of marble. "Had Lysippos seen thee, thou wouldst be ornamenting now
the gate leading to the Palatine, as a statue of Hercules in youth."

The young man smiled with satisfaction, and began to sink in the bath,
splashing warm water abundantly on the mosaic which represented Hera at
the moment when she was imploring Sleep to lull Zeus to rest. Petronius
looked at him with the satisfied eye of an artist.

When Vinicius had finished and yielded himself in turn to the
epilatores, a lector came in with a bronze tube at his breast and rolls
of paper in the tube.

"Dost wish to listen?" asked Petronius.

"If it is thy creation, gladly!" answered the young tribune; "if not,
I prefer conversation. Poets seize people at present on every street
corner."

"Of course they do. Thou wilt not pass any basilica, bath, library, or
book-shop without seeing a poet gesticulating like a monkey. Agrippa, on
coming here from the East, mistook them for madmen. And it is just such
a time now. Caesar writes verses; hence all follow in his steps. Only it
is not permitted to write better verses than Caesar, and for that reason
I fear a little for Lucan. But I write prose, with which, however, I do
not honor myself or others. What the lector has to read are codicilli of
that poor Fabricius Veiento."

"Why 'poor'?"

"Because it has been communicated to him that he must dwell in Odyssa
and not return to his domestic hearth till he receives a new command.
That Odyssey will be easier for him than for Ulysses, since his wife
is no Penelope. I need not tell thee, for that matter, that he acted
stupidly. But here no one takes things otherwise than superficially. His
is rather a wretched and dull little book, which people have begun to
read passionately only when the author is banished. Now one hears on
every side, 'Scandala! scandala!' and it may be that Veiento invented
some things; but I, who know the city, know our patres and our women,
assure thee that it is all paler than reality. Meanwhile every man is
searching in the book,--for himself with alarm, for his acquaintances
with delight. At the book-shop of Avirnus a hundred copyists are writing
at dictation, and its success is assured."

"Are not thy affairs in it?"

"They are; but the author is mistaken, for I am at once worse and less
flat than he represents me. Seest thou we have lost long since the
feeling of what is worthy or unworthy,--and to me even it seems that in
real truth there is