Now those lines I feel sure will live.’
‘Of course they will,’ said Tigellinus, ‘long after your poems are forgotten.’
The young poet only shrugged his shoulders, and turned on the adventurer a glance of disdain. Petronius, however, who disliked and despised Tigellinus, was now thoroughly disgusted by his malignity, and did not hesitate to express his contempt. ‘Tigellinus,’ he said. ‘if you are so rude I shall ask Cæsar to dismiss you. What nonsense on your part to pretend to know anything about poetry!You know even less than Calvisius Sabinus, who confounds Achilles with Ulysses, and has bought ten slaves who know all the poets by heart to prompt him when he makes a mistake.’[40]
Tigellinus reddened with anger, but he did not venture to reply.
‘For my part,’ said Senecio, ‘I prefer the line
‘“Thou who didst chine the long-ribb’d Apennine,”
not to speak of the fine effect of the spondaic, there is the daring image.’
‘There is something finer than both,’ said Petronius, and he quoted a line of real beauty which Seneca has preserved for us in his ‘Natural Questions,’ and in which Nero describes the ruffled iridescence of a dove’s neck:
‘Fair Cytherea’s startled doves illume
With sheeny lustre every glancing plume.’[41]