The Quality of Life - Publius Annius Florus

Bacchus, of the vine revealer, let thy fullness aid the vine:
Send the dulcet juice aflowing which no nectar can outshine.
Grant it ever-mellowing storage lest in veins inimical
It produce a smack of roughness turned to vinegar withal.

Every woman in her bosom hides a poisonous pestilence:
Though the lips speak ne'er so sweetly, yet the heart contrives offence.

So Apollo and then Bacchus are fire-bringers, I opine:
Both the gods are flame-created; in their birth the fires take part.
Both confer their heat for guerdon, by the sunbeam or the vine;
One dispels the long night's darkness, one the darkness of the heart.

When my young pear-trees I planted, when I planted apple-trees,
On the bark the name I gravéd of the sweetheart who is mine.
Never henceforth will my passion find an end or find its ease.
As the tree grows, so my zeal glows: love-dreams through each letter shine.

Rascals have not been so always — rascals from their mother's womb;
But false comradeship with rascals brings one to a rascal's doom.

Shun the morals brought across seas; they've a thousand trickeries.
None in all the world lives straighter than a citizen of Rome.
Why, I prize one Cato more than fifteen score like Socrates.

'Tis as bad possessing money as to live in penury;
Just as bad perpetual daring as perpetual modesty;
Just as bad is too much silence as too much loquacity;
Just as bad the girl you visit as the wife at home can be.
None can say that this is falsehood: none but does the contrary.

Every year we get fresh consuls, every year proconsuls too:
Only patrons, only poets, are not born each year anew.

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Publius Annius Florus (c.74 - ?) Egypt
Translated by J. Wight Duff and Arnold M. Duff
Source: Florus, Loeb Classical Library, 1934 (revised 1935)
From: The Epitome of Roman History, stanzas II-IX; NB stanzas V and VIII I have also placed separately as they seem to stand on their own quite nicely!