The astounding character, as well as the intrinsic importance and interest of this conversation, its reference to his half-countryman Dionysius, of whom he had heard so much, and the glimpses of society, the hints about men and things which it afforded him, had prevented Paulus from asking these exalted gentlefolk to make room for him and Benigna to pass, and had held him, and indeed her also, spell-bound.
"But how all this accounts, most noble Piso, for the visit of the Athenian to the court of Augustus, you have forgotten to say," remarked Pollio.
"He obtained," replied Piso, "the emperor's permission to study the Sibylline books."
"What a pity," said Flaccus, "that the first old books were burnt in the great fire at Rome."
"Well," resumed Lucius Piso, "he brought this permission to me, as governor of Rome, and I went with him myself to the quindecemviri and the other proper authorities. Oh! as to the books, it is the opinion of those learned in such matters that there is little or nothing in the old books which has not been recovered in the collection obtained by the senate afterward from Cumæ, Greece, Egypt, Babylon, and all places where either the sibyls still lived, or their oracles were preserved."
"But, after all," said Pollio, "are not these oracles the ravings of enthusiasm, if not insanity?"
"Cicero, although in general so sarcastic and disdainful, so incredulous and so hard to please," answered Piso, "has settled that question."
"He has, I allow it," added Pomponius Flaccus, "and settled it most completely. What a charming passage that is wherein the incomparable thinker, matchless writer, and fastidious critic expresses his reverential opinion of the Sibylline books, and demonstrates with triumphant logic their claims upon the attention of all rational, all clear-headed and philosophic inquirers!"
"I am not a rational, or clear-headed, or philosophic inquirer," broke in Apicius, "Come, do come to the camp; and do pray at last allow this foreign-looking young gentleman and rustic damsel to enter the doorway."
And so they all departed together.