Marcus Aper interposed: And are you, indeed, so enamoured of your
dramatic muse, as to renounce your oratorical character, and the
honours of your profession, in order to sacrifice your time, I think
it was lately to Medea, and now to Thyestes? Your friends, in the mean
time, expect your patronage; the colonies [b] invoke your aid, and the
municipal cities invite you to the bar. And surely the weight of so
many causes may be deemed sufficient, without this new solicitude
imposed upon you by Domitius [c] or Cato. And must you thus waste all
your time, amusing yourself for ever with scenes of fictitious
distress, and still labouring to add to the fables of Greece the
incidents and characters of the Roman story?


IV. The sharpness of that reproof, replied Maternus, would, perhaps,
have disconcerted me, if, by frequent repetition, it had not lost its
sting. To differ on this subject is grown familiar to us both. Poetry,
it seems, is to expect no quarter: you wage an incessant war against
the followers of that pleasing art; and I, who am charged with
deserting my clients, have yet every day the cause of poetry to
defend. But we have now a fair opportunity, and I embrace it with
pleasure, since we have a person present, of ability to decide between
us; a judge, who will either lay me under an injunction to write no
more verses, or, as I rather hope, encourage me, by his authority, to
renounce for ever the dry employment of forensic causes (in which I
have had my share of drudgery), that I may, for the future, be at
leisure to cultivate the sublime and sacred eloquence of the tragic
muse.


V. Secundus desired to be heard: I am aware, he said, that Aper may