years
before at ninety.

"At least, having no sons," he went on, "I shall be spared some of
his disappointments. It was cruel that my brother, who could have
satisfied him by going into public life, should have died. Father
had no use for literature. He used to point out to me that not even
Homer made money, so what could I expect? But I believe that even
he saw that my student speeches sounded like metreless verse, and
later on he accepted the bad bargain with some grace. He had sniffed
at what I considered my youthful successes. I was immensely proud
over seeing Virgil once in the same room as myself, and when I came
to know Horace and Propertius fairly intimately I felt myself quite
a figure in Rome. But father had little or no respect for them--except
when Horace turned preacher--and no patience at all with what I wrote.
Before he died, however, when these greater men had passed off the
stage and he saw young men look up to me as I had looked up to them,
and found I could sell my wares, he began to grant that I had, after
all, done something with my time."

"I never can realise," Perilla exclaimed, "that you are old enough
to have seen Virgil! Why, I wasn't even born when he died! I suppose
those times, when Augustus was young, were very fiery and inspiring,
but I am so glad I live in this very year. I would rather have you
the chief poet of Rome than a hundred solemn Virgils, and surely life
can never have been as lovely as it is now. Isn't Rome much finer
and more finished?"

Fidus smiled. "You are your father's own child," he said. "We
certainly are getting the rustic accent out of our mouths and the
rustic scruples out of our morals. In the meantime"--he added
lightly--"some of us have to plod along with our old habits, or where
would the Empire be? I don't expect to improve much on the
proconsulship of my father."

Ovid's eyes rested whimsically on the young man, and after a pause
he said: "Art is one thing and conduct is another. I trust Perilla
to you but with no firmer assurance of her happiness than I have of
Fabia's entrusted to me. Soldiering and proconsuling have their
place, but so has the service of the Muses. While you are looking
after taxes in Africa, we will make Rome a place to come back to from
the ends of the earth. After all, to live is the object of life, and
where can you live more richly, more exquisitely than here? You will
find you cannot stay away long. Rome is the breath we breathe