUS
Even if thou removest thy neighbour's boundaries till thou reachest the Pillars of Heracles, a portion of earth equal to that of all men awaits thee, and thou shalt lie like Irus, with no more than an obol on thee, dissolving into the earth that is no more thine.

§ 11.210  On Cowards (210-211)
LUCILIUS
Aulus the soldier stops his ears when he sees charcoal or laurel, wrapping his yellow duds tight round his head, and he shudders at his own useless sword; and if you ever say "They are coming," he falls flat on his back. No Polemo or Stratoclides will he approach, but always has Lysimachus for a friend.

§ 11.211  LUCILIUS
When Calpurnius the soldier saw the battle by the ships painted on a wall, as is the custom, the warrior lay stretched out pulseless and pale, calling out, "Quarter, ye Trojans dear to Ares." Then he enquired if he had been wounded, and with difficulty believed he was alive when he had agreed to pay ransom to the wall.

§ 11.212  On Painters (212-215)
LUCILIUS
I ordered you, Diodorus, to paint a pretty child, but you produce a child strange to me, putting a dog's head on his shoulders, so that I weep to think how my Zopyrion was born to me by Hecuba. And finally I, Erasistratus the butcher, have got for six drachmae a son Anubis from the shrines of Isis.

§ 11.213  LEONIDAS OF ALEXANDRIA
Diodorus, painting Menodotus' portrait, made it very like everyone except Menodotus.

§ 11.214  LUCILIUS
Having painted Deucalion and Phaethon, Menestratus, you enquire which of them is worth anything. We will appraise them according to their own fate. Phaethon is truly worthy of the fire and Deucalion of the water.

§ 11.215  LUCILIUS
Eutychus the painter was the father of twenty sons, but never got a likeness even among his children.

§ 11.216  On Lewd Livers (216-223)
LUCILIUS
You have heard of Cratippus as a lover of boys. It is a great marvel I have to tell you, but great goddesses are the Avengers. We discovered that Cratippus, the lover of boys, belongs now to another variety of those persons whose tastes lie in an inverse direction. Would I ever have expected this? I expected it, Cratippus. Shall I go mad because, while you told everyone you were a wolf, you suddenly turned out to be a kid?

§ 11.217  LUCILIUS
To avoid suspicion, Apollophanes married and walked as a bridegroom through the middle of the market, saying, "Tomorrow at once I will have a child." Then when tomorrow came he appeared carrying the suspicion instead of a child.

§ 11.218  CRATES
Choerilus is far inferior to Antimachus, but on all occasions Euphorion would ever talk of Choerilus and made his poems full of glosses, and knew those of Philetas well, for he was indeed a follower of Homer.

§ 11.219  ANTIPATER
I don't pay any attention, although some people are to be trusted; but in the meantime, for God's sake, if you love me, Pamphilus, don't kiss me.

§ 11.220  Anonymous
Avoid the mouth of Alphaeus; he loves the bosom of Arethusa, falling headlong into the salt sea.

§ 11.221  AMMIANUS
I don't dislike you because you lick the sugar cane, but because you do this, too, without the cane.

§ 11.222  Anonymous
ΧΕΙΛΩΝ (Chilon) and ΛΕΙΧΩΝ (licking) have the same letters. But what does that matter? For Chilon licks whether they are the same or not.

§ 11.223  MELEAGER (?)
You doubt that Favorinus has sex? Doubt it no longer; He himself told me has sex — with his own mouth.

§ 11.224  ANTIPATER
Seeing Kimon's penis standing erect Priapus said, "Alas! I, immortal, fall short of a mortal."

§ 11.225  STRATO
The bed has two passive and two active, which might seem to you to make four in all, but they are three. If you ask how this could be, the one in the middle counts twice, writhing in common labor in both directions.

§ 11.226  AMMIANUS
May the dust lie light on thee when under earth, wretched Nearchus, so that the dogs may easily drag thee out.

§ 11.227  AMMIANUS
Sooner shall a beetle make honey or a mosquito milk than thou, being a scorpion, shalt do any good. For neither dost thou do good willingly thyself, nor dost thou allow another to do it, hated as thou art by all like Saturn's star.

§ 11.228  AMMIANUS
One man killed his mother, another his father, a third his brother, but Polianus all three, the first since Oedipus.

§ 11.229  AMMIANUS
Late in the day has the gout found him who deserved it; him who deserved to be gouty a hundred years ago.

§ 11.230  AMMIANUS
Take away Marcus, the two first letters from Mastauron, and you deserve many of what is left.

§ 11.231  AMMIANUS
You are a wild beast all but a letter and a man by a letter, and you deserve many of the beasts that you are all but a letter.

§ 11.232  CALLIAS OF ARGOS
You were always, Polycritus, as good as gold, but now after drinking you have suddenly become a sort of rabid curse. I believe you are always wicked; wine is the test of character; it is not now that you become wicked, but now you have been shown to be so.

§ 11.233  LUCILIUS
Phaedrus the man of business and the painter Rufus contended as to which of them would copy quickest and most truly. But while Rufus was about to mix his paints Phaedrus took and wrote out a renouncement of Rufus' claim faithful as a picture.

§ 11.234  LUCILIUS
If Craterus' feet and hands were sound, his head was not, when he wrote such stuff.

§ 11.235  DEMODOCUS
This, too, is by Demodocus: "The Chians are bad, not one bad and another not, but all bad except Procles, and Procles is a Chian."

§ 11.236  DEMODOCUS All Cilicians are bad men, but among the Cilicians the only good man is Cinyras, and Cinyras is a Cilician.

§ 11.237  By the same
An evil viper once bit a Cappadocian, but it died itself, having tasted the venomous blood.

§ 11.238  By the same
The Cappadocians are always bad, but when they get a belt they are worse, and for the sake of gain they are the worst of all, and if once or twice they get hold of a large carriage they are as bad as bad can be for a year. I implore thee, O King, let it not be four times, lest the whole world slide to ruin, becoming cappadocianified.

§ 11.239  LUCILIUS
Not Homer's Chimaera breathed such foul breath, not the fire-breathing herd of bulls of which they tell, not all Lemnos nor the excrements of the Harpies, nor Philoctetes' putrefying foot. So that in universal estimation, Telesilla, you surpass Chimerae, rotting sores, bulls, birds, and the women of Lemnos.

§ 11.240  LUCILIUS
Demostratis not only breathes herself the stink of a he-goat, but makes those who smell her breathe the same.

§ 11.241  NICARCHUS
Your mouth and your butt, Theodorus, smell the same, so that it would be a famous task for men of science to distinguish them. You ought really to write on a label which is your mouth and which your butt, but now when you speak I think you break wind.

§ 11.242  NICARCHUS
I can't tell whether Diodorus is yawning or has broken wind, for he has one breath above and below.

§ 11.243  NICARCHUS
Onesimus went to the bath to bathe on the twelfth of the month Dystrus in the year of Antiphilus, leaving at home a child at the breast, whom when he has finished bathing he will find to be the father of two other children. . . . He writes us to say he will go again next year, for the bath-men promise to take off the heat then.

§ 11.244  Anonymous
You bought a brass boiler, Heliodorus, colder than Thracian Boreas. Don't blow the fire, don't put yourself out; it is in vain you stir up the smoke. What you bought was a brass wine-cooler for summer.

§ 11.245  LUCILIUS
The sides of the ship, Diophantes, let in all the waves, and through the ports ocean enters; and we see swimming in your ship herds of dolphins and the bright children of Nereus. But if we wait longer someone will soon be sailing inside this our ship, for there is no more water left in the sea.

§ 11.246  LUCILIUS
From what quarry, Dionysius, did you hew these timbers? Of what mill-stones is the ship built? For if I know anything about it, it is a kind of lead, not oak or pine, and the lower part of me is nearly taking root. Perhaps I shall suddenly become a stone, and then the worst of it is Melito will write a rotten drama about me as if I were Niobe.

§ 11.247  LUCILIUS
Of a truth, Dionysius, we the seas sail, and the ship is full of every sea from all parts. The Adriatic, the Tyrrhene Sea, the Gulf of Issa, the Aegean, are running dry. This is no ship, but a wooden fountain of ocean. To arms, Caesar! Dionysius begins already not to command a ship, but to command the seas.

§ 11.248  BIANOR
It was not the depths that took the ship (how the depths, when she had never sailed?) nor the south wind, but she perished before encountering south wind and sea. Already completely built, even as far as the benches, they were anointing her with the fat juice of the pine; and the pitch, overboiling with the flame of the fire, showed that she, who was being built to serve the sea faithfully, was less faithful to the land.

§ 11.249  LUCILIUS
Menophanus bought a field, and from hunger hanged himself on another man's oak. When he was dead they had no earth to throw over him from above, but he was buried for payment in the ground of one of his neighbours. If Epicurus had known of Menophanes' field he would have said that everything is full of fields, not of atoms.

§ 11.250  Anonymous
The artist painted the fat man well, but to Hell with him if we shall look on two guzzlers instead of one.

§ 11.251  NICARCHUS
A stone-deaf man went to law with another stone-deaf man, and the judge was much deafer than the pair of them. One of them contended that the other owed him five months' rent, and the other said that his opponent had ground corn at night. Says the judge, looking at them: "Why are you quarrelling? She is your mother; you must both maintain her."

§ 11.252  NICARCHUS
If you kiss me you hate me, and if you hate me you kiss me. But if you don't hate me, dear friend, don't kiss me!

§ 11.253  LUCILIUS
From what oak-trees did your father cut you, Aristo, or from what mill-stone quarry did he hew you? For indeed you are a dancer " made of a venerable tree or of stone," the living original of Niobe; so that I wonder and say: "You, too, must have had some quarrel with Leto, or else you would not have been naturally made of stone."

§ 11.254  LUCILIUS
You played in the ballet everything according to the story, but by overlooking one very important action you highly displeased us. Dancing the part of Niobe you stood like a stone, and again when you were Capaneus you suddenly fell down. But in the case of Canace you were not clever, for you had a sword, but yet left the stage alive; that was not according to the story.

§ 11.255  PALLADAS
Snub-nosed Memphis danced the parts of Daphne and Niobe, Daphne as if he were wooden and Niobe as if he were of stone.

§ 11.256  LUCILIUS
They say you spend a long time in the bath, Heliodora, an old woman of a hundred not yet retired from the profession. But I know why you do it. You hope to grow young, like old Pelias, by being boiled.

§ 11.257  LUCILIUS
Diophantus saw Hermogenes the doctor in his sleep and never woke up again, although he was wearing an amulet.

§ 11.258  LUCILIUS
Aulus the boxer dedicates to the Lord of Pisa his skull, having collected the bones one by one. And if he escapes from Nemea, Lord Zeus, he will perchance dedicate to thee also the vertebrae he still has left.

§ 11.259  LUCILIUS
You have a Thessalian horse, Erasistratus, but all the magic of Thessaly cannot make him stir; truly a Wooden Horse which would never have got through the Scaean gates, if all the Trojans and Greeks together had dragged it. If you take my advice, put him up as a votive statue to some god and make his barley into gruel for your children.

§ 11.260  Anonymous
This Ouleuein you had long ago but I don't recognise the "B" {bouleuein, to be a senator), for it used to be written "D" {douleuein, to be a slave).

§ 11.261  Anonymous
Patricius' son is very well behaved, as he avoids all his fellows because of impure indulgence.

§ 11.262  Anonymous
The young men of Alexandria bring down Selene divided in two in the ethereal night.

§ 11.263  PALLADAS
Menander, standing over the comedian Paulus in his sleep, said: "I never did you any harm, and you speak me ill."

§ 11.264  LUCILIUS
Hermon the miser, having spent money in his sleep, hanged himself from vexation.

§ 11.265  LUCILIUS
If an army is being led against locusts, or dog-flies, or mice, or the cavalry of fleas or frogs, you too should be afraid, Gaius, of someone enrolling you as being worthy of fighting with such foes. But if an army of brave men is being despatched, amuse yourself with something else; but the Romans do not fight against cranes.

§ 11.266  LUCILIUS
Demosthenis has a lying mirror, for if she saw the truth she would not want to look into it at all.

§ 11.267  Anonymous
You, Mathematician, don't require a measuring rod, and it is no concern of yours, for you have a nose three cubits long which no one grudges you.

§ 11.268  Anonymous
Proclus cannot wipe his nose with his hand, for his arm is shorter than his nose; nor does he say "God preserve us " when he sneezes, for he can't hear his nose, it is so far away from his ears.

§ 11.269  Anonymous
I "victorious Heracles the son of Zeus" am not Lucius but they compel me to be so.

§ 11.270  Anonymous on a Statue of the Emperor Anastasius on the Euripus (in the Circus)
King, destroyer of the world, they set up this iron statue of thee as being much less precious than bronze, in return for the bloodshed, the fatal poverty and famine and wrath, by which thou destroyest all things owing to thy avarice.

§ 11.271  Anonymous
Nigh to Scylla they set up cruel Charybdis, this savage ogre Anastasius. Fear in thy heart, Scylla, lest he devour thee too, turning a brazen goddess into small change.

§ 11.272  Anonymous on Cinaedi
They denied their manhood and did not become women, nor were they born men, as they have suffered what women do; nor are they women, since a man's nature was theirs. They are men to women and women to men.

§ 11.273  Anonymous
Your mind is as lame as your foot, for truly your nature bears outside the image of what is inside.

§ 11.274  LUCIAN
Tell me, I ask you, Hermes, how did the soul of Lollianus go down to the house of Persephone? If in silence, it was a marvel, and very likely he wanted to teach you also something. Heavens, to think of meeting that man even when one is dead!

§ 11.275  APOLLONIUS (RHODIUS) Callimachus the outcast, the butt, the wooden head I The origin is Callimachus who wrote the Origins.

§ 11.276  LUCILIUS
Indolent Marcus once, when cast into prison, confessed to a murder of his own accord, being too lazy to come out.

§ 11.277  LUCILIUS
Lazy Marcus, having once run in his sleep, never went to sleep again lest he should chance to run once more.

§ 11.278  LUCILIUS
On a Cuckold Grammarian Outside you teach the woes of Paris and Menelaus, having at home plenty of Parises for your Helen.

§ 11.279  LUCILIUS
None of the grammarians can ever be moderate, as from the very beginning he has wrath, and spite, and bile.i

§ 11.280  PALLADAS
Better to be judged by Hegemon, the slayer of robbers, than to fall into the hands of the surgeon Gennadius. For he executes murderers in just hatred, but Gennadius takes a fee for sending you down to Hades.

§ 11.281  PALLADAS
On Magnus the Expert Physician
When Magnus went down to Hades, Pluto trembled and said: "He has come to set the dead, too, on their legs."

§ 11.282  Anonymous
I lament no longer those who have left the sweet daylight, but those who ever live in expectation of death.

§ 11.283  PALLADAS
On Demonictis the Prefect Many people say many things, but yet they cannot express in words all the currents of your vices. But there is one strange and incredible thing I marvelled at in you: how, while you were stealing, you had tears ready to hand. Coming from the land of Chalcis he deprived our city of brass, stealing and stealing with profitable tears.

§ 11.284  PALLADAS on the same
From the land of the Lotophagi came the great leader Lycaon, from the land of Chalcis begotten by unnatural sex (?).

§ 11.285  PALLADAS on the same
We marvelled at another strange, effeminate characteristic. He wept while stealing, pitying those he was robbing; he who, while robbing, observed ceremonial purity, and while thus affecting purity went on despoiling, a man with nothing clean about him, not even his person free of dirt.

§ 11.286  PALLADAS
"Nothing is worse than a woman, even a good one "; and nothing is worse than a slave, even a good one. But still one requires necessary evils. Do you suppose a slave bears his master affection? A good slave would be he who broke both his legs.

§ 11.287  PALLADAS
He who is cursed with an ugly wife sees darkness when he lights the lamps in the evening.

§ 11.288  PALLADAS
A barber and a tailor came to blows with each other, and soon the needles got the better of the razor.

§ 11.289  PALLADAS
O swiftest ravishment of life! A money-lender, while marking down on his tablets the interest of years, died instantly in the space of a moment, still grasping his interest in his fingers.

§ 11.290  PALLADAS
One holding in his fingers a reckoning counter for the fingers went by the counter-vote of death in double-quick time to Hades. The counter now lives bereaved of the reckoner, whose soul is rapidly driven from hence.

§ 11.291  PALLADAS
What good do you do to the city by writing verses, getting so much gold for your slanders, selling iambic verses as a shopman sells oil?

§ 11.292  PALLADAS
On a certain Philosopher who became Prefect of Constantinople in the reign of Valentinian and Valens Thou, seated above the heavenly wheel, hast desired a silver wheel. Oh, infinite shame! Erst thou wast of higher station and hast straight become much lower. Ascend hither to the depths; for now thou hast descended to the heights.

§ 11.293  PALLADAS
Olympius promised me a horse, but brought me a tail from which hung a horse at its last gasp.

§ 11.294  LUCILIUS
Thou hast the wealth of a rich man, but the soul of a pauper, thou who art rich for thy heirs and poor for thyself.

§ 11.295  LUCILIUS
If thou hast any Dionysus in thy house, take off the ivy from his head and crown him with lettuce leaves.

§ 11.296  TIMON
On Cleanthes the Philosopher Who is this who like a ram stalks through the ranks of men a slow-coach, an Assian mill-stone of words, a spiritless block?

§ 11.297  Anonymous on a Tippling Old Woman
A. How is it, mother, that thou lovest wine more than me, thy son? Give me wine to drink since once thou didst give me milk. B. My son, my milk once stilled thy thirst, but now drink water and still thy own thirst.

§ 11.298  Anonymous
See how the son athirst reaches out his hand to his mother, and the woman, being a thorough woman, overcome by wine, drinking from a jar, spoke thus, looking askance: "How shall I give thee to drink, my son, from a little droppie, for this jar holds but thirty pints." "Mother, who hast rather the harsh nature of a step-mother, give me to quaff these tears of the sweetest vine." "Mother, evil mother, pitiless at heart, if thou lovest me, thy son, give me but a little to quaff."

§ 11.299  PALLADAS
Thou waxest wanton! What wonder? Does it distress me? No, I bear with thee. For the boldness of the wanton is their punishment.

§ 11.300  PALLADAS
Thou speakest much, O man, but in a little thou shalt be laid on the ground. Silence, and while thou yet livest meditate on death.

§ 11.301  PALLADAS
The Sun to men is the god of light, but if he too were insolent to them in his shining, they would not desire even light.

§ 11.302  PALLADAS
Thou hast not insulted me, but my poverty; but if Zeus dwelt on earth in poverty, he himself also would have suffered insult.

§ 11.303  PALLADAS
If I am poor, what shall it harm me? Why dost thou hate me who do no wrong? This is the fault of Fortune, not a vice of character.

§ 11.304  PALLADAS
All are cowards and braggarts and whatever other fault there may be among men, yet he who has reason does not expose his fault to his neighbour, but in his wisdom hides it within. But thy soul's door is flung wide open, and it is evident to all when thou crouchest in terror or art too brazen.

§ 11.305  PALLADAS
Child of shamelessness, most ignorant of men, nursling of folly, tell why dost thou hold thy head high, knowing nothing? Among the grammarians thou art the Platonist, and if anyone enquire as to Plato's doctrines thou art again a grammarian. From one thing thou takest refuge in another and thou neither knowest the Art of Grammar nor art thou a Platonist.

§ 11.306  PALLADAS
Though you leave Alexandria for Antioch, and after Syria land in Italy no man in power will ever wed you. The fact is you always are fancying that some one will, and therefore skip from city to city.

§ 11.307  PALLADAS
Your son is called Eros and your wife Aphrodite, and so, blacksmith, it is quite fair you should have a lame leg.

§ 11.308  LUCILIUS
Lean Cleonicus, making a hole in his foot with the needle, himself made a hole in the needle with his foot.2

§ 11.309  LUCILIUS
Thrasymachus, you lost great wealth by a plot, and, poor fellow, you have suddenly come to naught after all your economising, lending, exacting interest, drinking water, often not even eating, so as to have a little more money. But if you calculate what starvation was then and what it is now, you have no less now than you then seemed to have.

§ 11.310  LUCILIUS
You bought hair, rouge, honey, wax, and teeth. For the same outlay you might have bought a face.

§ 11.311  LUCILIUS
Pantaenetus is so lazy that when he fell sick of a fever he prayed to every god never to get up again. And now he leaves his bed unwillingly, and in his heart blames the deaf ears of the unjust gods.

§ 11.312  LUCILIUS
Though there is no one dead here now, O passer-by, Marcus the poet built a tomb here, and writing an inscription of one line as follows, engraved it: "Weep for twelve year old Maximus from Ephesus." I (says the tomb) never even saw any Maximus, but to show off the poet's talent I bid the passer-by weep.

§ 11.313  LUCILIUS
One, bidding me to a banquet, killed me with silver hunger, serving famished dishes. And in wrath I spoke amid the silver sheen of hunger: "Where is the plenty of my earthenware dishes? "

§ 11.314  LUCILIUS
I sought whence I should say the word pinakes (dishes) was derived, and on being invited by you I found out why they are so called. For you placed before me great pinakes of great peina (hunger), famished dishes, instruments of famine.

§ 11.315  LUCILIUS
Antiochus once set eyes on Lysimachus' cushion, and Lysimachus never set eyes on it again.

§ 11.316  Anonymous
Milo the wrestler was once the only one who came to the sacred games, and the steward of the games called him to crown him at once. But as he was approaching he slipped and fell on his back, and the people called out: "Do not crown this man, as he got a fall when he was alone! " But he, standing up in their midst, shouted back: "Are there not three falls? I fell once; now let someone give me the other two."

§ 11.317  PALLADAS
Someone gave me a long-suffering donkey that moves backwards as much as forward their journey's haven to those who ride on it; a donkey, the son of slowness, a labour, a delay, a dream, but first instead of last for those who are retiring.

§ 11.318  PHILODEMUS
Anticrates knew the constellations much better than Aratus, but could not tell his own nativity; for he said he was in doubt whether he was born in the Ram or the Twins, or in both the Fishes. But it was clearly found to be in all three, for he is a tupper and a fool, and effeminate, and fond of fish.

§ 11.319  AUTO MEDON
If you bring ten sacks of charcoal you, too, will be a citizen, and if you bring a pig, also, you will be Triptolemus himself, and to Heraclides your introducer must be given either some cabbage castocks, or lentils, or snails. Have these with you and call yourself Erechtheus, Cecrops, Codrus, whoever you like; no one minds a rap about it.

§ 11.320  ARGENTARIUS
Philostratus loved Antigone. He was poorer by five cubits, poor fellow, than Irus. The cold, however, taught him a sweet remedy; for tucking up his knees (with antia gonata) he slept so, stranger, with Antigone.

§ 11.321  PHILIPPUS
Grammarians, ye children of Stygian Momus, ye book-worms feeding on thorns, demon foes of books, dogs of Zenodotus, soldiers of Callimachus from whom, though you hold him out as a shield, you do not refrain your tongue, hunters of melancholy conjunctions who take delight in min and sphin and in enquiring if the Cyclops had dogs, may ye wear yourselves away for all eternity, ye wretches, muttering abuse of others; then come and quench your venom in me.

§ 11.322  ANTIPHANES
Idly curious race of grammarians, ye who dig up by the roots the poetry of others; unhappy bookworms that walk on thorns, defilers of the great, proud of your Erinna, bitter and dry dogs set on by Callimachus, bane of poets, darkness to little beginners, away with you, bugs that secretly bite the eloquent.

§ 11.323  PALLADAS
Corakes (crows) and colakes (flatterers) are only distinguished by Rho and Lambda. Therefore a crow and a lick-spittle flatterer are the same thing. So, my good sir, beware of this beast, knowing that flatterers are crows that pick the living too.

§ 11.324  AUTOMEDON
A. Accept, Phoebus, the supper I bring thee. B. I will accept it if someone lets me. A. Then, Son of Leto, is there something that thou too dost fear? B. No one else but only Arrius, for he, that ministrant of an altar that smells not of fat, has a more powerful claw than a robber-hawk, and once he has celebrated the procession he walks back carrying off everything. There is great virtue in Jove's ambrosia, for I should be one of you ' if a god, too, could feel hunger.

§ 11.325  AUTOMEDON
Having supped yesterday on a leg of an old goat and the yellow stalk, ten days old, of a cabbage like hemp, I am shy of mentioning the man who invited me; for he is short-tempered, and I am not a little afraid of his asking me again.

§ 11.326  AUTOMEDON
Beard and rough hair on the thighs, how quickly time changes all! Connichus, is this what you have become? Did I not say, "Be not in all things harsh and discourteous; Beauty has its own Avenging Deities"? So you have come into the pen, proud youth; we know that you wish for it now; but then, too, you might have had sense.

§ 11.327  ANTIPATER OF THESSALONICA (?)
Lycaenis with the dry back, the disgrace of Aphrodite, with less haunches than any deer, with whom, as the saying is, a drunken goatherd would not live. G-r-r, g-r-r! such are the wives of the Sidonians.

§ 11.328  NICARCHUS
Hermogenes, Cleobulus and I used to engage the same woman, Aristodike, for our common amour; I myself was allotted the "grey salt sea to dwell;" For we divided her one part for each, not all for everyone. So Hermogenes drew the "wide, grim abode," descending to the final unseen country, where are the shores of dead souls and the wind-blown wild fig-trees are twisted by the breath of the rough-howling winds. Put Cleobulus as Zeus, who drew the ascent to heaven, "holding in his hand the smoldering fire." Earth stayed "common to all," for spreading a straw mat on it we divided the old woman in this way.

§ 11.329  NICARCHUS
Demonax, do not always turn down your eyes, nor indulge your tongue; the pig has a formidable thorn. And you live . . . and sleep in Phoenicia, and though not Semele's son, art nourished by a thigh.

§ 11.330  NICARCHUS
I was invited yesterday, Demetrius, and came to supper today. Don't find fault with me; you have a long staircase. I spent an age on it, and I should not have got safe up it today only I came up holding on to a donkey's tail. You touch the stars: Zeus, it seems, when he ran away with Ganymede, went up with him by this route. But from here how long will it take you to reach Hades? You are not wanting in cleverness; you have hit on a trick for being immortal.

§ 11.331  NICARCHUS
Philo had a boat called the "Saviour," but in it perhaps not even Zeus himself can be saved. Its name only was Saviour, but the passengers sailed either close to land or to Persephone.

§ 11.332  NICARCHUS
Icander the captain embarked us, it seems, on his twenty-oarer, not for a sail, but to bale her out. For the water in her is not little, but Poseidon seems to sail over in her to the opposite shore. It is the first time a ship with the dropsy has been seen. But I, at least, fear lest you may see what was once a long boat turn into our long home.

§ 11.333  CALLICTER
Rhodon removes leprosy and scrofula by drugs, but he removes everything else even without drugs.

§ 11.334  Anonymous
Someone, hearing that "Damagoras " and "pestilence" were numerical equivalents, weighed the character of both from the beam of the balance. But the scale, when raised, was pulled down on Damagoras' side, and he found pestilence lighter.

§ 11.335  Anonymous
O unhappy Cynegirus, how among the living and in death art thou hacked by words and axes! Formerly thy hand fell fighting in the war, and now the grammarian has deprived thee of a foot.

§ 11.336  Anonymous
Carinus, after receiving the spoils of Asia, set sail on a winter's day at the setting of the Kids. Nemesis, too, saw the cargo, but he departed in her sight and laughing at the gods of the sea.

§ 11.337  Anonymous
You are a senator, Agathinus, but tell me how much you paid now for the Beta, for formerly it was Delta.

§ 11.338  Anonymous
Homer taught you to call the voice enope, but who taught you to have your tongue enope (exposed to view?)

§ 11.339  Anonymous
You wag your head and you waggle your butt; the first like a raving lunatic, the second like someone who has been penetrated.

§ 11.340  PALLADAS
I swore ten thousand times to make no more epigrams, for I had brought on my head the enmity of many fools, but when I set eyes on the face of the Paphlagonian Pentagathus I can't repress the malady.

§ 11.341  PALLADAS
It is best to praise, and blaming is the cause of enmity, but yet to speak ill of others is Attic honey.

§ 11.342  Anonymous
You put the ruptured man's rupture in front of him, he himself not being visible. Don't present me to the rupture; I want to see the man himself.

§ 11.343  Anonymous
Silvanus has two servants. Wine and Sleep; he no longer loves either the Muses or his friends, but the one flowing copiously into his head charms him from bed, and the other keeps him in his bedroom snoring.

§ 11.344  Anonymous on Metrodotus, one of the Veneti who had a Green Table
Metrodotus, detesting the eternal burden of the Greens, has this table to keep him mindful of his hatred.

§ 11.345  Anonymous
Metrophanes, swan-faced, shock-headed, lovely stork, shaking your head this way and that like a crane's, you drag your long hood over the ground.

§ 11.346  AUTOMEDON
How long, Polycarpus, sitting to feast at an empty table, shall you live undetected on the savings of others? I no longer see you much in the marketplace, but you now turn up side streets and try to think where your feet shall carry you. You promise all, "Come, take yours tomorrow. Come and get it"; but not even if you take your oath do you continue to keep faith. "The wind bearing thee from Cyzicus brought thee to Samothrace"; this is the goal that awaits you for the rest of your life.

§ 11.347  PHILIPPUS
Farewell ye whose eyes ever range over the universe, and ye thorn-gathering book-worms of Aristarchus' school. What serves it me to enquire what path the Sun has run, and whose son was Proteus and who Pygmalion? Let me know works whose lines are clean but let dark lore waste away the devotees of Callimachus.

§ 11.348  ANTIPHANES
O PARRICIDE, man more savage than the beasts all things hate thee, everywhere thy fate awaits thee. If thou fliest on the land, the wolf is near; and if thou climbest high on trees the asp on the branches is a terror. Thou makest trial of the Nile, too, but he nourishes in his eddies the crocodile, a brute most just to the impious.

§ 11.349  PALLADAS
Tell me whence comes it that thou measurest the Universe and the limits of the Earth, thou who bearest a little body made of a little earth? Count thyself first and know thyself, and then shalt thou count this infinite Earth. And if thou canst not reckon thy body's little store of clay, how canst thou know the measures of the immeasurable?

§ 11.350  AGATHIAS SCHOLASTICUS
On a Lawyer guilty of Malpractice Fool, how hast thou failed to notice the balance of Justice and dost not know the sentence due to impious men! Thou trustest in thy subtle rhetoric and thy trained mind, which knows how to utter a fallacious argument. Thou mayest hope if thou wilt, but the play of thy vain fancy cannot change Themis.

§ 11.351  PALLADAS
I let the cell yesterday to a barley-water maker, and today I found a formidable pugilist in it. And when I said, "Who art thou? Whence didst thou invade my house?" he up with his hands to box with me. I went off at the double, afraid of the savage man, on seeing the brewer suddenly turned into a bruiser. But by the boxer Pollux and Castor himself, and Zeus who hearkens to suppliants, keep the boxer, my aversion, off me; for I can't have a stand-up fight at the beginning of every month.

§ 11.352  AGATHIAS SCHOLASTICUS
Some one questioned the musician Androtion, skilled in what concerns the lyre, on a curious piece of instrumental lore. "When you set the highest string on the right in motion with the plectron, the lowest on the left quivers of its own accord with a slight twang, and is made to whisper reciprocally when its own highest string is struck; so that I marvel how nature made sympathetic to each other lifeless strings in a state of tension." But he swore that Aristoxenus, with his admirable knowledge of plectra, did not know the theoretical explanation of this. "The solution," he said, "is as follows. The strings are all made of sheep's gut dried all together. So they are sisters and sound together as if related, sharing each other's family voice. For they are all legitimate children, being the issue of one belly, and they inherit those reciprocal noises. Just so does the right eye, when injured, often convey its own pain to the left eye."

§ 11.353  PALLADAS
Hermolycus' daughter slept with a great ape and she gave birth to many little ape-Hermeses. If Zeus, transformed into a swan, got him from Leda Helen, Castor, and Pollux, with Hermione at least a crow lay, and, poor woman, she gave birth to a Hermes-crowd of horrible demons.

§ 11.354  AGATHIAS SCHOLASTICUS
One enquired as follows about the soul from Nicostratus, that second Aristotle, that equal of Plato, the straw-splitter of the loftiest philosophy. "How should we describe the soul, as mortal or rather immortal? Must we call it a body or incorporeal? Is it to be classed among intelligible or apprehensible things, or is it both? " But he perused again his books of metaphysic and Aristotle's work on the Soul, and having renewed his acquaintance with Plato's sublimity in the Phaedo, armed himself from every source with the complete truth. Then, wrapping his cloak about him and stroking down the end of his beard, he gave utterance to the solution: "If the soul has in truth any nature (for even that I don't know) it is in any case either mortal or immortal, either of a solid nature or immaterial; but when you have passed over Acheron, there you shall learn the precise truth like Plato. Or, if you will, imitate the boy Cleombrotus of Ambracia,! and let your body drop from the roof. Then you would at once recognise what you are, being without a body, and with nothing left you but the thing you are enquiring into."

§ 11.355  PALLADAS
You say "I know all things," but you are imperfect in all things. Tasting of everything, you have nothing that is your own.

§ 11.356  Anonymous
The book of Homer, which never lies, lied about thee, saying the minds of young men are volatile.

§ 11.357  PALLADAS
A son and father started a competitive contest as to which could eat up all the property by spending most, and after devouring absolutely all the money they have at last each other to eat up.

§ 11.358  Anonymous
Rufinianus was once Rufus in two syllables, but extended his syllables simultaneously with his crimes; but he does not escape the eye of two-syllabled Justice, for he shall again be called in two syllables Rufus the scoundrel and rascal, as he was before.

§ 11.359  Anonymous
THOU who art higher than all power, save my wretched self from all envy. Thou wouldest hear and I, too, would speak; for the wish gives birth to double pleasure, while elegance on the speaker's part and gravity on the hearer's bestow double beauty on the speech. Thou art the luminary of speech and of laws, judging by law and excelling in speech. I saw in this prince a cat-like gold-grabber or a cruel leech, a mass of bile set in gold.

§ 11.360  Anonymous
Now the general has become Hermanubis the dog, taking with him two brother Hermeses, stealers of silver, tied together with a rope, cold, prematurely dead demons of Tartarus. I know no place that accuses morals, but I say that morals accuse the place.

§ 11.361  AUTOMEDON
Two mules, equally advanced in years, adorn my carriage, in all things resembling Homer's Prayers: lame, wrinkled, with squinting eyes, the escort of Hephaestus, leathery demons who never tasted, I swear it by the Sun, even in a dream, either barley in summer or grass in spring. Therefore, as far as I am concerned, may you live as long as a crow or stag, feeding on empty air.

§ 11.362  CALLIMACHUS
Orestes of old, Leucarus, was happy in this, that, mad in other matters, he was not mad with my madness, nor did he have to apply the test to the Phocian, which is the trial of a friend, but taught him a part in one drama only. Perchance had he done this he would have lost his companion, and, as a fact, I no longer have most of my Pyladeses.

§ 11.363  DIOSCORIDES
Gone is the honour of the Alexandrians and Moschus, Ptolemaeus'3 son, has won glory among the young men in the torch-race, Moschus, Ptolemaeus' son! Woe for my city! And where are his mother's deeds of shame and her public prostitution? Where are the . . .? Where are the pigsties? Bring forth, ye whores, bring forth, persuaded by Moschus' crown.

§ 11.364  BIANOR
This man, a cypher, mean, yes a slave, this man look ye, is lord of some other's soul.

§ 11.365  AGATHIAS SCHOLASTICUS
Calligenes the husbandman, when he had cast the seed into the land, came to the house of Aristophanes the astrologer and begged him to tell him if he would have a favourable harvest and great abundance of corn. Taking his counters and spreading them on a tray, and bending his fingers, he said to Calligenes: "If your bit of land receives sufficient rain and produces no crop of wild flowers, if the frost does not break the furrows, if the hail does not nip off the tops of the sprouting ears, if no goat browses on the corn, and if it meet with no other injury by air or earth, I prophesy that your harvest will be excellent and you will cut the ears with success; only look out for the locusts."

§ 11.366  MACEDONIUS THE CONSUL
A parsimonious man, laying hands on a treasure in a dream, wished to die enjoying a rich sleep. But when after the shadowy gain of the dream he awoke and saw his poverty as it was, he went to sleep again.

§ 11.367  JULIAN ANTECESSOR
You have a face just like an ostrich. Did Circe give you a potion to drink and change your nature into that of a bird?

§ 11.368  JULIAN ANTECESSOR
You have such a heavy crop on your hairy face that you ought to have it cut with scythes and not with scissors.

§ 11.369  JULIAN ANTECESSOR To a Dwarf
Live in safety in the town, lest the stork who delights in the blood of Pygmies peck you.

§ 11.370  MACEDONIUS THE CONSUL
The mirror does not speak, but I will expose you who daub your counterfeit beauty with rouge. Sweetlyred Pindar, too, once censuring this, said that "Water is best," water the greatest enemy of rouge.

§ 11.371  PALLADAS
Do not invite me to witness your hunger-laden dishes, bringing me pumpkin pie to feast on. We don't eat the solid silver you set before us, defrauding with famine fare the poor trenchers. Seek those who are keeping their fast for your display of silver, and then you will be admired for your lightly loaded plate.

§ 11.372  AGATHIAS SCHOLASTICUS
As you have a body like a shadow, made of breath like the invisible wind, you should never venture to come near anyone, lest in drawing his breath he carry you into his nostrils, more feeble as you are than a breath of air. You have no fear of death, for then, without changing at all, you will again be just as you are, a ghost.

§ 11.373  PALLADAS
On a Poet playing at Dice
Calliope is the goddess of all poets: your Calliope is called Tabliope.

§ 11.374  MACEDONIUS THE CONSUL
Make your fleshless cheeks always smooth with white lead, Laodice (just, indeed, is the penalty you pay the people), but never open your lips wide, for who by cosmetic fraud shall fix a row of teeth in it? You have shed all the beauty you had; loveliness of limb cannot be drawn from a perennial fountain. Like a rose you flourished in the spring; now you are withered, dried by the parching summer of old age.

§ 11.375  MACEDONIUS THE CONSUL
I sneezed near a tomb and wished to hear of what I hoped, the death of my wife. I sneezed to the winds, but my wife meets with none of the misfortunes of mankind, neither illness nor death. 37G.— AGATHIAS SCHOLASTICUS An unhappy man, going to the rhetor Diodorus, consulted him about the following case. "My slave-girl ran away once and a certain man found her, and knowing her to be another man's servant married her to his own slave. She bore him children, and I wish to know whose slaves they legally are." When he had considered and looked up every book, he said, twisting his eyebrows into a semicircle: "Those about whom you enquire must either be your slaves or those of the man who took your slave-girl. Seek a well-disposed judge and you will at once get a more favourable decision, at least if what you say is just."

§ 11.377  PALLADAS
We guests had a miserable fowl to eat and were ourselves devoured by other birds. Two vultures eat Tityus under earth and four vultures eat us alive.

§ 11.378  PALLADAS
I cannot put up with a wife and with Grammar too, Grammar that is penniless and a wife who is injurious. What I suffer from both is Death and Fate. Now I have just with difficulty escaped from Grammar, but I cannot escape from this shrewish wife, for our contract and Roman law prevent it.

§ 11.379  AGATHIAS SCHOLASTICUS
No one has the courage to look on your grinders so that none approach your house, for if you always have the famine of Erysichthon himself you will even perhaps devour the friend you invite. Your halls will never see me enter them, for I am not going there to be kept for your belly. But if I ever do go to your house it was no great prowess of Ulysses to face the jaws of Scylla. Rather shall I be much more " all-daring " than he, if I manage to get past you who are no less fearful than the heart-chilling Cyclops.

§ 11.380  MACEDONIUS THE CONSUL (A Reply to App. Plan. 314, which should be read first)
The high-born virgin Justice, patroness of cities, does not turn her face away from gold that is associated with piety, but the very scales of Zeus with which he weighs every law of life are of solid gold. "Then did the Father hold out the scales of gold," if thou hast not forgotten the beauties of Homer.

§ 11.381  PALLADAS
Every woman is a source of annoyance, but she has two good seasons, the one in her bridal chamber and the other when she is dead.

§ 11.382  AGATHIAS SCHOLASTICUS
Alcimenes lay in bed sore sick of a fever and giving vent to hoarse wheezings from his wind-pipe, his side pricking him as if he had been pierced by a sword, and his breath coming short in ill-sounding gasps. Then came Callignotus of Cos, with his never-ending jaw, full of the wisdom of the healing art, whose prognosis of pains was complete, and he never foretold anything but what came to pass. He inspected Alcimenes' position in bed and drew conclusions from his face, and felt his pulse scientifically. Then he reckoned up from the treatise on critical days, calculating everything not without his Hippocrates, and finally he gave utterance to Alcimenes of his prognosis, making his face very solemn and looking most serious: "If your throat stops roaring and the fierce attacks of pain in your side cease, and your breathing is no longer made thick by the fever, you will not die in that case of pleurisy, for this is to us a sign of coming freedom from pain. Cheer up, and summoning your lawyer, dispose well of your property and depart from this life, the mother of care, leaving to me, your doctor, in return for my good prognostic, the third part of your inheritance."

§ 11.383  PALLADAS
So for pack-animals, too, there is sinister and good Fortune, and Saturn rules the nativities of beasts also; for ever since evil time befel this donkey, it has become a grammarian's instead of being in the alabarch's palace. But bear it patiently henceforth, donkey; for grammarians crithe (barley) has no end, but is called only cri.

§ 11.384  PALLADAS
If solitaries (monks), why so many? And if so many, how again are they solitary? O crowd of solitaries who give the lie to solitude!

§ 11.385  PALLADAS
Thy love is counterfeit and thou lovest from fear and by force. But nothing is more treacherous than such love.

§ 11.386  PALLADAS
Yesterday a certain man seeing Victory in town sour-faced, said: "Goddess Victory, what has befallen thee, then? " But she, lamenting and finding fault with the decision, said: "Dost thou alone not know it? I have been given to Patricius." So Victory, too, was in deep grief at being illegally caught by the sailor Patricius as if she were a breeze.

§ 11.387  PALLADAS
Everyone takes but one meal, but when Salaminus feasts us we go home and breakfast a second time.

§ 11.388  LUCILIUS
As long as you are unmarried, Numenius, everything in life seems to you the best of the best, but when a wife enters the house everything again in life seems to you at once the worst of the worst. "But I marry for the sake of having children," says he. You will have children, Numenius, if you have money, but a poor man does not even love his children.

§ 11.389  LUCILIUS
If thou livest the long years of a stag or crow thou mayest be pardoned for amassing vast wealth, but if thou art one of mortal men, whom old age right soon assails, let not the furious desire of immeasurable possessions beset thee, lest thou destroy thy soul in insufferable torture and others use thy goods without toiling for them.

§ 11.390  LUCILIUS
If thou lovest me, love me indeed, and do me no evil, making friendship the beginning of injury. For will have children — people running after your money and wishing you to adopt them; but if poor and married, your children will be a source of trouble. I say that for all men open enmity is much better than deceptive friendship. They say, too, that for seafaring ships sunken reefs are worse than visible rocks.

§ 11.391  LUCILIUS
Asclepiades the miser saw a mouse in his house and said: "My dearest mouse, what business have you here with me? " And the mouse said, smiling sweetly: "Fear nothing, my friend, I do not seek board with you, but residence."

§ 11.392  LUCILIUS
Adrastus the rhetor, seating himself on the back of a winged ant, spoke as follows: "Fly, O Pegasus, thou hast thy Bellerophon." Yes indeed the most doughty of heroes, a half-dead skeleton.

§ 11.393  LUCILIUS
There is no greater burden than a daughter, and if, Euctemon, you think it is a light one, listen to me. You have a hydrocele and I have a daughter; take her and give me a hundred hydroceles instead of one.

§ 11.394  LUCILIUS
He is really the most excellent of poets who gives supper to those who have listened to his recitation. But if he reads to them and sends them home fasting, let him turn his own madness on his own head.

§ 11.395  NICARCHUS
A fart which cannot find an outlet kills many a man; a fart also saves, sending forth its lisping music. Therefore if a fart saves, and on the other hand kills, a fart has the same power as kings.

§ 11.396  LUCIAN
You often sent me wine and I was often grateful to you, enjoying the draught of sweet nectar. But now if you love me, don't send any, for I don't wish for such wine, not having now any lettuces.

§ 11.397  LUCIAN
Artemidorus, reckoning his fortune at many times ten thousand, and spending nothing, leads the life of mules, who often, carrying on their backs a heavy and precious load of gold, only eat hay.

§ 11.398  NICARCHUS
A man, by dyeing his head, destroyed the hair itself, and his head from being very hairy became all like an egg. The dyer attained this result, that no barber now ever cuts his hair be it white or dark. .

§ 11.399  APOLLINARIUS
A grammarian riding on a donkey fell off it, and, they say, lost his memory of grammar; then afterwards he led an ordinary life without any profession, not knowing a word of what he had always been teaching. But just the opposite happened to Glycon; for, having been ignorant of the vulgar tongue, not to speak of grammar, now, by riding on Libyan donkeys and often falling off them, he has suddenly become a grammarian.

§ 11.400  LUCIAN
Hail, Grammar, giver of life! Hail, thou whose cure for famine is "Sing, O goddess, the wrath"! Men should build a splendid temple to thee, too, and an altar never lacking sacrifice. "For the ways are full of thee, and the sea and its harbours are full of thee," — Grammar, the hostess of all.

§ 11.401  LUCIAN
A physician sent me his dear son to be taught by me those elementary lessons. And when he had read "Sing the Wrath" and "imposed a thousand woes," and the third verse that follows these, "Many strong souls he sped to Hades," his father no longer sends him to learn from me, but on seeing me said: "All thanks to you, my friend, but the boy can learn that at home, for I speed down many souls to Hades, and for that I have no need of a grammarian."

§ 11.402  LUCIAN
May none of the gods, Erasistratus, create for me that luxury in which you riot, monstrously eating plagues of the stomach worse than famine, such as I wish the children of my enemies might eat. I would starve again even more than I used to starve rather than gorge myself with the luxuries of your table.

§ 11.403  LUCIAN
To the Gout Goddess who hatest the poor, sole vanquisher of wealth, who ever knowest to live well, even though it is thy joy to sit on the feet of others, thou knowest how to wear felt, and thou art fond of ointments. A garland delights thee and draughts of Italian wine. These things are never found among the poor. Therefore thou fliest the brassless threshold of poverty, and delightest to come to the feet of wealth.

§ 11.404  LUCIAN
Diophantes with the hydrocele, when he wants to cross to the other side, never gets into the ferryboat, but putting all his packages and his donkey on the hydrocele, sails across hoisting a sheet. So that in vain have the Tritons glory in the waters if a man with a hydrocele can do the same.

§ 11.405  LUCIAN
Crook-nosed Nicon has an admirable nose for wine, but he can't tell quickly what it is like, for scarcely in three summer hours does he smell it himself since his nose is two hundred cubits long. O what a huge nose! When he crosses a river he often catches little fish with it.

§ 11.406  NICARCHUS
I see Nicon's hooked nose, Menippus, and it is evident that he himself is not far off. Well, he will come; let us wait all the same, for at most he is not, I suppose, more than half a mile from his nose. But it, as you see, comes on in front of him, and if we stand on a high hill we shall get a view of him too.

§ 11.407  NICARCHUS
As lean Menestratus was sitting in spring-time an ant came out and pulled him into a crevice; but a fly flew up and carried him off, just as the eagle carried Ganymede to the heavenly chamber of Zeus. He fell from the fly's hands, but not even so did he light on the earth, but is hanging by his eyelids from a spider's web.

§ 11.408  LUCIAN
You dye your hair, but you will never dye your old age, or smooth out the wrinkles of your cheeks. Then don't plaster all your face with white lead, so that you have not a face, but a mask; for it serves no purpose. Why are you out of your wits? Rouge and paste will never turn Hecuba into Helen.

§ 11.409  GAETULICUS
Four times putting her lips to the lips of the jar Silenis drank up the last dregs. Fair-haired Dionysus, she defiled thee not with water, but even as thou first didst come from the vineyard she used to quaff thee generously, holding a cup even until she went to the sands of the dead.

§ 11.410  LUCIAN
We saw at supper the great wisdom of the Cynic, that bearded beggar with the staff. To begin with he abstained from pulse and radishes, saying that virtue should not be the belly's slave. But when he saw before his eyes a snow-white sow's womb with sharp sauce, a dish that soon stole away his prudent mind, he asked for some unexpectedly, and really started eating, saying that a sow's womb does no harm to virtue.

§ 11.411  Anonymous on an overheated Bath
You should call this not a bath but rather a funeral pyre such as Achilles lit for Patroclus, or Medea's crown that the Fury set afire (?) in the bridal chamber of Glauce because of Jason. Spare me, bathman, for God's sake, for I am a man who write all the deeds of men and gods. But if it is your purpose to burn numbers of us alive, light a wooden pyre, executioner, and not a stone one.

§ 11.412  ANTIOCHUS
To paint the soul is difficulty to sketch the outward shape is easy, but in your case both are just the opposite. For Nature, bringing outside the perversity of your soul, has wrought so that it is a visible object; but as for the tumult of your person and the offensiveness of your body, how could one paint it when one does not even wish to look on it?

§ 11.413  AMMIANUS
Apelles gave us a supper as if he had butchered a garden, thinking he was feeding sheep and not friends. There were radishes, chicory, fenugreek, lettuces, leeks, onions, basil, mint, rue, and asparagus. I was afraid that after all these things he would serve me with hay, so when I had eaten some half-soaked lupins I went off.

§ 11.414  HEDYLUS
The daughter of limb-relaxing Bacchus and limb-relaxing Aphrodite is limb-relaxing Gout.

§ 11.415  ANTIPATER or NICARCHUS
Who, Mentorides, so obviously transferred your breech to the place where your mouth formerly was? For you break wind and do not breathe, and you speak from the lower storey. I wonder how your lower parts became your upper!

§ 11.416  Anonymous
Money comes into the hands of whores too. I care not. Let wretched gold that loves whores hate me.

§ 11.417  Anonymous on an Elderly Woman annoying a Young Man
Shake the acorns off another oak, Menesthion; for I do not accept wrinkled apples past their season, but have ever desired fruit in its prime like myself; so why try to see a white crow?

§ 11.418  THE EMPEROR TRAJAN
If you put your nose pointing to the sun and open your mouth wide, you will show all passers-by the time of day.

§ 11.419  PHILO
Grey hairs are more venerable together with good sense, for when they are not accompanied by sense they are rather a reproach to advanced age.

§ 11.420  Anonymous
Your grey hairs, if you keep silent, are wisdom, but if you speak they are not wisdom but hairs, like those of youth.

§ 11.421  APOLLINARIUS
If you speak ill of me in my absence you do me no injury; but if you speak well of me in my presence, know that you are speaking ill of me.

§ 11.422  ANTIOCHUS
On an Illiterate Man speaking in Public
Besas, if he had any sense, would have hanged himself, but now, being such a fool, he both lives and grows rich even after his appearance in public.

§ 11.423  HELLADIUS
Dyer who dyest all things and changest them with thy colours, thou hast dyed thy poverty too, and turned out a rich man.

§ 11.424  PISO
Don't expect flowers from the land of Galatia, from whose bosom sprang the Furies, destroyers of men.

§ 11.425  Anonymous
I would have you know, Placianus, that every old woman with money is a rich coffin.

§ 11.426  Anonymous on Opian, a hard-drinking Governor
The first letter of your name is superfluous; if one takes it away you will acquire by simple means a name that suits you.

§ 11.427  LUCIAN
The exorcist with the stinking mouth cast out many devils by speaking, not by the virtue of his exorcisms, but by that of dung.

§ 11.428  LUCIAN
Why do you wash in vain your Indian body? Give up that device. You cannot shed the sunlight on dark night.

§ 11.429  LUCIAN
Acindynus wished to keep sober when all the others were drunk; therefore he was the only man who was thought to be drunk.

§ 11.430  LUCIAN
If you think that to grow a beard is to acquire wisdom, a goat with a fine beard is at once a complete Plato.

§ 11.431  LUCIAN
If you are quick at eating and tardy in running, eat with your feet and run with your mouth.

§ 11.432  LUCIAN
A fool put out the lamp when he was bitten by many fleas, saying: "You can't see me any longer."

§ 11.433  LUCIAN
Painter, thou stealest the form only, and canst not, trusting in thy colours, capture the voice.

§ 11.434  LUCIAN
If you see a hairless head, breast, and shoulders, make no enquiries; it is a bald fool that you see.

§ 11.435  LUCIAN
It strikes me as wonderful how Bytus is a sophist, since he has neither common speech nor reason.

§ 11.436  LUCIAN
You will sooner find white crows and winged tortoises than a Cappadocian who is an accomplished orator.

§ 11.437  ARATUS
I lament for Diotimus, who sits on stones repeating Alpha and Beta to the children of Gargarus.

§ 11.438  MENANDER
Trust in (?) a Corinthian and don't make him a friend.

§ 11.439  DIPHILUS
Argos is the land of horses, but the inhabitants are wolves.

§ 11.440  PITTACUS (?)
Avoid all Megarians, for they are bitter.

§ 11.441  PHILISCUS
The Piraeus is a big nut and empty.

§ 11.442  Anonymous
Thrice I reigned as tyrant, and as many times did the people of Erechtheus expel me and thrice recall me, Pisistratus, great in council, who collected the works of Homer formerly sung in fragments. For that man of gold was our fellow-citizen, if we Athenians colonized Smyrna.

§ 12.0  BOOK XII STRATO'S MUSA PUERILIS And what kind of man should I be, reader, if after setting forth all that precedes for thee to study, I were to conceal the Puerile Muse of Strato of Sardis, which he used to recite to those about him in sport, taking personal delight in the diction of the epigrams, not in their meaning. Apply thyself then to what follows, for "in dances," as the tragic poet says, "a chaste woman will not be corrupted."

§ 12.1  STRATO
"Let us begin from Zeus," as Aratus said, and you, O Muses, I trouble not today. For if I love boys and associate with boys, what is that to the Muses of Helicon?

§ 12.2  STRATO
Look not in my pages for Priam by the altar, nor for the woes of Medea and Niobe, nor for Itys in his chamber and the nightingales amid the leaves; for earlier poets wrote of all these things in profusion. But look for sweet Love mingled with the jolly Graces, and for Bacchus. No grave face suits them.

§ 12.3  STRATO
The foreparts of boys, Diodorus, come in three types. Learn their names: Call the still untouched one "Lalou"; the one just beginning to swell "Koko"; the one already quivering to the hand, call "Lizard"; the more perfect one, you already know what you need to call it.

§ 12.4  STRATO
I delight in the prime of a boy of twelve, but one of thirteen is much more desirable. He who is fourteen is a still sweeter flower of the Loves, and one who is just beginning his fifteenth year is yet more delightful. The sixteenth year is that of the gods, and as for the seventeenth it is not for me, but for Zeus, to seek it. But if one has a desire for those still older, he no longer plays, but now seeks "And answering him back."

§ 12.5  STRATO
I like them pale, and I also love those with a skin the colour of honey, and the fair too; and on the other hand I am taken by the black-haired. Nor do I dismiss brown eyes; but above all I love sparkling-black eyes.

§ 12.6  STRATO
The numerical value of the letters in proktos and Chrysos (gold) is the same. I once found this out reckoning up casually.

§ 12.7  STRATO
There's no tight muscle to a virgin, nor a frank kiss, nor the natural sweet exhalation of the skin, nor that sweet slutty talk, nor a full gaze, and the educated ones are worse. They're all cold behind. And the biggest problem, nowhere to put a wandering hand.

§ 12.8  STRATO
Just now, as I was passing the place where they make garlands, I saw a boy interweaving flowers with a bunch of berries. Nor did I pass by unwounded, but standing by him I said quietly, "For how much will you sell me your garland?" He grew redder than his roses, and turning down his head said, "Go right away in case my father sees you." I bought some wreaths as a pretence, and when I reached home crowned the gods, beseeching them to grant me him.

§ 12.9  STRATO
Now thou art fair, Diodorus, and ripe for lovers, but even if thou dost marry, we shall not abandon thee.

§ 12.10  STRATO
Even though the invading down and the delicate auburn curls of thy temples have leapt upon thee, that does not make me shun my beloved, but his beauty is mine, even if there be a beard and hairs.

§ 12.11  STRATO
Yesterday I had Philostratus for the night, but was incapable, though he (how shall I say it?) was quite complaisant. No longer, my friends, count me your friend, but throw me off a tower as I have become too much of an Astyanax.

§ 12.12  FLACCUS
Just as he is getting his beard, Lado, the fair youth, cruel to lovers, is in love with a boy. Nemesis is swift.

§ 12.13  STRATO
I once found some beardless doctors, not prone to love, grinding a natural antidote for it. They, on being surprised, besought me to keep it quiet, and I said, "I am mum, but you must cure me."

§ 12.14  DIOSCORIDES
If Demophilus, when he reaches his prime, gives such kisses to his lovers as he gives me now he is a child, no longer shall his mother's door remain quiet at night.

§ 12.15  STRATO
If a plank pinched Graphicus in the bath, what will become of me, a man? Even wood feels.

§ 12.16  STRATO
Seek not to hide our love, Philocrates; the god himself without that hath sufficient power to trample on my heart. But give me a taste of a blithe kiss. The time shall come when thou shalt beg such favour from others.

§ 12.17  Anonymous
The love of women touches not my heart, but male brands have heaped unquenchable coals of fire on me. Greater is this heat; by as much as a man is stronger than a woman, by so much is this desire sharper.

§ 12.18  ALPHEIUS OF MYTILENE
Unhappy they whose life is loveless; for without love it is not easy to do aught or to say aught. I, for example, am now all too slow, but were I to catch sight of Xenophilus I would fly swifter than lightning. Therefore I bid all men not to shun but to pursue sweet desire; Love is the whetstone of the soul.

§ 12.19  Anonymous
Though I would, I cannot make thee my friend; for neither dost thou ask, nor give to me when I ask, nor accept what I give.

§ 12.20  JULIUS LEONIDAS
Zeus is again rejoicing in the banquets of the Ethiopians, or, turned to gold, hath stolen to Danae's chamber; for it is a marvel that, seeing Periander, he did not carry off from Earth the lovely youth; or is the god no longer a lover of boys?

§ 12.21  STRATO
How long shall we steal kisses and covertly signal to each other with chary eyes? How long shall we talk without coming to a conclusion, linking again and again idle deferment to deferment? If we tarry we shall waste the good; but before the envious ones come, Phidon, let us add deeds to words.

§ 12.22  SCYTHINUS
There has come to me a great woe, a great war, a great fire. Elissus, full of the years ripe for love, just at that fatal age of sixteen, and having withal every charm, small and great, a voice which is honey when he reads and lips that are honey to kiss, and irreproachable to take inside. What will become of me? He bids me look only. Verily I shall often lie awake fighting with my hands against this empty love.

§ 12.23  MELEAGER
I am caught, I who once laughed often at the serenades of young men crossed in love. And at thy gate, Myiscus, winged Love has fixed me, inscribing on me "Spoils won from Chastity."

§ 12.24  TULLIUS LAUREAS
If my Polemo return welcome and safe, as he was, Lord of Delos, when we sent him on his way, I do not refuse to sacrifice by thy altar the bird, herald of the dawn, that I promised in my prayers to thee. But if he come possessing either more or less of anything than he had then, I am released from my promise. — But he came with a beard. If he himself prayed for this as a thing dear to him, exact the sacrifice from him who made the prayer.

§ 12.25  STATYLLIUS FLACCUS
When I bade farewell to Polemo I prayed for him to return safe and sound to me, Apollo, promising a sacrifice of a fowl. But Polemo came to me with a hairy chin. No, Phoebus, I swear it by thyself, he came not to me, but fled from me with cruel fleetness. I no longer sacrifice the cock to thee. Think not to cheat me, returning me for full ears empty chaff.

§ 12.26  STATYLLIUS FLACCUS
If the Polemo I parted from came back to me in safety, I promised to sacrifice to thee. But now Polemo is saved for himself. It is no longer he who has come back to me, Phoebus, and arriving with a beard, he is no longer saved for me. He perhaps prayed himself for his chin to be darkened. Let him then make the sacrifice himself, as he prayed for what was contrary to all my hopes.

§ 12.27  STATYLLIUS FLACCUS
When I saw Polemo off, his cheeks like thine, Apollo, I promised to sacrifice a fowl if he came back. I do not accept him now his spiteful cheeks are bristly. Luckless wretch that I was to make a vow for the sake of such a man! It is not fair for the innocent fowl to be plucked in vain, or let Polemo be plucked, too. Lord of Delos.

§ 12.28  NUMENIUS OF TARSUS
Cyrus is Lord (cyrius). What does it matter to me if he lacks a letter? I do not read the fair, I look on him.

§ 12.29  ALCAEUS
Protarchus is fair and does not wish it; but later he will, and his youth races on holding a torch.

§ 12.30  ALCAEUS
Your leg, Nicander, is getting hairy, but take care lest the same happen to your buttocks. Then shall you know how rare lovers are. But even now reflect that youth is irrevocable.

§ 12.31  PHANIAS
By Themis and the bowl of wine that made me totter, thy love Pamphilus, has but a little time to last. Already thy thigh has hair on it and thy cheeks are downy, and Desire leads thee henceforth to another kind of passion. But now that some little vestiges of the spark are still left thee, put away thy parsimony. Opportunity is the friend of Love.

§ 12.32  THYMOCLES
Thou rememberest, I trust, thou rememberest the time when I spoke to thee the holy verse, "Beauty is fairest and beauty is nimblest." Not the fleetest bird in the sky shall outstrip beauty. Look, now, how all thy blossoms are shed on the earth.

§ 12.33  MELEAGER
Heraclitus was fair, when there was a Heraclitus, but now that his prime is past, a screen of hide declares war on those who would scale the fortress. But, son of Polyxenus, seeing this, be not insolently haughty. It is not only on the cheeks that Nemesis grows.

§ 12.34  AUTOMEDON
Yesterday I supped with the boys' trainer, Demetrius, the most blessed of all men. One lay on his lap, one stooped over his shoulder, one brought him the dishes, and another served him with drink — the admirable quartette. I said to him in fun, "Do you, my dear friend, train the boys at night too? "

§ 12.35  DIOCLES
One thus addressed a boy who did not say goodday: "And so Damon, who excels in beauty,, does not even say good-day now! A time will come that will take vengeance for this. Then, grown all rough and hairy, you will give good-day first to those who do not give it you back."

§ 12.36  ASCLEPIADES OF ADRAMYTTIUM
Now you offer yourself, when the tender bloom is advancing under your temples and there is a prickly down on your thighs. And then you say, "I prefer this." But who would say that the dry stubble is better than the eared corn?

§ 12.37  DIOSCORIDES
Love, the murderer of men, moulded soft as marrow the body of Sosarchus of Amphipolis in fun, wishing to irritate Zeus because his thighs are much more honeyed than those of Ganymede.

§ 12.38  RHIANUS
The Horae and Graces shed sweet oil on thee, and thou lettest not even old men sleep. Tell me whose thou art and which of the boys thou adornest. And the answer was, "Menecrates."

§ 12.39  Anonymous
Nicander's light is out. All the bloom has left his complexion, and not even the name of charm survives, Nicander whom we once counted among the immortals. But, ye young men, let not your thoughts mount higher than beseems a mortal; there are such things as hairs.

§ 12.40  Anonymous
Take not off my cloak, Sir, but look on me even as if I were a draped statue with the extremities only of marble. If you wish to see the naked beauty of Antiphilus you will find the rose growing as if on thorns.

§ 12.41  MELEAGER
I do not count Thero fair any longer, nor Apollodotus, once gleaming like fire, but now already a burnt-out torch. I care for the love of women. Let it be for goat-mounting herds to press in their arms hairy minions.

§ 12.42  DIOSCORIDES
When you look on Hermogenes, boy-vulture, have your hands full, and perhaps you will succeed in getting that of which your heart dreams, and will relax the melancholy contraction of your brow. But if you fish for him, committing to the waves a line devoid of a hook, you will pull plenty of water out of the harbour; for neither pity nor shame dwells with an extravagant cinaedus.

§ 12.43  CALLIMACHUS
I detest poems all about the same trite stories, and do not love a road that carries many this way and that. I hate, too, a beloved who is in circulation, and I do not drink from a fountain. All public things disgust me. Lysanias, yes indeed thou art fair, fair. But before I can say this clearly an echo says, "He is another's."

§ 12.44  GLAUCUS
There was a time long long ago, when boys who like presents were won by a quail, or a sewn ball, or knuckle-bones, but now they want rich dishes or money, and those playthings have no power. Search for something else, ye lovers of boys.

§ 12.45  POSIDIPPUS
Yea, yea, ye loves, shoot. I alone stand here a target for many all at once. Spare me not, silly children; for if ye conquer me ye shall be famous among the immortals for your archery, as masters of a mighty quiver.

§ 12.46  ASCLEPIADES
I am not yet two and twenty, and life is a burden to me. Ye Loves, why thus maltreat me; why set me afire? For if I perish, what will you do? Clearly, Loves, you will play, silly children, at your knucklebones as before.

§ 12.47  MELEAGER
Love, the baby still in his mother's lap, playing at dice in the morning, played my soul away.

§ 12.48  MELEAGER
I am down; set thy foot on my neck, fierce demon. I know thee, yea by the gods, yea heavy art thou to bear: I know, too, thy fiery arrows. But if thou set thy torch to my heart, thou shalt no longer burn it; already it is all ash.

§ 12.49  MELEAGER
Drink strong wine, thou unhappy lover, and Bacchus, the giver of forgetfulness, shall send to sleep the flame of thy love for the lad. Drink, and draining the cup full of the vine-juice drive out abhorred pain from thy heart.

§ 12.50  ASCLEPIADES
Drink, Asclepiades. Why these tears .? What aileth thee? Not thee alone hath cruel Cypris taken captive; not for thee alone hath bitter Love sharpened his arrows. Why whilst yet alive dost thou lie in the dust? Let us quaff the unmixed drink of Bacchus. The day is but a finger's breadth. Shall we wait to see again the lamp that bids us to bed? Let us drink, woeful lover. It is not far away now, poor wretch, the time when we shall rest through the long night.

§ 12.51  CALLIMACHUS
To the Cup-bearer Pour in the wine and again say "To Diocles," nor does Achelous touch the ladlefuls hallowed to him. Beautiful is the boy, Achelous, passing beautiful; and if any say "Nay" — let me alone know what beauty is.

§ 12.52  MELEAGER
The South Wind, blowing fair for sailors, O ye who are sick for love, has carried off Andragathus, my soul's half. Thrice happy the ships, thrice fortunate the waves of the sea, and four times blessed the wind that bears the boy. Would I were a dolphin that, carried on my shoulders, he could cross the seas to look on Rhodes, the home of sweet lads.

§ 12.53  MELEAGER
Richly loaded ocean ships that sail down the Hellespont, taking to your bosoms the good North Wind, if haply ye see on the beach of Cos Phanion gazing at the blue sea, give her this message, good ships, that Desire carries me there not on shipboard, but faring on my feet. For if you tell her this, ye bearers of good tidings, straight shall Zeus also breathe the gale of his favour into your sails.

§ 12.54  MELEAGER
Cypris denies that she gave birth to Love now that she sees Antiochus among the young men, a second Love. But, ye young men, love this new Love; for of a truth this boy has proved to be a Love better than Love.

§ 12.55  Anonymous, or some say by ARTEMON Child of Leto, son of Zeus the great, who utterest oracles to all men, thou art lord of the sea-girt height of Delos; but the lord of the land of Cecrops is Echedemus, a second Attic Phoebus whom soft-haired Love lit with lovely bloom. And his city Athens, once mistress of the sea and land, now has made all Greece her slave by beauty.

§ 12.56  MELEAGER
Praxiteles the sculptor wrought a statue of Love in Parian marble, fashioning the son of Cypris. But now Love, the fairest of the gods, making his own image, hath moulded Praxiteles, a living statue, so that the one amid mortals and the other in heaven may be the dispenser of love-charms, and a Love may wield the sceptre on earth as among the immortals. Most blessed the holy city of the Meropes,i which nurtured a new Love, son of a god, to be the prince of the young men.

§ 12.57  MELEAGER
Praxiteles the sculptor of old time wrought a delicate image, but lifeless, the dumb counterfeit of beauty, endowing the stone with form; but this Praxiteles of today, creator of living beings by his magic, hath moulded in my heart Love, the rogue of rogues. Perchance, indeed, his name only is the same, but his works are better, since he hath transformed no stone, but the spirit of the mind. Graciously may he mould my character, that when he has formed it he may have within me a temple of Love, even my soul.

§ 12.58  RHIANUS
Troezen is a good nurse; thou shalt not err if thou praisest even the last of her boys. But Empedocles excels all in brilliance as much as the lovely rose outshines the other flowers of spring.

§ 12.59  MELEAGER
Delicate children, so help me Love, doth Tyre nurture, but Myiscus is the sun that, when his light bursts forth, quenches the stars.

§ 12.60  MELEAGER
If I see Thero, I see everything, but if I see everything and no Thero, I again see nothing.

§ 12.61  Anonymous
Look! consume not all Cnidus utterly, Aribazus; the very stone is softened and is vanishing.

§ 12.62  Anonymous
Ye Persian mothers, beautiful, yea beautiful are the children ye bear, but Aribazus is to me a thing more beautiful than beauty.

§ 12.63  MELEAGER
Heraclitus in silence speaks thus from his eyes: "I shall set aflame even the fire of the bolts of Zeus." Yea, verily, and from the bosom of Diodorus comes this voice: "I melt even stone warmed by my body's touch." Unhappy he who has received a torch from the eyes of the one, and from the other a sweet fire smouldering with desire.

§ 12.64  ALCAEUS
Zeus, Lord of Pisa, crown under the steep hill of Cronos Peithenor, the second son of Cypris. And, Lord, I pray thee become no eagle on high to seize him for thy cup-bearer in place of the fair Trojan boy. If ever I have brought thee a gift from the Muses that was dear to thee, grant that the god-like boy may be of one mind with me.

§ 12.65  MELEAGER If Zeus still be he who stole Ganymede in his prime that he might have a cup-bearer of the nectar, I, too, may hide lovely Myiscus in my heart, lest before I know it he swoop on the boy with his wings.

§ 12.66  Anonymous
Judge, ye Loves, of whom the boy is worthy. If truly of the god, let him have him, for I do not contend with Zeus. But if there is something left for mortals too, say. Loves, whose was Dorotheus and to whom is he now given. Openly they call out that they are in my favour; but he departs. I trust that thou, too, mayst not be attracted to beauty in vain.

§ 12.67  Anonymous
I see not lovely Dionysius. Has he been taken up to heaven. Father Zeus, to be the second cup-bearer of the immortals? Tell me, eagle, when thy wings beat rapidly over him, how didst thou carry the pretty boy? has he marks from thy claws?

§ 12.68  MELEAGER
I wish not Charidemus to be mine; for the fair boy looks to Zeus, as if already serving the god with nectar. I wish it not. What profits it me to have the king of heaven as a competitor for victory in love? I am content if only the boy, as he mounts to Olympus, take from earth my tears to wash his feet in memory of my love; and could he but give me one sweet, melting glance and let our lips just meet as I snatch one kiss! Let Zeus have all the rest, as is right; but yet, if he were willing, perchance I, too, should taste ambrosia.

§ 12.69  Anonymous
Take thy delight, Zeus, with thy former Ganymede, and look from afar, O King, on my Dexandrus. I grudge it not. But if thou carriest away the fair boy by force, no longer is thy tyranny supportable. Let even life go if I must live under thy rule.

§ 12.70  MELEAGER
I will stand up even against Zeus if he would snatch thee from me, Myiscus, to pour out the nectar for him. And yet Zeus often told me himself, "What dost thou dread? I will not smite thee with jealousy; I have learnt to pity, for myself I have suffered." That is what he says, but I, if even a fly buzz past, am in dread lest Zeus prove a liar in my case.

§ 12.71  CALLIMACHUS
Thessalian Cleonicus, poor wretch, poor wretch! By the piercing sun I did not know you, man. Where have you been? You are nothing but hair and bone. Can it be that my evil spirit besets you, and you have met with a cruel stroke from heaven? I see it; Euxitheus has run away with you. Yes, when you came here, you rascal, you were looking at the beauty with both eyes.

§ 12.72  MELEAGER
Sweet dawn has come, and lying sleepless in the porch Damis is breathing out the little breath he has left, poor wretch, all for having looked on Heraclitus; for he stood under the rays of his eyes like wax thrown on burning coals. But come, awake, all luckless Damis! I myself bear Love's wound, and shed tears for thy tears.

§ 12.73  CALLIMACHUS
It is but the half of my soul that still breathes, and for the other half I know not if it be Love or Hades that hath seized on it, only it is gone. Is it off again to one of the lads? And yet I told them often, "Receive not, ye young men, the runaway." Seek for it at Theutimus', for I know it is somewhere there that the gallows-bird, the love-lorn, is loitering.

§ 12.74  MELEAGER
If I perish, Cleobulus (for cast, nigh all of me, into the flame of lads' love, I lie, a burnt remnant, in the ashes), I pray thee make the urn drunk with wine ere thou lay it in earth, writing thereon, "Love's gift to Death."

§ 12.75  ASCLEPIADES
If thou hadst wings on thy back, and a bow and arrows in thy hand, not Love but thou wouldst be described as the son of Cypris.

§ 12.76  MELEAGER
If Love had neither bow nor wings, nor quiver, nor the barbed arrows of desire dipped in fire, never, I swear it by the winged boy himself, couldst thou tell from their form which is Zoilus and which is Love.

§ 12.77  ASCLEPIADES or POSIDIPPUS
If thou wert to grow golden wings above, and on thy silvery shoulders were slung a quiver full of arrows, and thou wert to stand, dear, beside Love in his splendour, never, by Hermes I swear it, would Cypris herself know which is her son.

§ 12.78  MELEAGER
If Love had a chlamys and no wings, and wore no bow and quiver on his back, but a petasus, yea, I swear it by the splendid youth himself, Antiochus would be Love, and Love, on the other hand, Antiochus.

§ 12.79  Anonymous
Antipater kissed me when my love was on the wane, and set ablaze again the fire from the cold ash. So against my will I twice encountered one flame. Away, ye who are like to be love-sick, lest touching those near me I burn them.

§ 12.80  MELEAGER
Sore weeping soul, why is Love's wound that was assuaged inflamed again in thy vitals? No, No! for God's sake, No! For God's sake, O thou lover of unwisdom, stir not the fire that yet glows under the ashes! For straightway, O unmindful of past woe, if Love catch thee again, he shall vilely use the truant he has found.

§ 12.81  MELEAGER
Love-sick deceivers of your souls, ye who know the flame of lads' love, having tasted the bitter honey, pour about my heart cold water, cold, and quickly, water from new-melted snow. For I have dared to look on Dionysius. But, fellow-slaves, ere it reach my vitals, put the fire in me out.

§ 12.82  MELEAGER
I made haste to escape from Love; but he, lighting a little torch from the ashes, found me in hiding. He bent not his bow, but the tips of his thumb and finger, and breaking off a pinch of fire secretly threw it at me. And from thence the flames rose about me on all sides. O Phanion, little light that set ablaze in my heart a great fire.

§ 12.83  MELEAGER
Eros wounded me not with his arrows, nor as erst lighting his torch did he hold it blazing under my heart; but bringing the little torch of Cypris with scented flame, the companion of the Loves in their revels, he struck my eyes with the tip of its flame. The flame has utterly consumed me, and that little torch proved to be a fire of the soul burning in my heart.

§ 12.84  MELEAGER
Save me, good sirs! No sooner, saved from the sea, have I set foot on land, fresh from my first voyage, than love drags me here by force, and as if bearing a torch in front of me, turns me to look on the loveliness of a boy. I tread in his footing, and seizing on his sweet image, formed in air, I kiss it sweetly with my lips. Have I then escaped the briny sea but to cross on land the flood of Cypris that is far more bitter?

§ 12.85  MELEAGER
Receive me, ye carousers, the newly landed, escaped from the sea and from robbers, but perishing on land. For now just as, leaving the ship, I had but set my foot on the earth, violent Love caught me and drags me here, here where I saw the boy go through the gate; and albeit I would not I am borne hither swiftly by my feet moving of their own will. I come thus as a reveller filled with fire about my spirit, not with wine. But, dear strangers, help me a little, help me, strangers, and for the sake of Love the Hospitable ' receive me who, nigh to death, supplicate for friendship.

§ 12.86  MELEAGER
It is Cypris, a woman, who casts at us the fire of passion for women, but Love himself rules over desire for males. Whither shall I incline, to the boy or to his mother? I tell you for sure that even Cypris herself will say, "The bold brat wins."

§ 12.87  Anonymous
Persistent Love, thou ever whirlest at me no desire for woman, but the lightning of burning longing for males. Now burnt by Damon, now looking on Ismenus, I ever suffer long pain. And not only on these have I looked, but my eye, ever madly roving, is dragged into the nets of all alike.

§ 12.88  Anonymous
Two loves, descending on me like the tempest, consume me, Eumachus, and I am caught in the toils of two furious passions. On this side I bend towards Asander, and on that again my eye, waxing keener, turns to Telephus. Cut me in two, I should love that, and dividing the halves in a just balance, carry off my limbs, each of you, as the lot decides.

§ 12.89  Anonymous
Cypris, why at one target hast thou shot three arrows, why are three barbs buried in one soul? On this side I am burning, on the other I am being dragged; I am all at a loss which way to turn, and in the furious fire I burn away utterly.

§ 12.90  Anonymous
No longer do I love. I have wrestled with three passions that burn: one for a courtesan, one for a maiden, and one for a lad. And in every way I suffer pain. For I have been sore exercised, seeking to persuade the courtesan's doors to open, the foes of him who has nothings and again ever sleepless I make my bed on the girl's couch, giving the child but one thing and that most desirable, kisses. Alack! how shall I tell of the third flame? For from that I have gained naught but glances and empty hopes.

§ 12.91  POLYSTRATUS
A double love burns one heart. O eyes that cast yourselves in every direction on everything that ye need not, ye looked on Antiochus, conspicuous by his golden charm, the flower of our brilliant youth. It should be enough. Why did ye gaze on sweet and tender Stasicrates, the sapling of violet-crowned Aphrodite? Take fire, consume, be burnt up once for all; for the two of you could never win one heart.

§ 12.92  MELEAGER
O eyes, betrayers of the soul, boy-hunting hounds, your glances ever smeared with Cypris' bird-lime, ye have seized on another Love, like sheep catching a wolf, or a crow a scorpion, or the ash the fire that smoulders beneath it. Do even what ye will. Why do you shed showers of tears and straight run off again to Hiketas? Roast yourselves in beauty, consume away now over the fire, for Love is an admirable cook of the soul.

§ 12.93  RHIANUS
Boys are a labyrinth from which there is no way out; for wherever thou castest thine eye it is fast entangled as if by bird-lime. Here Theodorus attracts thee to the plump ripeness of his flesh and the unadulterate bloom of his limbs, and there it is the golden face of Philocles, who is not great in stature, but heavenly grace environs him. But if thou turnest to look on Leptines thou shalt no more move thy limbs, but shalt remain, thy steps glued as if by indissoluble adamant; such a flame hath the boy in his eyes to set thee afire from thy head to thy toe and finger tips. All hail, beautiful boys! May ye come to the prime of youth and live till grey hair clothe your heads.

§ 12.94  MELEAGER
Delightful is Diodorus and the eyes of all are on Heraclitus, Dion is sweet-spoken, and Uliades has lovely loins. But, Philocles, touch the delicate-skinned one, and look on the next and speak to the third, and for the fourth — etcetera; so that thou mayst see how free from envy my mind is. But if thou cast greedy eyes on Myiscus, mayst thou never see beauty again.

§ 12.95  MELEAGER
Philocles, if thou art beloved by the Loves and sweet-breathed Peitho, and the Graces that gather a nosegay of beauty, mayst thou have thy arm round Diodorus, may sweet Dorotheus stand before thee and sing, may Callicrates lie on thy knee, may Dion warm that well-aimed horn of yours by holding it in his hand, may Uliades peel it back, may Philon give you a sweet kiss, may Theron chatter, and may you squeeze the breast of Eudemus under his chlamys. For if God were to grant thee all these delights, blessed man, what a Roman salad of boys wouldst thou dress.

§ 12.96  Anonymous
Not in vain is this saying bruited among mortals, "The gods have not granted everything to everyone." Faultless is thy form, in thy eyes is illustrious modesty, and the bloom of grace is on thy bosom. And with all these gifts thou vanquishest the young men; but the gods did not grant to thee to have the same grace in thy feet. But, good Pyrrhus, this boot shall hide thy foot and give joy to thee, proud of its beauty.

§ 12.97  ANTIPATER
Eupalamus is ruddy red like Love, as far as Meriones, the captain of the Cretans; but from Meriones onwards Podaleirius no longer goes back to the Dawn: see how envious Nature, the universal mother, is. For if his lower parts were equal to his upper he would excel Achilles, the grandson of Aeacus.

§ 12.98  POSIDIPPUS
Love, tying down the Muses' cicada on a bed of thorns, would lull it there, holding fire under its sides. But the Soul, sore tried of old amid books, makes light of other pain, yet upbraids the ruthless god.

§ 12.99  Anonymous
I am caught by Love, I who had never dreamt it, and never had I learnt to feed a male flame hot beneath my heart. I am caught. Yet it was no longing for evil, but a pure glance, foster-brother of modesty, that burnt me to ashes. Let it consume away, the long labour of the Muses; for my mind is cast in the fire, bearing the burden of a sweet pain.

§ 12.100  Anonymous
To what strange haven of desire hast thou brought me, Cypris, and pitiest me not, although thou thyself hast experience of the pain? Is it thy will that I should suffer the unbearable and speak this word, "Cypris alone has wounded the man wise in the Muses' lore"?

§ 12.01  MELEAGER
Myiscus, shooting me, whom the Loves could not wound, under the breast with his eyes, shouted out thus: "It is I who have struck him down, the overbold, and see how I tread underfoot the arrogance of sceptred wisdom that sat on his brow." But I, just gathering breath enough, said to him, "Dear boy, why art thou astonished? Love brought down Zeus himself from Olympus."

§ 12.102  CALLIMACHUS
The huntsman on the hills, Epicydes, tracks every hare and the slot of every hind through the frost and snow. But if one say to him, "Look, here is a beast lying wounded," he will not take it. And even so is my love; it is wont to pursue the fleeing game,i but flies past what lies in its path.

§ 12.103  Anonymous
I know well to love them who love me, and I know to hate him who wrongs me, for I am not unversed in both.

§ 12.104  Anonymous
Let my love abide with me alone; but if it visit others, I hate, Cypris, a love that is shared.

§ 12.105  ASCLEPIADES
I am a little love that flew away, still easy to catch, from my mother's nest, but from the house of Damis I fly not away on high; but here, loving and beloved without a rival, I keep company not with many, but with one in happy union.

§ 12.106  MELEAGER
I know but one beauty in the world; my greedy eye knows but one thing, to look on Myiscus, and for all else I am blind. He represents everything to me. Is it just on what will please the soul that the eyes look, the flatterers?

§ 12.107  Anonymous
Ye Graces, if lovely Dionysius' choice be for me, lead him on as now from season to season in ever-renewed beauty, but if, passing me over, he love another, let him be cast out like a stale myrtle-berry mixed with the dry sweepings.

§ 12.108  DIONYSIUS
If thou lovest me, Acratus, mayest thou be ranked with Chian wine, yea and even more honey-sweet; but if thou preferest another to me, let the gnats buzz about thee as in the fume of a jar of vinegar.

§ 12.109  MELEAGER
Delicate Diodorus, casting fire at the young men, has been caught by Timarion's wanton eyes, and bears, fixed in him, the bitter-sweet dart of Love, Verily this is a new miracle I see; fire is ablaze, burnt by fire.

§ 12.110  MELEAGER
It lightened sweet beauty; see how he flasheth flame from his eyes. Hath Love produced a boy armed with the bolt of heaven? Hail! Myiscus, who bringest to mortals the fire of the Loves, and mayest thou shine on earth, a torch befriending me.

§ 12.111  Anonymous
Winged is Love and thou art swift of foot, and the beauty of both is equal. We are only second to him, Eubius, because we have no bow and arrows.

§ 12.112  Anonymous
Silence, ye young men; Arcesilaus is leading Love hither, having bound him with the purple cord of Cypris.

§ 12.113  MELEAGER
Even Love himself, the winged, hath been made captive in the air, taken by thy eyes, Timarion.

§ 12.114  MELEAGER
Star of the Morning, hail, thou herald of dawn I and mayest thou quickly come again, as the Star of Eve, bringing again in secret her whom thou takest away.

§ 12.115  Anonymous
I have quaffed untempered madness, and all drunk with words I have armed myself with much frenzy for the way. I will march with music to her door, and what care I for God's thunder and what for his bolts, I who, if he cast them, carry love as an impenetrable shield?

§ 12.116  Anonymous
I will go to serenade him, for I am, all of me, mighty drunk. Boy, take this wreath that my tears bathe. The way is long, but I shall not go in vain; it is the dead of night and dark, but for me Themison is a great torch,

§ 12.117  MELEAGER
"Let the die be cast; light the torch; I will go." "Just look! What daring, heavy with wine as thou art! " "What care besets thee? I will go revelling to her, I will go." "Whither dost thou stray, my mind?" "Doth love take thought? Light up at once." "And where is all thy old study of logic? " "Away with the long labour of wisdom; this one thing alone I know, that Love brought to naught the high mind of Zeus himself."

§ 12.118  CALLIMACHUS
If I came to thee in revel, Archinus, willingly, load me with ten thousand reproaches; but if I am here against my will, consider the vehemence of the cause. Strong wine and love compelled me; one of them pulled me and the other would not let me be soberminded. But when I came I did not cry who I was or whose, but I kissed the door-post: if that be a sin, I sinned.

§ 12.119  MELEAGER
I shall bear, Bacchus, thy boldness, I swear it by thyself; lead on, begin the revel; thou art a god; govern a mortal heart. Born in the flame, thou lovest the flame love hath, and again leadest me, thy suppliant, in bonds. Of a truth thou art a traitor and faithless, and while thou biddest us hide thy mysteries, thou wouldst now bring mine to light.

§ 12.120  POSIDIPPUS
I am well armed, and will fight with thee and not give in, though I am a mortal. And thou. Love, come no more against me. If thou findest me drunk, carry me off a prisoner, but as long as I keep sober I have Reason standing in battle array to meet thee.

§ 12.121  RHIANUS
Tell me, Cleonicus, did the bright Graces meet thee walking in a narrow lane and take thee in their rosy arms, dear boy, that thou hast become such a Grace as thou art? From afar I bid thee all hail, but ah! dear, it is not safe for a dry corn-stalk to draw nearer to the fire.

§ 12.122  MELEAGER
Ye Graces, looking straight on lovely Aristagoras, you took him to the embrace of your soft arms; and therefore he shoots forth flame by his beauty, and discourses sweetly when it is meet, and if he keep silence, his eyes prattle delightfully. Let him stray far away, I pray; but what does that help? For the boy, like Zeus from piympus, has learnt of late to throw the lightning far.

§ 12.123  Anonymous
When Menecharmus, Anticles' son, won the boxing match, I crowned him with ten soft fillets, and thrice I kissed him all dabbled with blood as he was, but the blood was sweeter to me than myrrh.

§ 12.124  ARTEMON
As Echedemus was peeping out of his door on the sly, I slyly kissed that charming boy who is just in his prime. Now I am in dread, for he came to me in a dream, bearing a quiver, and departed after giving me fighting cocks, but at one time smiling, at another with no friendly look. But have I touched a swarm of bees, and a nettle, and fire?

§ 12.125  MELEAGER
Love in the night brought me under my mantle the sweet dream of a softly-laughing boy of eighteen, still wearing the chlamys; and I, pressing his tender flesh to my breast, culled empty hopes. Still does the desire of the memory heat me, and in my eyes still abideth sleep that caught for me in the chase that winged phantom. O soul, ill-starred in love, cease at last even in dreams to be warmed all in vain by beauty's images.

§ 12.126  MELEAGER
Pain has begun to touch my heart, for hot Love, as he strayed, scratched it with the tip of his nails, and, smiling, said, "Again, O unhappy lover, thou shalt have the sweet wound, burnt by biting honey." Since when, seeing among the youths the fresh sapling Diophantus, I can neither fly nor abide.

§ 12.127  MELEAGER
I saw Alexis walking in the road at noon-tide, at the season when the summer was just being shorn of the tresses of her fruits; and double rays burnt me, the rays of love from the boy's eyes and others from the sun. The sun's night laid to rest again, but love's were kindled more in my dreams by the phantom of beauty. So night, who releases others from toil, brought pain to me, imaging in my soul a loveliness which is living fire.

§ 12.128  MELEAGER
Ye pastoral pipes, no longer call on Daphnis in the mountains to please Pan the goat-mounter; and thou, lyre, spokesman of Phoebus, sing no longer of Hyacinthus crowned with maiden laurel. For Daphnis, when there was a Daphnis, was the delight of the Mountain Nymphs, and Hyacinthus was thine; but now let Dion wield the sceptre of the Loves.

§ 12.129  ARATUS
Philocles of Argos is "fair" at Argos, and the columns of Corinth and tombstones of Megara announce the same. It is written that he is fair as far as Amphiaraus' baths. But that is little; they are only letters that beat us. For they are not stones that testify to this Philocles' beauty, but Rhianus, who saw him with his own eyes, and he is superior to the other one.

§ 12.130  Anonymous
I said and said it again, "He is fair, he is fair," but I will still say it, that Dositheus is fair and has lovely eyes. These words we engraved on no oak or pine, no, nor on a wall, but Love burnt them into my heart. But if any man deny it, believe him not. Yea, by thyself, O God, I swear he lies, and I who say it alone know the truth.

§ 12.131  POSIDIPPUS
Goddess who hauntest Cyprus and Cythera and Miletus and the fair plain of Syria that echoes to the tread of horses, come in gracious mood to Callistion, who never repulsed a lover from her door.

§ 12.132  MELEAGER
Did I not cry it to thee, my soul, "By Cypris, thou wilt be taken, O thou love-lorn, that fliest again and again to the limed bough"? Did I not cry it? And the snare has caught thee. Why dost thou struggle vainly in thy bonds? Love himself hath bound thy wings and set thee on the fire, and sprays thee with scents when thou faintest, and gives thee when thou art athirst hot tears to drink.

§ 12.132a  By the same
O sore-afflicted soul, now thou burnest in the fire and now thou revivest, recovering thy breath. Why dost thou weep? When thou didst nurse merciless Love in thy bosom knewest thou not that he was being nursed for thy bane? Didst thou not know it? Now learn to know the pay of thy good nursing, receiving from him fire and cold snow therewith. Thyself thou hast chosen this; bear the pain. Thou sufferest the due guerdon of what thou hast done, burnt by his boiling honey.

§ 12.133  MELEAGER
In summer, when I was athirst, I kissed the tender-fleshed boy and said, when I was free of my parching thirst, "Father Zeus, dost thou drink the nectareous kiss of Ganymede, and is this the wine he tenders to thy lips? " For now that I have kissed Antiochus, fairest of our youth, I have drunk the sweet honey of the soul.

§ 12.134  CALLIMACHUS
Our guest has a wound and we knew it not. Sawest thou not with what pain he heaved his breath up from his chest when he drank the third cup? And all the roses, casting their petals, fell on the ground from the man's wreaths. There is something burns him fiercely; by the gods I guess not at random, but a thief myself, I know a thief's footprints.

§ 12.135  ASCLEPIADES
Wine is the proof of love. Nicagoras denied to us that he was in love, but those many toasts convicted him. Yes! he shed tears and bent his head, and had a certain downcast look, and the wreath bound tight round his head kept not its place.

§ 12.136  Anonymous
Ye chattering birds, why do you clamour? Vex me not, as I lie warmed by the lad's delicate flesh, ye nightingales that sit among the leaves. Sleep, I implore you, ye talkative women-folk; hold your peace.

§ 12.137  MELEAGER
Crier of the dawn, caller of evil tidings to a love-sick wight, now, thrice accursed, just when love has only this brief portion of the night left to live, thou crowest in the dark, beating thy sides with thy wings all exultant above thy bed, and makest sweet mockery over my pains. Is this the loving thanks thou hast for him who reared thee? I swear it by this dim dawn, it is the last time thou shalt chant this bitter song.

§ 12.138  MNASALCAS
Vine, dost thou fear the setting of the Pleiads in the west,i that thou hastenest to shed thy leaves on the ground? Tarry till sweet sleep fall on Antileon beneath thee; tarry till then, bestower of all favours on the fair.

§ 12.139  CALLIMACHUS
There is, I swear it by Pan, yea, by Dionysus, there is some fire hidden here under the embers. I mistrust me. Embrace me not, I entreat thee. Often a tranquil stream secretly eats away a wall at its base. Therefore now too I fear, Menexenus, lest this silent crawler find his way into me and cast me into love.

§ 12.140  Anonymous
When I saw Archestratus the fair I said, so help me Hermes I did, that he was not fair; for he seemed not passing fair to me. I had but spoken the word and Nemesis seized me, and at once I lay in the flames and Zeus, in the guise of a boy, rained his lightning on me. Shall I beseech the boy or the goddess for mercy? But to me the boy is greater than the goddess. Let Nemesis go her way.

§ 12.141  MELEAGER
By Cypris, thou hast spoken what not even a god might, O spirit, who hast learnt to be too daring. Theron seemed not fair to thee. He seemed not fair to thee, Theron. But thou thyself hast brought it on thee, not dreading even the fiery bolts of Zeus. Wherefore, lo! indignant Nemesis hath exposed thee, once so voluble, to be gazed at, as an example of an unguarded tongue.

§ 12.142  RHIANUS
Dexionicus, having caught a blackbird with lime under a green plane-tree, held it by the wings, and it, the holy bird, screamed complaining. But I, dear Love, and ye blooming Graces, would fain be even a thrush or a blackbird, so that in his hand I might pour forth my voice and sweet tears.

§ 12.143  Anonymous
"O Hermes, when shot he extracted the bitter arrow, . ." "And I, O stranger, met with the same fate." "But desire for Apollophanes wears me away." "O lover of sports, thou hast outstripped me; we both have leapt into the same fire."

§ 12.144  MELEAGER
To Love Why weepest thou O stealer of the wits? Why hast thou cast away thy savage bow and arrows, folding thy pair of outstretched wings? Doth Myiscus, ill to combat, burn thee, too, with his eyes? How hard it has been for thee to learn by suffering what evil thou wast wont to do of old!

§ 12.145  Anonymous
Rest, ye lovers of lads, from your empty labour; cease from your troubles, ye perverse men; we are maddened by never fulfilled hopes. It is like to baling the sea on to the dry land and reckoning the number of grains in the Libyan sand to court the love of boys, whose vainglorious beauty is sweet to men and gods alike. Look on me, all of you; for all my futile toil of the past is as water shed on the dry beach.

§ 12.146  RHIANUS
I caught the fawn and lost him; I, who had taken countless pains and set up the nets and stakes, go away empty-handed, but they who toiled not carry off my quarry, O Love. May thy wrath be heavy upon them.

§ 12.147  MELEAGER
They have carried her off! Who so savage as to do such armed violence? Who so strong as to raise war against Love himself? Quick, light the torches! But a footfall; Heliodora's! Get thee back into my bosom, O my heart.

§ 12.148  CALLIMACHUS
I know my hands are empty of wealth, but, by the Graces I beseech thee, Menippus, tell me not my own dream. It hurts me to hear continually these bitter words. Yes, my dear, this is the most unloving thing in all thy bearing to me.

§ 12.149  CALLIMACHUS
"You will be caught, Menecrates, do all you can to escape," I said on the twentieth of Panemus; and in Loius on what day? — the tenth — the ox came of his own accord under the yoke of the plough. Well done, my Hermes! well done, my own! I don't complain of the twenty days' delay.

§ 12.150  CALLIMACHUS
How capital the charm for one in love that Polyphemus discovered! Yea, by the Earth, he was not unschooled, the Cyclops. The Muses make Love thin, Philippus; of a truth learning is a medicine that cures every ill. This, I think, is the only good that hunger, too, has to set against its evils, that it extirpates the disease of love for boys. I have plenty of cause for saying to Love "Thy wings are being clipped, my little man. I fear thee not a tiny bit." For at home I have both the charms for the severe wound.

§ 12.151  Anonymous
Stranger, if thou sawest somewhere among the boys one whose bloom was most lovely, undoubtedly thou sawest Apollodotus. And if, having seen him, thou wast not overcome by burning fiery desire, of a surety thou art either a god or a stone.

§ 12.152  Anonymous
Heraclitus, my beloved, is a Magnet, not attracting iron by stone, but my spirit by his beauty.

§ 12.153  ASCLEPIADES
(The Complaint of a Girl) Time was when Archeades loved to sit close to me, but now not even in play does he turn to look at me, unhappy that I am. Not even Love the honeyed is ever sweet, but often he becomes a sweeter god to lovers when he torments them.

§ 12.154  MELEAGER
Sweet is the boy, and even the name of Myiscus is sweet to me and full of charm. What excuse have I for not loving? For he is beautiful, by Cypris, entirely beautiful; and if he gives me pain, why, it is the way of Love to mix bitterness with honey.

§ 12.155  Anonymous
A. Don't speak to me again like that. B. How am I to blame? He sent me himself. A. What! will you say it a second time? B. A second time. He said "Go." But come, don't delay, they are waiting for you. A. First of all I will find them and then I will come. I know from experience what the third story will be.

§ 12.156  Anonymous
Even like unto a storm in springtime, Diodorus, is my love, determined by the moods of an uncertain sea. At one time thou displayest heavy rain-clouds, at another again the sky is clear and thy eyes melt in a soft smile. And I, like a shipwrecked man in the surge, count the blind waves as I am whirled hither and thither at the mercy of the mighty storm. But show me a landmark either of love or of hate, that I may know in which sea I swim.

§ 12.157  MELEAGER
Cypris is my skipper and Love keeps the tiller, holding in his hand the end of my soul's rudder, and the heavy gale of Desire drives me storm-tossed; for now I swim verily in a Pamphylian sea of boys.

§ 12.158  MELEAGER
The goddess, queen of the Desires, gave me to thee, Theocles; Love, the soft-sandalled, laid me low for thee to tread on, all unarmed, a stranger in a strange land, having tamed me by his bit that grippeth fast. But now I long to win a friendship in which I need not stoop. But thou refusest him who loves thee, and neither time softens thee nor the tokens we have of our mutual continence. Have mercy on me. Lord, have mercy! for Destiny ordained thee a god; with thee rest for me the issues of life and death.

§ 12.159  MELEAGER
My life's cable, Myiscus, is made fast to thee; in thee is all the breath that is left to my soul. For by thy eyes, dear boy, that speak even to the deaf, and by thy bright brow I swear it, if ever thou lookest at me with a clouded eye I see the winter, but if, thy glance be blithe, the sweet spring bursts into bloom.

§ 12.160  Anonymous
Bravely shall I bear the sharp pain in my vitals and the bond of the cruel fetters. For it is not now only, Nicander, that I learn to know the wounds of love, but often have I tasted desire. Do both thou, Adrasteia, and thou. Nemesis, bitterest of the immortals, exact due vengeance for his evil resolve.

§ 12.161  ASCLEPIADES
Dorcion, who loves to sport with the young men, knows how to cast, like a tender boy, the swift dart of Cypris the Popular, flashing desire from her eye, and over her shoulders . . . with her boy's hat, her chlamys showed her naked thigh.

§ 12.162  ASCLEPIADES
My Love, not yet carrying a bow, or savage, but a tiny child, returns to Cypris, holding a golden writing tablet, and reading from it he lisps the love-charms that Diaulus' boy, Philocrates, used to conquer the soul of Antigenes.

§ 12.163  ASCLEPIADES
Love has discovered what beauty to mix with beauty; not emerald with gold, which neither sparkles nor could ever be its equal, nor ivory with ebony, black with white, but Cleander with Eubiotus, two flowers of Persuasion and Friendship.

§ 12.164  MELEAGER
Sweet it is to mix with wine the bees' sugary liquor, and sweet to love a boy when oneself is lovely too, even as Alexis now loves soft-haired Cleobulus. These two are the immortal metheglin of Cypris.

§ 12.165  MELEAGER
Cleobulus is a white blossom, and Sopolis, who stands opposite him, is of honey tint — the two flowerbearers of Cypris . . . Therefrom comes my longing for the lads; for the Loves say they wove me of black and white.

§ 12.166  ASCLEPIADES Let this that is left of my soul, whatever it be, let this at least, ye Loves, have rest for heaven's sake. Or else no longer shoot me with arrows but with thunderbolts, and make me utterly into ashes and cinders. Yea! yea! strike me, ye Loves; for withered away as I am by distress, I would have from you, if I may have aught, this little gift.

§ 12.167  MELEAGER
Wintry is the wind, but Love the sweet-teared bears me, swept away by the revel, towards thee, Myiscus. And Desire's heavy gale tosses me. But receive me, who sail on the sea of Cypris, into thy harbour.

§ 12.168  POSIDIPPUS
Pour in two ladles of Nanno and Lyde and one of the lovers' friend, Mimnermus, and one of wise Antimachus, and with the fifth mix in myself, Heliodorus, and with the sixth say, "Of everyone who ever chanced to love." Say the seventh is of Hesiod, and the eighth of Homer, and the ninth of the Muses, and the tenth of Mnemosyne. I drink the bowl full above the brim, Cypris, and for the rest the Loves . . . not very displeasing when either sober or drunk.

§ 12.169  DIOSCORIDES I escaped from your weight, Theodorus, but no sooner had I said "I have escaped from my most cruel tormenting spirit " than a crueller one seized on me, and slaving for Aristocrates in countless ways, I am awaiting even a third master.

§ 12.170  By the same
Libation and Frankincense, and ye Powers mixed in the bowl, who hold the issues of my friendship, I call you to witness, solemn Powers, by all of whom the honey-complexioned boy Athenaeus swore.

§ 12.171  By the same
Zephyr, gentlest of the winds, bring back to me the lovely pilgrim Euphragoras, even as thou didst receive him, not extending his absence beyond a few months' space; for to a lover's mind a short time is as a thousand years.

§ 12.172  EVENUS
If to hate is pain and to love is pain, of the two evils I choose the smart of kind pain.

§ 12.173   — PHILODEMUS Demo and Thermion are killing me. Thermion is a courtesan and Demo a girl who knows not Cypris yet. The one I touch, but the other I may not. By thyself, Cypris, I swear, I know not which I should call the more desirable. I will say it is the virgin Demo; for I desire not what is ready to hand, but long for whatever is kept under lock and key.

§ 12.174  FRONTO
How long wilt thou resist me, dearest Cyrus? What art thou doing? Dost thou not pity thy Cambyses? tell me. Become not a Mede, for soon thou shalt be a Scythian and the hairs will make thee Astyages.

§ 12.175  STRATO
Either be not jealous with your friends about your slave boys, or do not provide girlish-looking cupbearers. For who is of adamant against love, or who succumbs not to wine, and who does not look curiously at pretty boys? This is the way of living men, but if you like, Diophon, go away to some place where there is no love and no drunkenness, and there induce Tiresias or Tantalus to drink with you, the one to see nothing and the other only to see.

§ 12.176  STRATO
Why are you draped down to your ankles in that melancholy fashion, Menippus, you who used to tuck up your dress to your thighs? Or why do you pass me by with downcast eyes and without a word? I know what you are hiding from me. They have come, those things I told you would come.

§ 12.177  STRATO
Last evening Moeris, at the hour when we bid good night, embraced me, I know not whether in reality or in a dream. I remember now quite accurately everything else, what he said to me and the questions he asked, but whether he kissed me too or not I am at a loss to know; for if it be true, how is it that I, who then became a god, am walking about on earth?

§ 12.178  STRATO
I caught fire when Theudis shone among the other boys, like the sun that rises on the stars. Therefore I am still burning now, when the down of night overtakes him, for though he be setting, yet he is still the sun.

§ 12.179  STRATO
I swore to thee, son of Cronos, that never, not even to myself, would I utter what Theudis told me I might have. But my froward soul flies high in exultation and cannot contain the good. But I will out with it: pardon me, Zeus, "He yielded." Father Zeus, what delight is there in good fortune that is known to none?

§ 12.180  STRATO
I feel some burning heat; but cease, boy, from waving in the air near me the napkin of fine linen. I have another fire within me lit by the wine thou didst serve, and aroused more with thy fanning.

§ 12.181  STRATO
It is a lying fable, Theocles, that the Graces are good and that there are three of them in Orchomenus; for five times ten dance round thy face, all archers, ravishers of other men's souls.

§ 12.182  STRATO
Now thou givest me these futile kisses, when the fire of love is quenched, when not even apart from it do I regard thee as a sweet friend. For I remember those days of thy stubborn resistance. Yet even now, Daphnis, though it be late, let repentance find its place.

§ 12.183  STRATO
What delight, Heliodorus, is there in kisses, if thou dost not kiss me, pressing against me with greedy lips, but on the tips of mine with thine closed and motionless, as a wax image at home kisses me even without thee.

§ 12.184  STRATO
Study not to capture Menedemus by craft, but sign to him with your eyebrows and he will say openly, "Go on, I follow." For there is no delay, and he even "outrunneth him who guides him," and is more expeditious not than a water-channel but than a river.

§ 12.185  STRATO
These airified boys, with their purple-edged robes, whom we cannot get at, Diphilus, are like ripe figs on high crags, which the vultures and ravens eat.

§ 12.186  STRATO
How long. Mentor, shalt thou maintain this arrogant brow, not even bidding "good day," as if thou shouldst keep young for all time or tread for ever the pyrrhic dance? Look forward and consider thy end too. Thy beard will come, the last of evils but the greatest, and then thou shalt know what scarcity of friends is.

§ 12.187  STRATO
How, Dionysius, shall you teach a boy to read when you do not even know how to make the transition from one note to another? You have passed so quickly from the highest note to a deep one, from the slightest rise to the most voluminous. Yet I bear you no grudge; only study, and striking both say Lambda and Alpha to the envious.

§ 12.188  STRATO
If I do you a wrong by kissing you, and you think this an injury, kiss me too, inflicting the same on me as a punishment.

§ 12.189  STRATO
Who crowned all thy head with roses? If it was a lover, blessed is he, but if it was thy father, he too has eyes.

§ 12.190  STRATO
Blest is he who painted thee, and blest is this wax that knew how to be conquered by thy beauty. Would I could become a creeping wood-worm that I might leap up and devour this wood.

§ 12.191  STRATO
Wast thou not yesterday a boy, and we had never even dreamt of this beard coming? How did this accursed thing spring up, covering with hair all that was so pretty before? Heavens! what a marvel! Yesterday you were Troilus and today how have you become Priam?

§ 12.192  STRATO
I am not charmed by long hair and needless ringlets taught in the school of Art, not of Nature, but by the dusty grime of a boy fresh from the playground and the colour given to the limbs by the gloss of oil. My love is sweet when unadorned, but a fraudulent beauty has in it the work of female Cypris.

§ 12.193  STRATO
Thou dost not even take to heart, Artemidorus, what the Avenging Goddesses of Smyrna say to thee, "Nothing beyond due measure," but thou art always acting, talking loud in a tone so arrogant and savage, not even becoming in an actor. Thou shalt remember all this, haughty boy; thou, too, shalt love and play the part of "The barred-out lady."

§ 12.194  STRATO
If Zeus still carried off mortal boys from earth to the sky to be ministrants of the sweet nectar, an eagle would ere this have borne my lovely Agrippa on his wings to the service of the immortals. For yea, by thyself I swear it. Son of Cronos, Father of the world, if thou lookest on him thou wilt at once find fault with the Phrygian boy of the house of Dardanus.

§ 12.195  STRATO
The meads that love the Zephyr are not abloom with so many flowers, the crowded splendour of the spring-tide, as are the high-born boys thou shalt see, Dionysius, all moulded by Cypris and the Graces. And chief among them, look, flowers Milesius, like a rose shining with its sweet-scented petals. But perchance he knows not, that as a lovely flower is killed by the heat, so is beauty by a hair.

§ 12.196  STRATO
Thy eyes are sparks, Lycinus, divinely fair; or rather, master mine, they are rays that shoot forth flame. Even for a little season I cannot look at thee face to face, so bright is the lightning from both.

§ 12.197  STRATO
"Know the time" said one of the seven sages; for all things, Philippus, are more loveable when in their prime. A cucumber, too, is a fruit we honour at first when we see it in its garden bed, but after, when it ripens, it is food for swine.

§ 12.198  STRATO
I am a friend of youth and prefer not one boy to another, judging them by their beauty; for one has one charm, another another.

§ 12.199  STRATO
I have drunk already in sufficient measure, for both my mind's and my tongue's steadiness is relaxed. The flame of the lamp is torn into two, and I count the guests double, though I try over and over again. And now not only am I in a flutter for the wine-pourer, but I look, out of season, at the Water-pourer too.

§ 12.200  STRATO
I hate resistance to my embrace when I kiss, and pugnacious cries, and violent opposition with the hands, but at the same time I have no great desire for him who, when he is in my arms, is at once ready and abandons himself effusively. I wish for one half-way between the two, such as is he who knows both how to give himself and how not to give himself.

§ 12.201  STRATO
If Cleonicus does not come now I will never receive him in my house, by — . I will not swear; for if he did not come owing to a dream he had, and then does appear tomorrow, it is not all over with me because of the loss of this one day.

§ 12.202  STRATO
Winged Love bore me through the air, Damis, when I saw your letter which told me you had arrived here; and swiftly I flew from Smyrna to Sardis; if Zetes or Calais had been racing me they would have been left behind.

§ 12.203  STRATO
You kiss me when I don't wish it, and you don't wish it when I kiss you; when I fly you are facile, when I attack you are difficult.

§ 12.204  STRATO
Now you may say, "Golden gifts for brazen." Sosiades the fair and Diocles the bushy are playing at "Give and take." Who compares roses with brambles, or figs with toadstools? Who compares a lamb like curdled milk with an ox? What dost thou give, thoughtless boy, and what dost thou receive in return? Such gifts did Diomede give to Glaucus.

§ 12.205  STRATO
My neighbour's quite tender young boy provokes me not a little, and laughs in no novice manner to show me that he is willing. But he is not more than twelve years old. Now the unripe grapes are unguarded; when he ripens there will be watchmen and stakes.

§ 12.206  STRATO
A. "If you are minded to do thus, take your adversary by the middle, and laying him down get astride of him, and shoving forward, fall on him and hold him tight." B. "You are not in your right senses, Diophantus. I am only just capable of doing this, but boys' wrestling is different. Fix yourself fast and stand firm, Cyris, and support it when I close with you. He should learn to practise with a fellow before learning to practise himself." ■

§ 12.207  STRATO Yesterday Diocles in the bath brought up a lizard from the tub, "Venus Anadyomene ." If someone had shown it to Paris then in Ida, he would have pronounced the three goddesses to be less fair than it.

§ 12.208  STRATO
Happy little book, I grudge it thee not; some boy reading thee will rub thee, holding thee under his chin, or press thee against his delicate lips, or will roll thee up resting on his tender thighs, O most blessed of books. Often shalt thou betake thee into his bosom, or, tossed down on his chair, shalt dare to touch without fear, and thou shalt talk much before him all alone with him; but I supplicate thee, little book, speak something not unoften on my behalf.

§ 12.209  STRATO
Lie not by me with so sour a face and so dejected, Diphilus, and be not a boy of the common herd. Put a little wantonness into your kisses and the preliminaries, toying, touching, scratching, your look and your words.

§ 12.210  STRATO
Those on the bed number three, two of whom act and two receive. I seem to be saying something miraculous but it is not a lie. One in between serves for two, giving pleasure from behind, enjoying pleasure in front.

§ 12.211  STRATO
If you were still uninitiated in the matter about which I go on trying to persuade you, you would be right in being afraid, thinking it is perhaps something formidable. But if your master's bed has made you proficient in it, why do you grudge granting the favour to another, receiving the same? For he, after summoning you to the business, dismisses you, and being your lord and master, goes to sleep without even addressing a word to you. But here you will have other enjoyments, playing on equal terms, talking together, and all else by invitation and not by order.

§ 12.212  STRATO
Woe is me! Why in tears again and so woebegone, my lad? Tell me plainly; don't give me pain; what do you want? You hold out the hollow of your hand to me. I am done for! You are begging perhaps for payment; and where did you learn that? You no longer love slices of seed-cake and sweet sesame, and nuts to play at shots with, but already your mind is set on gain. May he who taught you perish! What a boy of mine he has spoilt!

§ 12.213  STRATO
You rest your splendid loins against the wall, Cyris. Why do you tempt the stone? It is incapable.

§ 12.214  STRATO
Grant it me and take the coin. You will say "I am rich." Then, like a king, make me a present of the favour.

§ 12.215  STRATO
Now thou art spring, and afterward summer, and next what shalt thou be, Cyris? Consider, for thou shalt be dry stubble too.

§ 12.216  STRATO
Now straight and well-toned to no purpose, accursed tool, because yesterday you weren't breathing at all.

§ 12.217  STRATO
So soon thou rushest to the wars still an ignorant boy and delicate. What art thou doing? Ho I look to it, change thy resolve. Alas! who persuaded thee to grasp the spear? Who bad thee take the shield in thy hand or hide that head in a helmet? Most blessed he, whoe'er he be, who, some new Achilles, shall take his pleasure in the tent with such a Patroclus!

§ 12.218  STRATO
How long shall I bear with thee, thus laughing only and never uttering a word? Tell me this plainly, Pasiphilus. I entreat and thou laughest; I entreat again and no answer; I weep and thou laughest. Cruel boy, is this a laughing matter?

§ 12.219  STRATO
You want payment too, you schoolmasters! How ungrateful you are! For why? Is it a small thing to look on boys and speak to them, and kiss them when you greet them? Is not this alone worth a hundred pounds? If anyone has good-looking boys, let him send them to me and let them kiss me, and receive whatever payment they wish from me.

§ 12.220  STRATO
Thou art not in fetters for stealing the fire, ill-advised Prometheus, but because thou didst spoil the clay of Zeus. In moulding men thou didst add hairs, and hence comes the horrible beard, and hence boys' legs grow rough. For this thou art devoured by Zeus' eagle which carried off Ganymede; for the beard is a torment to Zeus, too.

§ 12.221  STRATO
Hie thee to holy Heaven, eagle; away, bearing the boy, thy twin wings outspread. Go, holding tender Ganymede, and let him not drop, the ministrant of Zeus' sweetest cups. And take heed not to make the boy bleed with the crooked claws of thy feet, lest Zeus, sore aggrieved thereby, suffer pain.

§ 12.222  STRATO
Once a wrestling-master, taking advantage of the occasion, when he was giving a lesson to a smooth boy, bending toward the knee was training the boy's middle, caressing his nuts with his hand. But by chance the master of the house came, wanting the boy. The teacher threw him quickly on his back, getting astride of him and grasping him by the throat. But the master of the house, who was not untrained himself, said to him, "Stop, you are choking the boy."

§ 12.223  STRATO
His face as he approaches seems altogether delightful to me, and that suffices, and I turn not my head to look at him again as he passes. For thus do we look at the statue of a god and a temple, in front, but need not look at the back chamber too.

§ 12.224  STRATO
We walk together in a good path, Diphilus, and take thou thought how it shall continue to be even as it was from the beginning. To the lot of each has fallen a winged thing; for in thee is beauty and in me love; but both are fugitive. Now they remain in unison for a season, but if they do not guard one another they take wing and are gone,

§ 12.225  STRATO
Never in the dawn light of the rising sun should the flaming Dog have intercourse with the Bull, lest when fruit-bearing Demeter is moistened she rain on the hairy bedmate of Heracles.

§ 12.226  STRATO
All night long, my dripping eyes tear-stained, I strive to rest my spirit that grief keeps awake — grief for this separation from my friend since yesterday, when Theodorus, leaving me here alone, went to his own Ephesus. If he come not back soon I shall be no longer able to bear the solitude of my bed.

§ 12.227  STRATO
Even if I desire to avoid looking at a pretty boy when I meet him, I have scarcely passed him when I at once turn round.

§ 12.228  STRATO
That an immature boy should do despite to his insensible age carries more disgrace to the friend who tempts him than to himself, and for a grown-up youth to submit to that, his season for which is past, is twice as disgraceful to him who consents as it is to his tempter. But there is a time, Moeris, when it is no longer unseemly in the one, and not yet so in the other, as is the case with you and me at present.

§ 12.229  STRATO
What a good goddess is that Nemesis, to avert whom, dreading her as she treadeth behind us, we spit in our bosom! Thou didst not see her at thy heels, but didst think that for ever thou shouldst possess thy grudging beauty. Now it has perished utterly; the very wrathful goddess has come, and we, thy servants, now pass thee by.

§ 12.230  CALLIMACHUS
If Theocritus, the beautifully brown, hate me, hate thou him, Zeus, four times as much, but if he love me, love him. Yea, by fair-haired Ganymede, celestial Zeus, thou too wert once in love. I say nothing further.

§ 12.231  STRATO
Euclides, who is in love, has lost his father. Ah, the ever lucky fellow! His father used ever to be good-natured to him about anything he wished, and now is a benevolent corpse. But I must still play in secret. Alas for my evil fate and my father's immortality!

§ 12.232  SCYTHINUS
Now you stand straight, nameless one, and don't shrivel, and you are intent as if you would never stop. But when Nemesenos stretched out next to me to give whatever I want, you hung down dead. Reach out, rend, weep, all in vain, you will have no pity from our hand.

§ 12.233  FRONTO
Comedian, thou deniest that thy prime is "The Treasure," knowing not that it is swifter to depart than "The Phantom." Time will make thee "The Hated Man" and then "The Countryman," and then thou shalt seek "The Clipped Lady."

§ 12.234  STRATO
If thou gloriest in thy beauty, know that the rose too blooms, but withers of a sudden and is cast away on the dunghill. To blossom and to beauty the same time is allotted, and envious time withers both together.

§ 12.235  STRATO
If beauty grows old, give me of it ere it depart; but if it remains with thee, why fear to give what shall remain thine?

§ 12.236  STRATO
A certain eunuch has good-looking servant-boys — for what use? — and he does them abominable injury. Truly, like the dog in the manger with the roses, and stupidly barking, he neither gives the good thing to himself nor to anyone else.

§ 12.237  STRATO
Off with thee, pretended hater of evil; off with thee, low-minded boy, who didst swear so lately that never again wouldst thou grant me it. Swear no longer now; for I know, and thou canst not conceal it from me, where it was, and how, and with whom, and for how much.

§ 12.238  STRATO
The shameless colts when they are playing provide mutual pleasure to one another, the same ones taking turns for the one to climb on the back of the other, carrying out reciprocally the doing and receiving. Nor does one take advantage of the other: for the one who gave before stands again behind. Anyway this is the proverb: the ass knows to scratch the ass for a like reward, as they say.

§ 12.239  STRATO
You ask for five drachmas: I will give ten and you will . . . have twenty. Is a gold sovereign enough for you? Sovereign gold was enough for Danae.

§ 12.240  STRATO
Already the locks of hair on my temples are gray, and my penis hangs inert between my thighs. My testicles are idle; old age hits me hard, alas, I know how to sodomize but I'm unable.

§ 12.241  STRATO
You have made a hook, my child, and I am the fish you have caught. Pull me where you will, but don't run or you might lose me.

§ 12.242  STRATO
[See Bk. XI No. 21]

§ 12.243  STRATO
If sodomy destroys me and I come down with gout, Zeus, make me a meat-hook.

§ 12.244  STRATO
If I see a white boy it is the death of me and if it be a honey-complexioned one I am on fire; but if it be a flaxen-haired one I am utterly melted.

§ 12.245  STRATO
Dumb animals merely copulate. We rational animals are superior to the others because we discovered sodomy. Those who stick with women are no better than dumb animals.

§ 12.246  STRATO
A pair of brothers love me. I know not which of them I should decide to take for my master for I love them both. One goes away from me and the other approaches. The best of the one is his presence; the best of the other my desire for him in his absence.

§ 12.247  STRATO
Theodorus, as once Idomeneus brought from Crete to Troy Meriones to be his squire such a dexterous friend have I in thee; for Meriones was in some things his servant, in others his minion. And do thou, too, all day go about the business of my life, but at night, by Heaven, let us essay Meriones.

§ 12.248  STRATO
Who can tell if his beloved begins to pass his prime, if he is ever with him and never separated? Who that pleased yesterday can fail to please today, and if he please now, what can befall him to make him displease tomorrow?

§ 12.249  STRATO
Ox-born bee, why, catching sight of my honey, dost thou fly across to the boy's face, smooth as glass? Wilt thou not cease thy humming and thy effort to touch his most pure skin with thy flower-gathering feet? Off to thy honey-bearing hive, where'er it be, thou truant, lest I bite thee! I, too, have a sting, even love's.

§ 12.250  STRATO
Going out in revel at night after supper, I, the wolf, found a lamb standing at the door, the son of my neighbour Aristodicus, and throwing my arms round him I kissed him to my heart's content, promising on my oath many gifts. And now what present shall I bring to him? He does not deserve cheating or Western-style oath-breaking.

§ 12.251  STRATO
Hitherto we had kisses face to face, and all that precedes the trial; for you were still a little boy, Diphilus. But now I supplicate for them behind, that will be no longer with thee afterwards; for let all things be as befits our age.

§ 12.252  STRATO
I will burn thee, door, with the torch; and burning him who is within, too, in my drunken fury, I will straight depart a fugitive, and sailing over the purple Adriatic, shall, in my wanderings, at least lie in ambush at doors that open at night.

§ 12.253  STRATO
Give me thy right hand for a time, not to stop me from the dance, even though the fair boy made mockery of me. But if he had not been lying at the wrong time next his father, he would not, I swear, have seen me drunk to no purpose.

§ 12.254  STRATO
From what temple, whence comes this band of Loves shedding radiance on all? Sirs, my eyes are dazed. Which of them are slaves, which freemen? I cannot tell. Is their master a man? It is impossible; or if he be, he is much greater than Zeus, who only had Ganymede, though such a mighty god. While how many has this man!

§ 12.255  STRATO
Unsociable man! does not the word itself teach you by the words from which it is truly derived? Everyone is called a lover of boys, not a lover of big boys. Have you any retort to that? I preside over the Pythian games, you over the Olympian, and those whom I reject and remove from the list you receive as competitors.

§ 12.256  MELEAGER
Love hath wrought for thee, Cypris, gathering with his own hands the boy-flowers, a wreath of every blossom to cozen the heart. Into it he wove Diodorus the sweet lily and Asclepiades the scented white violet. Yea, and thereupon he pleated Heraclitus when, like a rose, he grew from the thorns, and Dion when he bloomed like the blossom of the vine. He tied on Theron, too, the golden-tressed saffron, and put in Uliades, a sprig of thyme, and soft-haired Myiscus the ever-green olive shoot, and despoiled for it the lovely boughs of Aretas. Most blessed of islands art thou, holy Tyre, which hast the perfumed grove where the boy-blossoms of Cypris grow.

§ 12.257  MELEAGER
I, the flourish that announce the last lap's finish, most trusty keeper of the bounds of written pages, say that he who hath completed his task, including in this roll the work of all poets gathered into one, is Meleager, and that it was for Diocles he wove from flowers this wreath of verse, whose memory shall be evergreen. Curled in coils like the back of a snake, I am set here enthroned beside the last lines of his learned work.

§ 12.258  STRATO
Perchance someone in future years, listening to these trifles of mine, will think these pains of love were all my own. No! I ever scribble this and that for this and that boy-lover, since some god gave me this gift.