there, while he is being
praised, saluted, hailed, and presented. Just as it happened in a
contrary way, so that much-praised Moecenatus, who, if he had had no
other glory than a soul inclined to protect and favour the Muses, for
this alone merited, that the genius of so many illustrious poets should
do him homage, and place him in the number of the most famous heroes who
have trod this earth. His own studies and his own brightness made him
prominent and grand, and not the being born of a royal race, and not the
being grand secretary and councillor of Augustus. That, I say, which
made him illustrious was the having made himself worthy to fulfil the
promise of that poet who says:--

Fortunati ambo, si quid mea carmina possunt,
Nulla dies nunquam memori vos eximet aevo,
Dum domus Aeneae Capitoli immobile saxum
Accolet, imperiumque pater romanus habebit.

MAR. I remember what Seneca says in certain letters where he refers to
the words of Epicurus to a friend, which are these: "If the love of
glory is dear to thy breast, these letters of mine will make thee more
famous and known than all those other things which thou honourest, by
which thou art honoured, and of which thou mayest boast. The same might
Homer have said if Achilles or Ulysses had presented themselves before
him, or Eneas and his offspring before Virgil; as that moral philosopher
well said; Domenea is more known through the letters of Epicurus, than
all the magicians, satraps and royalties upon whom depended his title of
Domenea and the memory of whom was lost in the depths of oblivion.
Atticus does not survive because he was the son-in-law of Agrippa and
ancestor of Tiberius, but through the epistles of Tully; Drusus, the
ancestor of Caesar, would not be found amongst the number of great names
if Cicero had not inserted it. Many, many years may pass over our heads,
and in all that time not many geniuses will keep their heads raised.

Now to return to the question of this enthusiast, who, seeing a phoenix
set on fire by the sun, calls to mind his own cares, and laments that
like the phoenix he sends, in exchange for the light and heat received,
a sluggish smoke from the holocaust of his melted substance. Wherefore
not only can we never discourse about things divine, but we cannot even
think of them without detracting from, rather than adding to the glory
of them; so that the best thing to be done with regard to them is, that
man, in the pres