ears to me the worst
insult that one can offer to nature. I am assured that during their
lives certain of the elect of thy god abstained from food and avoided
women through love of asceticism, and voluntarily exposed themselves to
useless sufferings. I should be afraid of meeting those, criminals whose
frenzy horrifies me. A poet must not be asked to attach himself too
strictly to any scientific or moral doctrine. Moreover, I am a Roman,
and the Romans, unlike the Greeks, are unable to pursue profound
speculations in a subtle manner. If they adopt a philosophy it is above
all in order to derive some practical advantages from it. Siro, who
enjoyed great renown among us, taught me the system of Epicurus and thus
freed me from vain terrors and turned me aside from the cruelties to
which religion persuades ignorant men. I have embraced the views of
Pythagoras concerning the souls of men and animals, both of which are of
divine essence; this invites us to look upon ourselves without pride
and without shame. I have learnt from the Alexandrines how the earth, at
first soft and without form, hardened in proportion as Nereus withdrew
himself from it to dig his humid dwellings; I have learned how things
were formed insensibly; in what manner the rains, falling from the
burdened clouds, nourished the silent forests, and by what progress a
few animals at last began to wander over the nameless mountains. I could
not accustom myself to your cosmogony either, for it seems to me
fitter for a camel-driver on the Syrian sands than for a disciple of
Aristarchus of Samos. And what would become of me in the abode of your
beatitude if I did not find there my friends, my ancestors, my masters,
and my gods, and if it is not given to me to see Rhea's noble son, or
Venus, mother of Aeneas, with her winning smile, or Pan, or the young
Dryads, or the Sylvans, or old Silenus, with his face stained by Aegle's
purple mulberries.' These are the reasons which I begged that simple man
to plead before the successor of Jupiter."

* This phrase seems to indicate that, if one is to believe
Macrobius, the "Copa" is by Virgil.

"And since then, O great shade, thou hast received no other messages?"

"I have received none."

"To console themselves for thy absence, O Virgil, they have three poets,
Commodianus, Prudentius, and Fortunatus, who were all three born in
those dark plays when neither prosody nor grammar were known. But tell
me, O Mantuan,