It's really sad how things get worse daily. This colony grows backward like a calf's tail. But why do we put up with an aedile not worth three Caunian figs, who sets more value on an as for himself than on our lives? He sits at home laughing and takes in more money in a day than another man has for his fortune.
heu, heu, quotidie peius. haec colonia retroversus crescit tamquam coda vituli. sed quare [non] habemus aedilem <non> trium cauniarum, qui sibi mavult assem quam vitam nostram? itaque domi gaudet, plus in die nummorum accipit, quam alter patrimonium habet.
non transp. Bücheler: nos Mentel
"A peculiar anthologic maze, an amusing literary chaos, a farrago of quotations, a mere olla podrida of quaintness, a pot pourri of pleasant delites, a florilegium of elegant extracts, a tangled fardel of old-world flowers of thought, a faggot of odd fancies, quips, facetiae, loosely tied" (Holbrook Jackson, Anatomy of Bibliomania) by a "laudator temporis acti," a "praiser of time past" (Horace, Ars Poetica 173).
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Wednesday, April 16, 2025
Things Get Worse Daily
Petronius, Satyricon 44.12-14 (tr. Gareth Schmeling):