potavi modo consulare vinum. quaeris quam vetus atque liberale? Prisco consule conditum: sed ipse qui ponebat erat, Severe, consul (vii. 79). I have just drunk some consular wine. How old, you ask, and how generous? It was bottled in Priscus' consulship: and he who set it before me was the consul himself. Polycharmus has returned Caietanus his IOU's. 'Little good will that do you, and Caietanus will not even be grateful': quod Caietano reddis, Polycharme, tabellas, milia te centum num tribuisse putas? 'debuit haec' inquis. tibi habe, Polycharme, tabellas et Caietano milia crede duo (viii. 37). In giving back Caietanus his IOU's, Polycharmus, do you think you are giving him 100,000 sesterces? 'He owed me that sum,' you say. Keep the IOU's and lend him two thousand more! Chloe, the murderess of her seven husbands, erects monuments to their memory, and inscribes _fecit Chloe_ on the tombstones: inscripsit tumulis septem scelerata virorum 'se fecisse' Chloe. quid pote simplicius? (ix. 15). On her seven husbands' tombs she doth impress 'This Chloe did.' What more can she confess? WRIGHT. Vacerra admires the old poets only. What shall Martial do? miraris veteres, Vacerra, solos nec laudas nisi mortuos poetas. ignoscas petimus, Vacerra: tanti non est, ut placeam tibi, perire (viii. 69). Vacerra lauds no living poet's lays, But for departed genius keeps his praise. I, alas, live, nor deem it worth my while To die that I may win Vacerra's smile. PROFESSOR GOLDWIN SMITH. All this is very slight, _merae nugae_; but even if the humour be not of the first water, it will compare well with the humour of epigrams of any age. Martial knows he is not a great poet.[681] He knows, too, that his work is uneven: iactat inaequalem Matho me fecisse libellum: si verum est, laudat carmina nostra Matho. aequales scribit libros Calvinus et Vmber: aequalis liber est, Cretice, qui malus est (vii. 90). Matho makes game of my unequal verse; If it's unequal it might well be worse. Calvinus, Umber, write on one dead level, The book that's got no up and down's the devil!