Cease thou to wish to merit well from anyone in aught, or to think any can become honourable. All are ingrate, naught benign doth avail to aught, but rather it doth irk and prove the greater ill: so with me, whom none doth o'erpress more heavily nor more bitterly than he who a little while ago held me his one and only friend.
LXXIIII.
Gellius audierat patruom obiurgare solere,
Siquis delicias diceret aut faceret.
Hoc ne ipsi accideret, patrui perdepsuit ipsam
Vxorem et patruom reddidit Harpocratem.
5
Quod voluit fecit: nam, quamvis inrumet ipsum
Nunc patruom, verbum non faciet patruos.
LXXIIII.