"My dearest, delectissima," said Quintus, earnestly, "I could not honourably take your hand in marriage, if I had not done that which my conscience, if not my reason, tells me is the only right thing to do. It grieves me to hurt you; but we are not fickle Greeks, nor servile Easterns; but Romans born to rule, and because born to rule, born to count nothing dear that will tend to advance the strength and prosperity not of self, but of the state. You would not love me if I said I cared more for keeping a pang from your dear heart, than for the performance of that which our ancestors counted the one end of life—duty to the commonwealth."
Cornelia threw her arms around him.
"You are the noblest man on the whole earth!" she cried with bright enthusiasm. "Of course I would not love you if you did what you believed to be wrong! My uncle may scold, may storm. I shan't care for all his anger, for you must be right."
"Ah! delectissima," cried Drusus, feeling at the moment as if he were capable of refuting senates and confounding kings, "we will not look at too gloomy a side of the picture. Pompeius and Cæsar will be reconciled. Your uncle's party will see that it is best to allow the proconsul an election as promised. We will have wise laws and moderate reforms. All will come out aright. And we—we two—will go along through life as softly and as merrily as now we stroll up and down in the cool shade of these columns; and I will turn philosopher and evolve a new system that will forever send Plato and Zeno, Epicurus and Timon, to the most remote and spider-spun cupboard of the most old-fashioned library, and you shall be a poetess, a Sappho, an Erinna, who shall tinkle in Latin metres sweeter than they ever sing in Aiolic. And so we will fleet the time as though we were Zeus and Hera on Olympus."
"Zeus and Hera!" repeated Cornelia, laughing. "You silly Græcule.[73] You may talk about that misbehaved pair, who were anything but harmonious and loving, if Homer tells truly. I prefer our own Juppiter and our Juno of the Aventine. They are a staid and home-keeping couple, worth imitating, if we are to imitate any celestials. But nothing Greek for me."
"Intolerant, intolerant," retorted Drusus, "we are all Greek, we Romans of to-day—what is left of old Latium but her half-discarded language, her laws worse than discarded, perverted, her good pilum[74] which has not quite lost its cunning, and her—"
"Men," interrupted Cornelia, "such as you!"
"And women," continued Drusus, "such as you! Ah! There is something left of Rome after all. We are not altogether fallen, unworthy of our ancestors. Why shall we not be merry? A Greek would say that it was always darkest before Eōs leaves the couch of Tithonus,[75] and who knows that our Helios is not soon to dawn and be a long, long time ere his setting? I feel like throwing formality to the winds, crying 'Iacchos evoë,' and dancing like a bacchanal, and singing in tipsy delight,—
"'Oh, when through the long night,
With fleet foot glancing white,
Shall I go dancing in my revelry,
My neck cast back, and bare
Unto the dewy air,
Like sportive faun in the green meadow's glee?'[76]
as old Euripides sings in his 'Bacchæ.' Yes, the Hellenes were right when they put nymphs in the forest and in the deep. Only our blind practical Latin eyes will not see them. We will forget that we are Romans; we will build for ourselves some cosey little Phæacia up in the Sabine hills beside some lake; and there my Sappho shall also be my Nausicaä to shine fair as a goddess upon her distressed and shipwrecked Odysseus."