O Stoic, so may you, after your damage, sell all your merchandise the better:  what folly (for, [it seems,] there are more kinds than one) do you think I am infatuated with?  For to myself I seem sound.  What—­when mad Agave carries the amputated head of her unhappy son, does she then seem mad to herself?  I allow myself a fool (let me yield to the truth) and a madman likewise:  only declare this, with what distemper of mind you think me afflicted.  Hear, then:  in the first place you build; that is, though from top to bottom you are but of the two-foot size you imitate the tall:  and you, the same person, laugh at the spirit and strut of Turbo in armor, too great for his [little] body:  how are you less ridiculous than him?  What—­is it fitting that, in every thing Maecenas does, you, who are so very much unlike him and so much his inferior, should vie with him?  The young ones of a frog being in her absence crushed by the foot of a calf, when one of them had made his escape, he told his mother what a huge beast had dashed his brethren to pieces.  She began to ask, how big?  Whether it were so great? puffing herself up.  Greater by half.  What, so big? when she had swelled herself more and more.  If you should burst yourself, says he, you will not be equal to it.  This image bears no great dissimilitude to you.  Now add poems (that is, add oil to the fire), which if ever any man in his senses made, why so do you.  I do not mention your horrid rage.  At length, have done—­your way of living beyond your fortune—­confine yourself to your own affairs, Damasippus—­those thousand passions for the fair, the young.  Thou greater madman, at last, spare thy inferior.

* * * * *

SATIRE IV.

He ridicules the absurdity of one Catius, who placed the summit of human felicity in the culinary art.

Whence, and whither, Catius?  I have not time [to converse with you], being desirous of impressing on my memory some new precepts; such as excel Pythagoras, and him that was accused by Anytus, and the learned Plato.  I acknowledge my offense, since I have interrupted you at so unlucky a juncture:  but grant me your pardon, good sir, I beseech you.  If any thing should have slipped you now, you will presently recollect it:  whether this talent of yours be of nature, or of art, you are amazing in both.  Nay, but I was anxious, how I might retain all [these precepts]; as being things of a delicate nature, and in a delicate style.  Tell me the name of this man; and at the same time whether he is a Roman, or a foreigner?  As I have them by heart, I will recite the precepts:  the author shall be concealed.