Agathias in the toilet

Agathias 'Scholasticus' ('the Advocate') was the sixth-century anthologist of a Cycle of contemporary epigrammatists, including much work of his own. Some of these are inscriptional in form and I would like to think the following two were inscribed for real, in a public toilet in Byzantium. According to the second poem, Agathias himself had paid to have it renovated. The first poem is newly translated; the second is in the book.

9.644

How justly blessed are you that work the soil,
Stout-hearted labourer, who all your life
Must brace against the agonies of toil
And poverty: the meals you eat are small,
And in the thickets you lay down your head,
Awash with water as your beverage.
Fit as a fiddle, here you sit a while
Unburdening your belly in a flash;
You do not knuckle at your lower spine,
Or thump your thighs in anguish as you shed
Your wholesome cargo. Pitiful are they,
Those who possess or flock about great wealth,
Who set more store by feasting than by health.

 

9.662 

I was a place detestable to see,
A mud-brick warren. Here the strangers came,
And native folk and boorish countrymen,
To noisily excrete their bowel waste,
Until our city’s father intervened.
Agathias transformed me: now I shine,
Who was so ignominious before.