l Menander. The counsels
of the divine Plato are too eternal for my little mind. And, Davus,"
he added thoughtfully, as he rose and leaned on the slave's willing
arm, "as soon as we get to the house, write down, 'Greece took her
captors captive.' That has the making of a good phrase in it--a good
phrase. I shall polish it up and use it some day."

A ROMAN CITIZEN

I

"Look at him--a subject for his own verses--a grandfather
metamorphosed into an infant Bacchus! Will he be a Mercury in
swaddling clothes by next year? O, father, father, the gods certainly
laid their own youth in your cradle fifty-two years ago!"

The speaker, a young matron, smiled into her father's eyes, which
were as brilliant and tender as her own. Ovid and his daughter were
singularly alike in a certain blitheness of demeanour, and in Fabia's
eyes they made a charming picture now, both of them in festal white
against the March green of the slender poplars. Perilla's little boy
had climbed into his grandfather's lap and laid carefully upon his
hair, still thick and black, a wreath of grape leaves picked from
early vines in a sunny corner. Fabia and Perilla's husband, Fidus
Cornelius, smiled at each other in mutual appreciation of a youth
shared equally, it seemed to them, by the other three with the
new-born spring.

It was Ovid's birthday and they were celebrating it in their country
place at the juncture of the Flaminian and Clodian roads. The poet
had a special liking for his gardens here, and he had preferred to
hold his fete away from the city, in family seclusion, because Fidus
was about to take Perilla off to Africa, where he was to be proconsul.
The shadow of the parting had thrown into high relief the happiness
of the day. Perilla had always said that it was worth while to pay
attention to her father's birthday, because he could accept family
incense without strutting like a god and was never so charming as
when he was being spoiled. To-day they had spared no pains, and his
manner in return had fused with the tenderness kept for them alone
the gallantry, at once that of worldling and of poet, which made him
the most popular man in Roman society. Now, as the afternoon grew
older and his grandson curled comfortably into his arms, the
conversation turned naturally to personal things. Perilla's jest led
her father to talk of his years, and to wonder whether he was to have
as long a life as his father, who had died only two or three