and, as you are wont, be present
as my chief guardian. Wherefore, when I have removed myself from the
city to the mountains and my castle, (what can I polish, preferably to
my satires and prosaic muse?) neither evil ambition destroys me, nor the
heavy south wind, nor the sickly autumn, the gain of baleful Libitina.

Father of the morning, or Janus, if with more pleasure thou hearest
thyself [called by that name], from whom men commence the toils of
business, and of life (such is the will of the gods), be thou the
beginning of my song. At Rome you hurry me away to be bail; "Away,
dispatch, [you cry,] lest any one should be beforehand with you in doing
that friendly office:" I must go, at all events, whether the north wind
sweep the earth, or winter contracts the snowy day into a narrower
circle. After this, having uttered in a clear and determinate manner
[the legal form], which may be a detriment to me, I must bustle through
the crowd; and must disoblige the tardy. "What is your will, madman, and
what are you about, impudent fellow?" So one accosts me with his
passionate curses. "You jostle every thing that is in your way, if with
an appointment full in your mind you are away to Maecenas." This pleases
me, and is like honey: I will not tell a lie. But by the time I reached
the gloomy Esquiliae, a hundred affairs of other people's encompass me
on every side: "Roscius begged that you would be with him at the
court-house to-morrow before the second hour." "The secretaries
requested you would remember, Quintus, to return to-day about an affair
of public concern, and of great consequence." "Get Maecenas to put his
signet to these tablets." Should one say, "I will endeavor at it:" "If
you will, you can," adds he; and is more earnest. The seventh year
approaching to the eighth is now elapsed, from the time that Maecenas
began to reckon me in the number of his friends; only thus far, as one
he would like to take along with him in his chariot, when he went a
journey, and to whom he would trust such kind of trifles as these: "What
is the hour?" "Is Gallina, the Thracian, a match for [the gladiator]
Syrus?" "The cold morning air begins to pinch those that are ill
provided against it;"--and such things-as are well enough intrusted to a
leaky ear. For all this time, every day and hour, I have been more
subjected to envy. "Our son of fortune here, says every body, witnessed
the shows in company with [Maecenas], and played with him in