'Talk to me no more of Rome,' said he to Clodius. 'Pleasure is too
stately and ponderous in those mighty walls: even in the precincts of
the court--even in the Golden House of Nero, and the incipient glories
of the palace of Titus, there is a certain dulness of magnificence--the
eye aches--the spirit is wearied; besides, my Clodius, we are
discontented when we compare the enormous luxury and wealth of others
with the mediocrity of our own state. But here we surrender ourselves
easily to pleasure, and we have the brilliancy of luxury without the
lassitude of its pomp.'

'It was from that feeling that you chose your summer retreat at
Pompeii?'

'It was. I prefer it to Baiae: I grant the charms of the latter, but I
love not the pedants who resort there, and who seem to weigh out their
pleasures by the drachm.'

'Yet you are fond of the learned, too; and as for poetry, why, your
house is literally eloquent with AEschylus and Homer, the epic and the
drama.'

'Yes, but those Romans who mimic my Athenian ancestors do everything so
heavily. Even in the chase they make their slaves carry Plato with
them; and whenever the boar is lost, out they take their books and their
papyrus, in order not to lose their time too. When the dancing-girls
swim before them in all the blandishment of Persian manners, some drone
of a freedman, with a face of stone, reads them a section of Cicero "De
Officiis". Unskilful pharmacists! pleasure and study are not elements
to be thus mixed together, they must be enjoyed separately: the Romans