Letter 15

AUSONIUS TO THEON, WHEN THEON HAD SENT HIM THIRTY OYSTERS — large ones, to be sure, but so very few. I had been waiting for you to write back in answer to the lines I composed a while ago in jest, about your truly impious idleness and my own insistent demands. But since you have scorned to repay the courtesy by paying me any attention in return, I have found among the bookworms an old letter that I had once put together, with deliberate obscurity, on the subject of oysters and mussels — verses that I had poured out rashly as a young man — and now, older, I have reworked them. Yet the satirical and laughable composition has been restored in the very same vein, so that now at least you may answer this latest little ditty, you who condemned that newer one with your silence.

I HAVE been looking for a reply from you to the letter I wrote some time ago dealing playfully with your positively unnatural neglect of me and my own urgent demands; and since you have disdained to do me the courtesy of sending a favour in return, having found an old letter, half worm-eaten, which I once composed in a style of deliberate obscurity on oysters and mussels, now that I am older I have revised that careless effusion of my youth. But though recast, this composition still retains the same satirical and burlesque character, that now at least you may send an answer to my ditty in its newest guise, though by your silence you condemned it when new born. Oysters rivalling those of Baiae, which the surge of the ebbing sea fattens in the lush marshes of Médoc, I have received, dear Theon—a gift not beyond reckoning. But what was their number, the following single lines declare. As many were they as the forefinger thrice crossed with the thumb1 reckons up; as many as there were Geryons, if ten times multiplied; thrice as many as the decades told over in the Phrygian (Trojan) War, or as the journeys made by the flame-tressed Sun in a full month; as the nights which wandering Cynthia enjoys after she first shows her horns; as the days wherein Titan traverses each several Sign;2 as the years in which Phaenon (Saturn) accomplishes his circuit aloft; as the tale of years in which a Vestal maid does service,3 and as those o'er which the scion of Dardanus 4 prolonged his reign; as many as Priam's sons if twice ten are deducted, or, if you count them twice, as they who keep the Amphrysian Oracles,h as the young littered beneath the oaks by the Alban sow,6 and as the unit when there are ninety thirds—or as many hacks as are harnessed to a car at Bazas. But if the figure shadowed forth in story, and the number wrapped up in this learned rigmarole baffles a mind smothered deep in fat—that yon may know how to count in the common way at least, I will unfold the sum reduced to its factors. Thrice ten, methinks, or five times six, or two times five plus ten and ten, or four times six with twice three added; to seven times four add one and one, or to thrice four add nine twice over; take ten times two and one time ten, four times eight with two subtracted, two thirteen times plus a single four. Add also six to nine and eight to seven, or with twin sevens twice join eight, or—not to bother you with more—thirty in number were they all. The mussel not without mud-haunting oysters, makes up a course for early luncheon—a food delightful to the taste of lords and cheap enough for poor folks' kitchens. 'Tis not sought on the ship-wrecking deep so that the price grows great to match the danger, but is picked up in the nearest shallows after the sea's ebb, matching in colour the weed-strewn shore. For it is hidden in the cavern of a double shell which, warmed by the steam of boiling water, reveals the milk-white substance within. But too careless of cost this broad sheet is spreading out. See that thou abridge, my Muse, thy acreage of paper, and no longer let the furrow of the Cnidian reed proceed along the paths of the cloven-footed pen painting the surface of my poor parched page with Cadmus' dark-hued little daughters. Or from all the lines alike let a milk-white sponge blot out the dusky sepia. Let us spare the shortcomings of the folk at Dumnitonus, lest paper cost me more than the value of the oysters.

AUSONIUS THEONI CUM EI TRIGINTA OSTREA GRANDIA QUIDEM SET TAM PAUCA MISISSET expectaveram, ut rescriberes ad ea, quae dudum ioculariter luseram de cessatione tua valde impia et mea efflagitatione, cuius rei munus reciprocum quoniam in me colendo fastidisti, inventa inter tineas epistula vetere, quam de ostreis et musculis adfectata obscuritate condideram, quae adulescens temere fuderam, iam senior retractavi. set in eundem modum instaurata est satirica et ridicula conciunatio, saltem ut nunc respondeas novissimae cantilenae, qui illam noviciam silentio condemnasti.