Why need I tell with what indignation my parched liver boils, when here, the plunderer of his ward (reduced by him to the vilest gains) presses on the people with his crowds of menials, and there, he that was condemned by a powerless sentence. (For what cares he for infamy while he retains the plunder?) Marius,[52] though an exile, drinks from the eighth hour, and laughs at the angry gods, while thou, O Province, victorious in the suit, art in tears! Shall I not deem these themes worthy of the lamp of Venusium?[53] Shall I not lash these? Why rather sing tales of Hercules or Diomede, or the bellowing of the Labyrinth, and the sea struck by the boy Icarus, and the winged artificer?[54] When the pander inherits the wealth of the adulterer (since the wife has lost the right of receiving it),[55] taught to gaze at the ceiling, and snore over his cups with well-feigned sleep. When he considers himself privileged to expect the command of a cohort, who has squandered his money on his stables, and has run through all his ancestors' estate, while he flies with rapid wheel along the Flaminian road;[56] for while yet a youth, like Automedon, he held the reins, while the great man showed himself off to his "mistress-in-his-cloak."[57] Do you not long to fill your capacious tablets, even in the middle of the cross-ways, when there comes borne on the shoulders of six slaves, exposed to view on either side, with palanquin almost uncurtained, and aping the luxurious Mæcenas, the forger, who made himself a man of splendor and wealth by a few short lines, and a moistened seal?[58] Next comes the powerful matron, who when her husband thirsts, mingles the toad's-poison in the mellow wine of Cales which she is herself about to hand him, and with skill superior even to Locusta,[59] initiates her neighbors, too simple before, in the art of burying their husbands, livid from the poison, in despite of infamy and the public gaze.[60] Dare some deed to merit scanty Gyarus[61] and the jail, if you wish to be somebody. Honesty is commended, and starves. It is to their crimes they are indebted for their gardens, their palaces, their tables, their fine old plate, and the goat standing in high relief from the cup. Whom does the seducer of his own daughter-in-law, greedy for gold, suffer to sleep? Or the unnatural brides, or the adulterer not out of his teens?[62] If nature denies the power, indignation would give birth to verses, such as it could produce, like mine and Cluvienus'. From the time that Deucalion ascended the mountain in his boat, while the storm upheaved the sea,[63] and consulted the oracle, and the softening stones by degrees grew warm with life, and Pyrrha displayed to the males the virgins unrobed; all that men are engaged in, their wishes, fears, anger, pleasures, joys, and varied pursuits, form the hotch-potch of my book.