Calvus, save that as eyes thou art beloved,
I could verily loathe thee for the morning's
Gift, Vatinius hardly more devoutly.
Slain with poetry! done to death with abjects!
O what syllable earn'd it, act allow'd it? 5
Gods, your malison on the sorry client
Sent that rascally rabble of malignants.
Yet, if, freely to guess, the gift recherche
Some grammarian, haply Sulla, sent thee;
I repine not; a dear delight, a triumph 10
This, thy drudgery thus to see rewarded.
Gods! an horrible and a deadly volume!
Sent so faithfully, friend, to thy Catullus,
Just to kill him upon a day, the festive,
Saturnalia, best of all the season. 15
Sure, a drollery not without requital.
For, come dawn, to the cases and the bookshops
I; there gather a Caesius and Aquinus,
With Suffenus, in every wretch a poison:
Such plague-prodigy thy remuneration! 20
Now good-morrow! away with evil omen
Whence ill destiny lamely bore ye, clumsy
Poet-rabble, an age's execration!