(Sat. I, viii, 8, 14.)
There Maecenas set out his books and his gems and his Etruscan ware,
entertained his literary and high born friends, poured forth his
priceless Caecuban and Chian wines. There were drops of bitter in these
cups. His beautiful wife Terentia tormented him by her temper and her
infidelities; he put her away repeatedly, as often received her back.
It was said of him that he had been married a hundred times, though only
to a single wife: "What is the latest conjugal news?" men asked as his
sumptuous litter passed by, "is it a marriage or a divorce?" And he was
haunted by terror of death. "Prolong my life," was his prayer, in words
which Seneca has ridiculed and La Fontaine translated finely, yet
missing the terseness of the original, "life amid tortures, life even
on a cross, only life!"

Qu'on me rend impotent,
Cul-de-jatte, goutteux, manchot, pourvu qu'en somme
Je vive, c'est assez; je suis plus que content.

His patronage of intellectual men was due to policy as well as
inclination. Himself a cultured literary critic, foreseeing the
full-winged soar of writers still half-fledged--the "Aeneid" in Virgil's
"Eclogues," the "Odes" of Horace in his "Epodes"--he would not only
gather round his board the men whom we know to have been his equals,
whose wit and wisdom Horace has embalmed in an epithet, a line, an ode;
Varius, and Sulpicius, and Plotius, and Fonteius Capito, and Viscus;
but he saw also and utilized for himself and for his master the social
influence which a rising poet might wield, the effect with which a bold
epigram might catch the public ear, a well-conceived eulogy minister to
imperial popularity, an eloquent sermon, as in the noble opening odes of
Horace's third book, put vice out of countenance and raise the tone of
a decadent community.

[Illustration: _Alinari photo._] [_Palace of the Conservators, Rome._

MAECENAS.]

To Horace, then, now twenty-seven years old, these imposing doors were
opened. The first interview was unsatisfactory; the young poet was
tongue-tied and stammering, the great man reserved and haughty: they
parted mutually dissatisfied. Nine months later Maecenas sent for him
again, received him warmly, enrolled him formally amongst his friends.
(Sat. I, vi, 61.) Horace himself tells the story: he explains neither
the first coldness, the long pause, nor the later cordiality. But he
rose rapidly in his patron's favour; a year afterward