Laudator Temporis Acti

Plautus, Aulularia 226-235 (Euclio speaking; tr. Paul Nixon):

Now here's the way it strikes me, Megadorus, — you're a rich man, a man of position: but as for me, I'm poor, awfully poor, dreadfully poor. Now if I was to marry off my daughter to you, it strikes me you'd be the ox and I'd be the donkey. When I was hitched up with you and couldn't pull my share of the load, down I'd drop, I, the donkey, in the mud; and you, the ox, wouldn't pay any more attention to me than if I'd never been born at all. You would be too much for me: and my own kind would haw-haw at me: and if there should be a falling out, neither party would let me have stable quarters: the donkeys would chew me up and the oxen would run me through. It is a very hazardous business for donkeys to climb into the ox set.

venit hoc mi, Megadore, in mentem te | esse hominem divitem,
factiosum, me autem esse hominem pauperum pauperrimum,
nunc si filiam locassim meam tibi, in mentem venit
te bovem esse et me esse asellum; ubi tecum coniunctus siem,
ubi onus nequeam ferre pariter, iaceam ego asinus in luto,        230
tu me bos magis haud respicias, gnatus quasi numquam siem.
et te utar iniquiore | et meus me ordo irrideat,
neutrubi habeam stabile stabulum, siquid divorti fuat:
asini me mordicibus scindant, boves incursent cornibus.
hoc magnum est periclum [me] ab asinis ad boves transcendere.        235

227 autem Brix : item P
232 in suspicionem vocavit Leo
234 mordicibus Non. 203 L. : mordicus P
235 [me] Camerarius