Claudius serves a good table, I must say-a very decent Campanian wine before the meal, and a good Falernian afterwards. The meal was neither ostentatiously elaborate nor affectedly simple: oysters, eggs, and tiny onions to begin; roast kid, broiled chicken, and grilled bream; and a variety of fresh fruits.
After the meal, Octavius proposed that we toast the Muses, and that we converse upon their separate functions; and argued briefly with himself as to whether we should drink individual toasts to the ancient three or to the more recent nine; and finally, after pretending a great struggle, decided upon the latter.
"But," he said, and glanced, smiling, at Claudius, "we must honor the Muses to this extent; we must not allow them to be soiled by any mention of politics. It is a subject that might embarrass us all."
There was general, if nervous, laughter; and I suddenly realized how many enemies, past and potential, were in the room. Claudius, whom Octavius had exiled from Italy less than two years before; Pollio himself, our guest of honor, who was an old friend of Marcus Antonius; our young Horace, who only three years ago had fought on the side of the traitor Brutus; and Mevius, poor Mevius, whose envy ran so deep that no man might be spared from the treachery of his flattery, or vice versa.
Pollio, being the guest of honor, began. With an apologetic bow to Octavius, he chose to extol the ancient Muse of Memory, Mneme; and likening all mankind to a single body, he went on to compare the collective experience of mankind to the mind of that body; and thence rather neatly (though obviously) he spoke of the library which he was establishing in Rome as if it were the most important quality of the mind, memory; and concluded that the Muse of Memory presided over all the others in a beneficent reign.
Mevius gave a tremulous sigh and said to someone in a loud whisper: "Beautiful. Oh, how beautiful!" Horace glanced at him, and raised a dubious eyebrow.
Agrippa addressed himself to Clio, the Muse of History; Mevius whispered loudly something about manliness and bravery; and Horace glowered at Mevius. Upon my turn, I spoke of Calliope-rather badly, I fear, since I could not allude to my own work upon the slain Julius Caesar, even though it is a poem, without trespassing upon Octavius's interdiction against politics.
It was all rather dull, I fear, though Octavius, reclining with Livia seated beside him in the torchlight, seemed pleased; it was his animation and gaiety that made possible what otherwise would have been impossible.
He assigned to Mevius (rather obviously, I thought, though Mevius was too full of himself to notice) that Thalia who is the Muse of Comedy; and Mevius, delighted to be singled out, launched into a long, farcical account (stolen, I believe, from Antiphanes of Athens) about the upstarts of old Athens-slaves, freedmen, and tradespeople-who presumed to set themselves upon a level with their social betters; who wangled invitations to the homes of the great, and gorged themselves at their tables, abusing the kindness and generosity of their noble hosts; and how Thalia, the goddess of the comic spirit, to punish such interlopers, called down upon them certain afflictions, so that their class might be distinguished, and so that the nobility might be protected. Some, Mevius said, she made dwarfs, and gave thatches of hair like the hay in which they were born, and afflicted with the manners of the stable. And so on, and so on.
It became quickly clear that Mevius was attacking your young friend Horace, though for what reason none was quite sure. And no one knew precisely how to behave; we looked at Octavius, but his face was impassive; we looked at Maecenas, who seemed unconcerned. None would look at Horace, except myself, who was seated next to him. His face was pale in the flickering light.
Mevius finished and sat back, satisfied that he had flattered a patron and destroyed a possible rival. There was a murmur. Octavius thanked him, and said:
"Now who shall speak for that Erato who is the Muse of Poetry?"
And Mevius, raised by what he thought was his success, said: "Oh, Maecenas, of course; for he has courted the Muse and won her. It must be Maecenas."
Maecenas waved languidly. "I must decline," he said. "These last months, she has wandered from my gardens… Perhaps my young friend Horace will speak for her."
Octavius laughed, and turned toward Horace with perfect civility. "I have met our guest only this evening, but I will presume upon that slight acquaintance. Will you speak, Horace?"
"I will speak," Horace said; but for a long time he was silent. Without waiting for a servant, he poured himself a measure of unmixed wine, and drank it at once. And he spoke. I give you his words as I remember them.
"You all know the story of the Greek Orpheus of whom our absent Vergil has written so beautifully-son of Apollo and the Muse Calliope, whom the god honored by the presence of his manhood, and inheritor of the golden lyre which sent forth light into the world, making even the stones and trees glimmer in a beauty not apprehended before by man. And you know of his love for Eurydice, of which he sang with such purity and grace that Eurydice thought herself to be part of the singer's own soul and came to him in marriage, at which Hymen wept, as if at a fate no one could imagine. And you know, too, how Eurydice at last, wandering foolishly beyond the precincts of her husband's magic, was touched by a serpent that came out of the bowels of the earth, and dragged from the light of life into the darkness of the underground-where Orpheus in his despair followed, having bound his eyes against a dark that no man can imagine. And there he sang so beautifully and gave such light to the darkness, that the very ghosts shed tears, the wheel upon which Ixion whirled in terror stilled; and the demons of the night relented, and said that Eurydice might return with her husband to the world of light, upon the condition that Orpheus remain blindfolded and not look back upon the wife who followed him…
"The legend does not tell us why Orpheus broke the vow; it tells us only that he did, that he saw where he had been, and saw Eurydice drawn back into the earth, and saw the earth close around her so that he could not follow. And legend tells of how thereafter Orpheus sang his sorrow, and how the maidens who had lived in light only and could not imagine where he had been, came to him and offered themselves to beguile him from his knowledge; and how he refused them, and how in their anger then they shouted down his song, so that its magic could not stay them, and in their mania tore his body apart, and cast it in the River Hebrus, where his severed head continued to sing its wordless song; and the very shores parted and widened so that the singing head might be borne in safety out to the landless sea… This is the story of the Greek Orpheus which Vergil has told us, and to which we have listened."
A silence had come upon the room; Horace dipped his cup into the jar of wine and drank again.
"The gods in their wisdom," he said, "tell us all of our lives, if we will but listen. I speak to you now of another Orpheus- not the son of a god and goddess, but an Italian Orpheus whose father was a slave, and whose mother had no name. Some, no doubt, would scoff at such an Orpheus; but they would scoff who have forgotten that all Romans are descended from a god, and bear the name of his son; and from a mortal woman, and wear her humanity. Thus even a dwarf who wears upon his head a thatch of hay may have been touched by a god, if he springs from the earth that Mars loved… This Orpheus of whom I speak received no golden lyre, but only a poor torch from a humble father who would have given his life that his son might be worthy of his dream. Thus was this young Orpheus in his childhood shown the light of Rome, equally with the sons of the rich and mighty; and in his young manhood, at the cost of his father's substance was shown too the source of what was said to be the light of all mankind that came from the mother city of all knowledge, Athens. Thus his love was no woman; his Eurydice was knowledge, a dream of the world, to which he sang his song. But the world of light that was his dream of knowledge became eclipsed by a civil war; and forsaking the light, this young Orpheus went into the darkness to retrieve his dream; and at Philippi, almost forgetting his song, he fought against one whom he thought to represent the powers of darkness. And then the gods, or the demons-he knows not which, even now-granted him the gift of cowardice, and bade him flee the field with the power of his dream and knowledge intact, and bade him not to look back upon what he fled. But like the other Orpheus, just as he was safely escaped, he did look back; and his dream vanished, as if a vapor, into the darkness of time and circumstance. He saw the world, and knew he was alone- without father, without property, without hope, without dreams… It was only then that the gods gave to him their golden lyre, and bade him play not as they but as he wished. The gods are wise in their cruelty; for now he sings, who would not have sung before. No Thracian maidens blandish him, nor offer him their charms; he makes do with the honest whore, and for a fair price. It is the dogs of the world that yap at him as he sings, trying to drown his voice. They grow in number as more he sings; and no doubt he, too, will suffer to have his limbs torn from his body, even though he sing against the yapping, and sing as he is carried to that sea of oblivion which will receive us all… Thus, my masters and my betters, I have told you a tedious story of a local Orpheus; and I wish you well with his remains."