Letter 1059: So you boast of your leisure and your hunting.

So you boast of your leisure and your hunting. It's a pleasant claim, but you make it more in jest than in earnest. I know you spend your free time happily chewing over the works of the ancients. You can fool other people — those who've only just met you. I can judge both your daily business, which occupies you night and day, and the daily nourishment of your mind from the flavor of the letters you send me. Unless perhaps you've confined Apollo to the forests, like that shepherd Hesiod, whom the Muses crowned with poetic laurel [referring to Hesiod's account of the Muses appearing to him while he tended sheep on Mount Helicon]. For where does this freshness of thought and this old-fashioned richness of language in your letters come from, if you've truly abandoned everything for knotted nets, feathered scarecrows, keen-nosed dogs, and the whole business of the hunt? So when you write, remember to keep your eloquence within bounds. Let your letters be rustic and rough — so you'll actually be believed to be the hunter you claim. Farewell.

Otio et venatibus gloriare. est haec quidem iucunda iactatio sed ludo magis a te prolata quam serio. nam remissa tempora et ab negotiis publicis feriata libris veterum ruminandis libenter expendis. aliis igitur dabis verba, qui te congressu pri- i5 more noverunt. ego ci/m actus, quos pemox et perdius curae tibi habes, tum coti- 2 diana ingenii tui pabula de litterarum. quas mihi tribuis, sapore coniecto. nisi forte in silvis Apollinem continaris, ut ille pastor Hesiodus, quem poetica lauru Camenalis familia coronavit. nam unde est haec in epistulis tuis sensuum novitas verborum vetustas, si tantum nodosa retia vel pinnarnm formidines et sagaces canes omnemque 20 rem venaticam meliomm oblitus adfectas? qnare cnm scribis, memento facnndiae tuae modum ponere. mstica sint et inculta, quae loqueris, ut venator esse credaris. vale. Lmi (XXXXVni) a. SSO.