‘Clemens,’ said Vespasian, ‘Domitilla tells me that yesterday morning you were learning my favourite poem, the “Epode” of Horace about the pleasures of country life, and the lines of Virgil on the same subject. As we have nothing special to do this morning, suppose you repeat the poems to us, while the boys and I make a formido for our next deer-hunt.’
The boys got out the long line of string, and busied themselves with tying to it, at equal distances, the crimson feathers which were to frighten the deer into the nets; while Flavius, standing up, recited feelingly and musically the well-known lines of the Venusian poet, whose Sabine farm lay at no great distance from the place where they were living—
‘Blessed is he—remote as were the mortals
Of the first age, from business and its cares—
Who ploughs paternal fields with his own oxen,
Free from the bonds of credit or of debt.
No soldier he, roused by the savage trumpet,
Not his to shudder at the angry sea;
His life escapes from the contentious Forum,
And shuns the insolent thresholds of the great.’[45]