In truth, to luck I care not to pretend,
For ’twas not luck that mark’d me for your friend: 
Virgil at first, that faithful heart and true,
And Varius after, named my name to you. 
Brought to your presence, stammeringly I told
(For modesty forbade me to be bold)
No vaunting tale of ancestry of pride,
Of good broad acres and sleek nags to ride,
But simple truth:  a few brief words you say,
As is your wont, and wish me a good day. 
Then, nine months after, graciously you send,
Desire my company, and hail me friend. 
O, ’tis no common fortune, when one earns
A friend’s regard, who man from man discerns,
Not by mere accident of lofty birth
But by unsullied life, and inborn worth!

Yet, if my nature, otherwise correct,
But with some few and trifling faults is flecked,
Just as a spot or mole might be to blame
Upon some body else of comely frame,
If none can call me miserly and mean
Or tax my life with practices unclean,
If I have lived unstained and unreproved
(Forgive self-praise), if loving and beloved,
I owe it to my father, who, though poor,
Passed by the village school at his own door,
The school where great tall urchins in a row,
Sons of great tall centurions, used to go,
With slate and satchel on their backs, to pay
Their monthly quota punctual to the day,
And took his boy to Rome, to learn the arts
Which knight or senator to his imparts. 
Whoe’er had seen me, neat and more than neat,
With slaves behind me, in the crowded street,
Had surely thought a fortune fair and large,
Two generations old, sustained the charge. 
Himself the true tried guardian of his son,
Whene’er I went to class, he still made one. 
Why lengthen out the tale? he kept me chaste,
Which is the crown of virtue, undisgraced
In deed and name:  he feared not lest one day
The world should talk of money thrown away,
If after all I plied some trade for hire,
Like him, a tax-collector, or a crier: 
Nor had I murmured:  as it is, the score
Of gratitude and praise is all the more. 
No:  while my head’s unturned, I ne’er shall need
To blush for that dear father, or to plead
As men oft plead, ’tis Nature’s fault, not mine,
I came not of a better, worthier line. 
Not thus I speak, not thus I feel:  the plea
Might serve another, but ’twere base in me. 
Should Fate this moment bid me to go back
O’er all my length of years, my life retrack
To its first hour, and pick out such descent
As man might wish for e’en to pride’s content,
I should rest satisfied with mine, nor choose
New parents, decked with senatorial shoes,
Mad, most would think me, sane, as you’ll allow,
To waive a load ne’er thrust on me till now. 
More gear ’twould make me get without delay,
More bows there’d be to make, more calls to pay,
A friend or two must still be at my side,