Suffenus iste, Vare, quem probe nosti,
homo est venustus et dicax et urbanus,
idemque longe plurimos facit versus.
Puto esse ego illi milia aut decem aut plura
perscripta, nec sic ut fit in palimpsesto
relata: cartae regiae, novi libri,
novi umbilici, lora rubra, membranae,
derecta plumbo et pumice omnia aequata.
Haec cum legas tu, bellus ille et urbanus
suffenus unus caprimulgus aut fossor
rursus videtur: tantum abhorret ac mutat.
Hoc quid putemus esse? Qui modo scurra
aut si quid hac re scitius videbatur,
idem infaceto est infacetior rure,
simul poemata attigit, neque idem umquam
aeque est beatus ac poema cum scribit:
tam gaudet in se tamque se ipse miratur.
Nimirum idem omnes fallimur, neque est quisquam
quem non in aliqua re videre Suffenum
possis. Suus cuique attributus est error;
sed non videmus manticae quod tergo est.

That Suffenus, Varius, whom you know well,
That man is charming, and witty, and sophisticated,
And the same man makes the most by far very many verses of poetry.
I think that either 10,000 or more verses
Have been written by that man, as is common in palimpsest
Having been jotted down there are: royal papers (expensive papyri), new books,
New knobs, red straps, scroll covers,
All things having been ruled with lead and smoothed by pumice.
When you read this, that good and sophisticated
Suffenus merely a goatherder or a ditchdigger
On the contrary seems: he differs and changes so much.
What are we to think that this is? He who recently seemed a clever man
Or if anything is more clever than this thing
That same man is more witless than the dull countryside,
As soon as he has undertaken a poem, nor is that same man
Ever equally as happy as when he writes the poem:
So much he rejoices in himself and so much he himself admires at himself
Clearly we are all deceived in the same way, nor is there anyone
Whom you could see not to be Suffenus in some thing.
To each one of us one's own mistakes have been assigned;
but we do not see the knapsack which is on our back.