III Songs
Pist. Please sing us a song, as you are wont to do.
Ablig.
Ego nolo Caesar esse,
Ambulare per Britannos,
Scythicas pati pruinas.62
Florus.63
Ut sapiant fatuae Fabiorum prandia betae,
O quam saepe petet vina piperque coquus.64
Martial’s Epigrams, 13, 13.
Pist. Do you say the Fabii or the fabri?
Ablig. On that point inquire of the bandy-legged schoolmaster and you will get for your Fabii and fabri a sound blow on the cheek or the back.
Pist. Is that the sort of man?
Ablig. He is a determined, courageous man, prompt with blows. He compensates for the slowness of his tongue by the swiftness of his hands.
Pist. Here, bring the beer-jug. My palate, throat, gullet are parched with thirst.
Ablig.
Et gravis attrita pendebat cantharus ansa.65
Vergil, Eclogue, 6, 17.
Claudere quae coenas lactuca solebat avorum,
Dic mihi, cur nostros inchoat illa dapes?66
Martial, Epigram, 13, 14.
Filia Picenae venio Lucanica porcae,
Pultibus hinc niveis grata corona datur.67
Martial, Epigram, 13, 35.
Apic. Where hast thou thus learnt to ῥαψωδεῖν?
Ablig. Lately I served a schoolmaster in Calabria who was a poetaster. He often used to give me no other meal than a song of a hundred verses, in which he used to say there was a wonderful savour. I, indeed, would rather have had a little bread and cheese. There was, however, enough water for the house, and we had permission to drink from the well to our heart’s content. If I then had gone hungry to bed, instead of food I chewed those verses and digested them. Nor did there seem to me to be any other remedy to drive away the keenness of hunger (bulimia) than to betake myself to the art of cookery.
Apic. What services did you render that schoolmaster?
Ablig. Such as Caesar rendered to the Republic. I was everything to him. I was his counsellor, though he had nothing to advise about; he had nothing secret from me, not even in his personal habits. I used to pour water on his hand, which he never used to wash himself. I served him as his treasurer.
Apic. What treasure had he?
Ablig. He had a few sheets of the trashiest poems which the moths used to eat away and barbarian mice gnawed at.
Apic. Nay, say learned mice, since they bit their teeth into bad poems.