While passenger and boatman chant the praise
Of their true-loves in amoebean lays,
Each fairly drunk: the passenger at last
Tires of the game, and soon his eyes are fast:
Then to a stone his mule the boatman moors,
Leaves her to pasture, lays him down, and snores.
And now 'twas near the dawning of the day,
When 'tis discovered that we make no way:
Out leaps a hair-brained fellow and attacks
With a stout cudgel mule's and boatman's backs:
And so at length, thanks to this vigorous friend,
By ten o'clock we reach our boating's end.
Tired with the voyage, face and hands we lave
In pure Feronia's hospitable wave.
We take some food, then creep three miles or so
To Anxur, built on cliffs that gleam like snow;
There rest awhile, for there our mates were due,
Maecenas and Cocceius, good and true,
Sent on a weighty business, to compose
A feud, and make them friends who late were foes.
I seize on the occasion, and apply
A touch of ointment to an ailing eye.
Meanwhile Maecenas with Cocceius came,
And Capito, whose errand was the same,
A man of men, accomplished and refined,
Who knew, as few have known, Antonius' mind.
Along by Fundi next we take our way
For all its praetor sought to make us stay,
Not without laughter at the foolish soul,
His senatorial stripe and pan of coal.