l do perhaps for your Roman guest. I am curious to
hear what he will say about our Urania. Pollux has done his share of the
work very well, and I have already devoted an hour's work to it, which
has improved it. The more humble our material, the better I shall be
pleased if the work satisfies Caesar; he himself has tried his hand at
sculpture."

"If only Hadrian could hear that!" cried one of the painters. "He likes
to think himself a great artist--one of the foremost of our time. It is
said that he caused the life of the great architect, Apollodorus--who
carried out such noble works for Trajan--to be extinguished--and why?
because formerly that illustrious man had treated the imperial bungler as
a mere dabbler, and would not accept his plan for the temple of Venus at
Rome."

"Mere talk!" answered Pontius to this accusation. "Apollodorus died in
prison, but his incarceration had little enough to do with the Emperor's
productions--excuse me, gentlemen, I must once more look through the
sketches and plans."

The architect went away, but Pollux continued the conversation that had
been begun by saying:

"Only I cannot understand how a man who practises so many arts at once as
Hadrian does, and at the same time looks after the state and its
government, who is a passionate huntsman and who dabbles in every kind of
miscellaneous learning, contrives, when he wants to practise one
particular form of art, to recall all his five senses into the nest from
which he has let them fly, here, there, and everywhere. The inside of his
head must be like that salad-bowl--which we have reduced to emptiness--in
which Papias discovered three sorts of fish, brown and white meat,
oysters and five other substances."

"And who can deny," added Papias, "that if talent is the father, and meat
the mother of all productiveness, practice must be the artist's teacher!
Since Hadrian took to sculpture and painting it has become the universal
fashion here to practise these arts, and among the wealthier youth who
come to my workroom, many have very good abilities; but not one of them
brings anything to any good issue, because so much of their time is taken
up by the gymnasium, the bath, the quail-fights, the suppers, and I know
not what besides, so that they do nothing by way of practice."

"True," said a painter. "Without the restraint and worry of
apprenticeship no one can ever rise to happy and independent
creativeness; and in the schools of rheto