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 the Campus Martius.”  Does any disheartening report spread from the rostrum through the streets, whoever comes in my way consults me [concerning it]:  “Good sir, have you (for you must know, since you approach nearer the gods) heard any thing relating to the Dacians?” “Nothing at all for my part,” [I reply].  “How you ever are a sneerer!” “But may all the gods torture me, if I know any thing of the matter.”  “What? will Caesar give the lands he promised the soldiers, in Sicily, or in Italy?” As I am swearing I know nothing about it, they wonder at me, [thinking] me, to be sure, a creature of profound and extraordinary secrecy.

Among things of this nature the day is wasted by me, mortified as I am, not without such wishes as these:  O rural retirement, when shall I behold thee? and when shall it be in my power to pass through the pleasing oblivion of a life full of solicitude, one while with the books of the ancients, another while in sleep and leisure?  O when shall the bean related to Pythagoras, and at the same time herbs well larded with fat bacon, be set before me?  O evenings, and suppers fit for gods! with which I and my friends regale ourselves in the presence of my household gods; and feed my saucy slaves with viands, of which libations have been made.  The guest, according to every one’s inclination, takes off the glasses of