He must need see every thing for himself, and he is always wandering
restlessly through the provinces. I should not care to change with him!"

"You have expressed the same ideas in verse," said Favorinus.

"Oh! a jest at supper-time. So long as I am in Alexandria and waiting
on Caesar I can make myself very comfortable every day at the 'Olympian
table' of this admirable cook."

"But how runs your poem?" asked Pancrates.

"I have forgotten it, and it deserved no better fate," replied Florus.

"But I," laughed the Gaul, "I remember the beginning. The first lines,
I think, ran thus:

"'Let others envy Caesar's lot;
To wander through Britannia's dales
And be snowed up in Scythian vales
Is Caesar's taste--I'd rather not?'"

As he heard these words Hadrian struck his fist into the palm of his left
hand, and while the feasters were hazarding guesses as to why he was so
long in coming to Alexandria, he took out the folding tablet he was in
the habit of carrying in his money-bag, and hastily wrote the following
lines on the wax face of it:

'Let others envy Florus' lot;
To wander through the shops for drink,
Or, into foolish dreaming sink