Sol 5.6

  1. Women were fashioned to dissemble, so beware

    their guile—for mighty indeed it is.

  2. Whenever you abstain, perhaps she too abstains; but if

    she is neglected, a tender waist is made fair game.

  3. So too the boy, when poverty overtakes him,

    finds a phrase presenting itself to him, accounted sweet.

  4. You see him freely yielding what he once withheld,

    then returning after praise, yet disgraced.

  5. His noble brow has touched the surface of the earth;

    then he rises utterly bereft of shame.

  6. At one time a boon companion to prostitutes, and at another

    a companion to sinful sodomites.

  7. And when his beard comes in, he is a pauper or a thief, and at

    the judges’ or governors’ gate, a lackey.

Sol 5.6