Three of the papers in this volume have already appeared in The Atlantic Monthly: "A Poet's Toll," "The Phrase-Maker," and "A Roman Citizen." The author is indebted to the Editors for permission to republish them. The illustration on the title page is reproduced from the poster of the Roman Exposition of 1911, drawn by Duilio Cambeliotti, printed by Dr. E. Chappuis....

The main purpose of these Roman sketches is to show that the men and women of ancient Rome were like ourselves. It is only when we perceive in "classical antiquity" a human nature similar to our own in its mingling of weakness and strength, vice and virtue, sorrow and joy, defeats and victories that we shall find in its noblest literature an intimate rather than a formal inspiration, and in its history either comfort or warning. A secondary purpose is to suggest Roman conditions as they may have

In the effort to dull the edge of his mental anguish by physical exhaustion Catullus had walked far out from the town, through vineyards and fruit-orchards displaying their autumnal stores and clamorous with eager companies of pickers and vintagers. On coming back to the eastern gate he found himself reluctant to pass from the heedless activities of the fields to the bustle of the town streets and the formal observances of his father's house. Seeking a quiet interlude, he turned northward and cl

In the capital a dull winter was being prophesied. Only one gleam was discoverable in the social twilight. The Progressives had shipped Cato off to Cyprus and society was rid for one season of a man with a tongue, who believed in economy when money was plentiful, in sobriety when pleasure was multiform and in domestic fidelities when escape was easy. But they had done irreparable mischief in disposing more summarily of Cicero. With the Conservative leader exiled to Greece and the Progressive lea

About seven o'clock on a clear evening of early November Catullus arrived in Rome. With the passage of the weeks his jealous grief had learned to dwell with other emotions, and a longing to be with Lesbia, once more admitted, had reassumed its habitual sway. Coming first in guise of the need of comfort, it had impelled him to leave Verona, and on the journey it had grown into a lover's exclusive frenzy. To-morrow he might examine the structure of his familiar life which had been beaten upon by t

The boy's mother let the book fall, and, walking restlessly to the doorway, flung aside the curtains that separated the library from the larger and open hall. The December afternoon was sharp and cold, and she had courted an hour's forgetfulness within a secluded room, bidding her maid bring a brazier and draw the curtains close, and deliberately selecting from her son's books a volume of Lucretius. But her oblivion had been penetrated by an unexpected line, shot like a poisoned arrow from the s

Nearly a week later Horace was dining quietly with Mæcenas. It was during one of the frequent estrangements between the prime minister and his wife, and Mæcenas often sent for Horace when the strain of work had left him with little inclination to collect a larger company. The meal was over, and on the polished citron-wood table stood a silver mixing-bowl, and an hospitable array—after the princely manner of the house—of gold cups, crystal flagons, and tall, slender glasses which looked as if the

Propertius made his way past the slave at his own door, who was surprised only by his young master's arrival before daybreak, and stumbled to his bedroom, where the night-lamp was burning. The drinking at Cynthia's—he always thought of her by that name—had been fast and furious. She had been more beautiful than he had ever seen her. Her eyes had shone like stars, and the garlands had hung down over her face and trailed in her cup of yellow wine. And she had told him that he was the only true poe

The sun still hung high over a neat little farm among the Sabine hills, although the midday heat had given way to the soft and comforting warmth of a September afternoon. Delicate shadows from dark-leaved ilexes, from tall pines and white poplars, fell waveringly across a secluded grass-plot which looked green and inviting even after the parching summer. The sound of water bickering down the winding way of a stream gave life and coolness to the warm silence. Thick among the tree-trunks on one si

"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 the

The next week Fidus and Perilla started for Libya, leaving the two children with their grandfather rather than expose them to the dangers of the African climate. Ovid and Fabia spent the summer as usual in the cool Apennines at the old family homestead at Sulmo. They lingered on into the autumn for the sake of the vintage, a favourite season with them, and did not return to their beautiful town house at the foot of the Capitoline hill until late in October. While Fabia was busy with the househol

Ovid's second birthday in exile had passed. The hope of an early release, harboured at first by his family and friends, had died away. None of them knew what the "blunder" or "crime" was which had aroused the anger of Augustus, and every effort to bring into high relief the innocence of Ovid's personal life and his loyalty to the imperial family simply made them more cognisant of a mystery they could not fathom. Access to Cæsar was easy to some of them, and through Marcia, Maximus's wife, they h

His Lady of Gifts smiled at him and held out her hand with something shut tight inside of it. The white fingers were just about to open into his palm, when he felt his mother's hand on his and heard her say: "Come, Marcus, come, the sun will get ahead of you this morning." He knew that she had kissed his eyes and hurried away again before he could open them upon the faint, grey light in his tiny room. A piercing thought put an end to sleepiness and brought him swiftly from his bed. This was the

The day at the villa had been the most trying one of a trying week for Pliny and Calpurnia. A restful house-party of their dearest friends had been spoiled by the arrival of Quadratilla, heralded by one of her incredible letters dated at Baiæ: The hale old woman took a terrible advantage of her years and her tongue to do as she chose among her acquaintances. And Pliny was more or less at her mercy, because his mother and she had been friends in their girlhood, and because her grandson, Quadratus

Marcus had been in his pasture for many an hour when Calpurnia came to the farm. His mother was on her knees washing up the stone floor of the kitchen. A sweet voice sounded in her ears, and she looked up to see a goddess—as she thought in the first blinding moment—a goddess dressed in silvery white with a gleam of gold at her throat. Neither woman ever told all that passed between them in their long talk in the sunlit courtyard, where they sought solitude, but when Marcus's mother kissed her vi

The spring had come promptly this year and with it the usual invoice of young Romans to Athens. Some of them were planning to stay only a month or two to see the country and hear the more famous professors lecture. Others were settling down for a long period of serious study in rhetoric and philosophy. Scarcely to be classed among any of these was the young poet Julius Paulus,² who, as he put it to himself with the frank grandiosity of youth, was in search of the flame of life— studiosus ardoris

In the following weeks Paulus remembered some things in the conversation of this day, which at the time had made but slight impression on him. The stories of professors and teachers had meant little until he knew at first hand the lentil suppers and brilliant talking at the house of Taurus, the ethical discussions with Peregrinus in his hovel on the outskirts of the city, and, most of all, the generous and ennobling hospitality, in his city house and villas, of the millionaire rhetorician, Herod

The answer to this prayer, the grant of victory, came, as it happened, in strange guise. The sensitive Roman youth, still in the potter's hands, had reckoned without the final Greek experience which lay ahead of him, the issue of one night in the early autumn. During the season of the full moon in September all lectures were suspended and most of the Roman students joined the crowd of travellers to Elis to see the Olympic games. Paulus had had a touch of malaria and his physician had urged him n