"The 'Tacitus?'" asked Cethegus.

"Yes, friend, we have drunk enough of the 'Livius.' You must know that
I name my wines according to their historical character. For example,
to return to what I was saying, this piece of history which we are
about just now, this Gothic war, is quite against my taste. Narses is
right, we ought first to repel the Persians before we attack the
Goths."

"Narses! What is my wise friend doing?"

"He envies Belisarius, and will not confess it even to himself. Besides
that, he makes plans of wars and battles. I will bet that he had
already conquered Italy before we had even landed."

"You are not his friend. Yet he is a man of genius. Why do you prefer
Belisarius?"

"I will tell you," said Procopius, pouring out the "Tacitus," "It is my
misfortune that I was not the historian of Alexander or Scipio. Since I
recovered from philosophy and theology, my whole nature has longed for
men, for real men of flesh and blood. So these spindle-shanked emperors
and bishops and generals, who subtilise everything with their reason,
disgust me. We have become a crippled generation; the hero time lies
far behind us! Only honest Belisarius is a hero like those of the olden
time. He might have encamped with Agamemnon before Troy! He is not
stupid; he has good sense; but only the natural sense of a noble wild
animal for its prey, for his vocation. Belisarius's vocation is
heroism! And I delight in his broad chest and his flashing eyes and
mighty thighs with which he masters the strongest stallion. And I am
glad when, sometimes, his blind delight in blows upsets all his fine
plans. I love to see him rush amongst the enemy and fight like an
infuriated boar. But I dare not tell him so; for then all would be
over; in three days he would be cut to pieces. On the contrary, I keep
him back. I am his 'reason,' as he calls me. And he puts up with my
prudence because he knows that it is not cowardice. More than once I
have been obliged to save him from a difficulty into which the
frowardness of his heroism had brought him! The most amusing of these
stories is that of the horn and tuba."

"Which of the two do you blow, O my Procopius?"

"Neither; only the trumpet of fame and the pipe of mockery!"

"But what about the horn and trumpet?"

"Oh, we were lying before a rocky nest in Persia, which we were obliged
to take, because it commanded the high-road. But we had already, many
times, damaged our heroic heads against