Furius, you who have neither a slave, nor a coffer, nor a bug, nor a spider, nor
fire, but have both a father and a step-mother whose teeth can munch up even
flints,—you live finely with your father, and with your father's
wooden spouse. And no wonder: for you are all in good health, finely you digest,
you fear nothing, not arson, not the fall of your house, not impious thefts, not
plots of poison, no perilous happenings whatsoever. And you have bodies drier
than horn (or if there is anything more arid still, parched by sun, frost, and
famine. So why is it not happy and well with you? Sweat is a stranger to you,
absent also are saliva, phlegm, and evil nose-snot. Add to this cleanliness the
thing that's still more cleanly, that your backside is purer than a salt-cellar,
nor do you crap ten times in the whole year, and then it is harder than beans
and pebbles; and if you rub and crumble it in your hands, you can't ever dirty a
finger. Spurn not hese goodly gifts and favours, Furius, nor think lightly of
them; and stop always begging for a hundred sesterces: for you are happy
enough!
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.