are dallying between past and future triumphs.
I am tempted to drop you both and take up with ambitious youth. Here
is Propertius setting the town agog, and yesterday the Sosii told
me of another clever boy, the young Ovid, who is already writing verse
at seventeen: a veritable rascal, they say, for wit and wickedness,
but a born poet."

"If he is that," Horace said, in a tone of irritation very unusual
with him, "you had better substitute him for your Propertius. I think
his success is little short of scandalous."

"You sound like Tullus," Maecenas said banteringly, "or like the
friend of Virgil's father who arrived from Mantua last week and began
to look for the good old Tatii and Sabines in Pompey's Portico and
the Temple of Isis! Since when have you turned Cato?"

Horace laughed good-humouredly again. "At any rate," he said, "you
might have done worse by me than likening me to Tullus. I sometimes
wish we were all like him, unplagued by imagination, innocent of
Greek, quite sure of the admirableness of admirably administering
the government, and of the rightness of everything Roman. What does
he think of Propertius's peccadilloes, by the way? He is a friend
of the family, is he not?"

"Yes," said Maecenas, "and he is doing his friendly duty with the
dogged persistence you would expect. He has haunted me in the Forum
lately, and yesterday we had a long talk. His point of view is obvious.
A Roman ought to be a soldier, and he ought to marry and beget more
soldiers. Propertius boasts of being deaf to the trumpet if a woman
weeps, and the woman is one he cannot marry. _Ergo_, Propertius is
a disgrace to his country. It is as clear as Euclid. All the friends
of the family, it seems, have taken a hand in the matter. Tullus
himself has tried to make the boy ambitious to go to Athens, Bassus
has tried to discount the lady's charms, Lynceus has urged the
pleasures of philosophy, and Ponticus of writing epics. And various
grey-beards have done their best to make a love-sick poet pay court
to wisdom. I could scarcely keep from laughing at the look of
perplexity and indignation in Tullus's face when he quoted
Propertius's reply. The boy actually asked them if they thought the
poor flute ought to be set adrift just because swelled cheeks weren't
becoming to Pallas! The long and short of it is that he wants me to
interfere, and convince Propertius of his public duty. That public
duty may conceivably take the form of writing p