SUMMARY OF SATIRE VI
Has winter taken you back, Caesius Bassus, to your Sabine home, with that manly lyre of yours that strikes every note so fitly, whether grave or gay? I am wintering in my own Luna, regardless of the multitude, without care of flocks, without envy of inferiors richer than myself (1–17). Others may think differently; there are some who meanly stint themselves on feast-days; others waste their substance in good living. Use what you have, say I; thrash out your harvest, and commit a new crop to the soil (18–26). O, but a friend needs help, you say, lying shipwrecked on the Bruttian shore; then break off a bit of your estate for him, that he may not want. "What? am I to incur the wrath of my heir, and tempt him to neglect my funeral rites?" Bestius does well in condemning all foreign notions (27–40). Come, my heir, let me have a quiet talk with you. Have you heard that there's grand news from the front? that the Germans have had a tremendous smashing, and that there are to be rejoicings on a grand scale? Woe to you if you don't join in! I am going to treat the multitude: do you dare stay my hand? (41–52). Well, if you refuse, and if I can find no legitimate heir of my own; if I can find no relation, male or female, sprung from ancestors of mine up to the fourth generation, I will go to Bovillae and find
