"I send to thee from Antium, by a trusty slave, this letter, to which,
though thy hand is more accustomed to the sword and the javelin than the
pen, I think that thou wilt answer through the same messenger without
needless delay. I left thee on a good trail, and full of hope; hence I
trust that thou hast either satisfied thy pleasant desires in the
embraces of Lygia, or wilt satisfy them before the real wintry wind from
the summits of Soracte shall blow on the Campania. Oh, my Vinicius! may
thy preceptress be the golden goddess of Cyprus; be thou, on thy part,
the preceptor of that Lygian Aurora, who is fleeing before the sun of
love. And remember always that marble, though most precious, is nothing
of itself, and acquires real value only when the sculptor's hand turns
it into a masterpiece. Be thou such a sculptor, carissime! To love is
not sufficient; one must know how to love; one must know how to teach
love. Though the plebs, too, and even animals, experience pleasure, a
genuine man differs from them in this especially, that he makes love in
some way a noble art, and, admiring it, knows all its divine value,
makes it present in his mind, thus satisfying not his body merely, but
his soul. More than once, when I think here of the emptiness, the
uncertainty, the dreariness of life, it occurs to me that perhaps thou
hast chosen better, and that not Cæsar's court, but war and love, are
the only objects for which it is worth while to be born and to live.

"Thou wert fortunate in war, be fortunate also in love; and if thou art
curious as to what men are doing at the court of Cæsar, I will inform
thee from time to time. We are living here at Antium, and nursing our
heavenly voice; we continue to cherish the same hatred of Rome, and
think of betaking ourselves to Baiæ for the winter, to appear in public
at Naples, whose inhabitants, being Greeks, will appreciate us better
than that wolf brood on the banks of the Tiber. People will hasten