Roads from Rome

by Anne C. E. Allinson

A silence fell between the friends. Two slaves, their faces flushed with unusual wine, came in to replenish the small lamps on the table, and stole quietly out again. Horace watched his friend with grave affection, knowing well where his thoughts had strayed. Presently Mæcenas shook himself with a laugh.

"Exit Terentia's husband," he said, "and reënter the galley-slave of the Roman State. I have, indeed, been thinking for some time that this new talent ought to be deflected into other lines. Its energy would put vitality into national themes. A little less Cynthia and a little more Cæsar will please us all. I mean to suggest some historical subjects to the boy. Thinking about them may stiffen up this oversoft Muse of his."

"You speak hopefully," Horace said, "but you have our Hostia (I understand the 'Cynthia' is an open secret) to reckon with. She is not going to loosen her hold on a young man who is making her famous, and whose sudden success with you is due to poetry about her. We have to acknowledge that she is almost as wonderful as the young fool thinks she is."

"Certainly," Mæcenas answered, "she has insight. Her favour must have been won by his talent, for he hasn't money enough to meet her price."

"And I," scoffed Horace, "think the dice about equal between her favour and his talent. However, I wish you luck, and shall look for a crop of songs on Cæsar and Carthage and the Cimbrians."

With a smile of mutual understanding the friends pledged each other in one last draught of Chian, as Horace rose to take his leave.

"How lately have you heard from Virgil?" Mæcenas asked while they waited for Davus to be summoned from the festivities in the servants' hall.

"A letter came yesterday," Horace answered, "and it troubled me greatly. He wrote in one of his blackest moods of despair over the Æneid. He says he feels as if he were caught in a nightmare, trying madly to march along a road, while his feet drag heavily, and his tongue refuses to form sounds and words. I confess that I am anxious, for I think his mind may prey too far upon his physical strength. Only last week Varius told me that he thinks Virgil himself is obsessed by the idea that he may die before he has finished his work, he has begged him so often to promise to destroy whatever is left uncompleted."

A sudden sadness, like the shadow of familiar pain, fell upon Mæcenas's face.

"Flaccus, my Flaccus," he exclaimed, "it is I who shall die, die before Virgil finishes his Æneid, or you your Odes. My life will have been futile. The Romans do not understand. They want their standards back from the Parthians, they want the mines of Spain and the riches of Arabia. They cast greedy eyes on Britain and make much ado about ruling Gaul and Asia and Greece and Egypt. And they think that I am one of them. But the Etruscan ghosts within me stir strangely at times, and walk abroad through the citadel of my soul. Then I know that the idlest dream of a dreamer may have form when our civilisation shall have crumbled, and that the verse of a poet, even of this boy Propertius, will outlast the toil of my nights. You and Virgil often tell me that you owe your fortunes to me,—your lives, you sometimes say with generous exaggeration. But I tell you that the day is coming when I shall owe my life to you, when, save for you, I shall be a mere name in the rotting archives of a forgotten state. Why, then, do you delay to fulfill my hope? Virgil at least is working. What are you doing, my best of friends?"