the moment as if he were
capable of refuting senates and confounding kings, "we will not look
at too gloomy a side of the picture. Pompeius and Caesar will be
reconciled. Your uncle's party will see that it is best to allow the
proconsul an election as promised. We will have wise laws and moderate
reforms. All will come out aright. And we--we two--will go along
through life as softly and as merrily as now we stroll up and down in
the cool shade of these columns; and I will turn philosopher and
evolve a new system that will forever send Plato and Zeno, Epicurus
and Timon, to the most remote and spider-spun cupboard of the most
old-fashioned library, and you shall be a poetess, a Sappho, an
Erinna, who shall tinkle in Latin metres sweeter than they ever sing
in Aiolic. And so we will fleet the time as though we were Zeus and
Hera on Olympus."

"Zeus and Hera!" repeated Cornelia, laughing. "You silly Graecule.[73]
You may talk about that misbehaved pair, who were anything but
harmonious and loving, if Homer tells truly. I prefer our own Juppiter
and our Juno of the Aventine. _They_ are a staid and home-keeping
couple, worth imitating, if we are to imitate any celestials. But
nothing Greek for me."

[73] Contemptuous diminutive for Greek.

"Intolerant, intolerant," retorted Drusus, "we are all Greek, we
Romans of to-day--what is left of old Latium but her half-discarded
language, her laws worse than discarded, perverted, her good pilum[74]
which has not quite lost its cunning, and her--"

[74] The heavy short javelin carried by the Roman legionary, only
about six feet long. In practised hands it was a terrible weapon,
and won many a Roman victory.

"Men," interrupted Cornelia, "such as you!"

"And women," continued Drusus, "such as you! Ah! There is something
left of Rome after all. We are not altogether fallen, unworthy of our
ancestors. Why shall we not be merry? A Greek would say that it was
always darkest before Eos leaves the couch of Tithonus,[75] and who
knows that our Helios is not soon to dawn and be a long, long time ere
his setting? I feel like throwing formality to the winds, crying
'Iacchos evoe,' and dancing like a bacchanal, and singing in tipsy
delight,--

[75] The "rosy-fingered Dawn" of Homer; Tithonos was her consort.

"'Oh, when through the long night,
With fleet foot glancing white,
Shall I go dancing in my revelry,
My neck cast back, and bare
Unto the dewy air,