At first the conversation turned on naval matters. It was debated at some length whether the Romans needed a fleet at all, and, if they did, whether it should be a small fleet composed of huge triremes or a large fleet of smaller and swifter vessels. Agrippa, who has the great advantage of practical experience in naval warfare, was in favour of the latter type of vessel. But another sailor, a friend of Cinna’s, who was present, and who was also experienced, said that the day of small vessels was over. The conversation then veered to literary matters. Ovidius--a little man with twinkling eyes, carefully curled hair, and elaborately elegant clothes--he has his linen washed at Athens--excelled himself in affable courtesy and compliment to Crassus, whom he had never met hitherto. He had always been so anxious, he said, to meet the author of odes that were so interesting, although they were to him a little difficult. “I’m afraid you must be deeply disappointed,” said Crassus, blushing--he is a shy, overgrown youth with an immense tuft of tangled hair and a desperately earnest face. “No,” said Ovidius, “I am never disappointed in men of letters. I always think they are the most charming people in the world. It is their works which I find so disappointing. Everybody writes too much,” he continued, “and, what is worse still, everybody writes. Even the dear Emperor writes hexameters; they do not always scan, but they are hexameters for all that. It has even been hinted that he has written a tragedy. Of course it doesn’t matter how much verse a young man writes as long as he burns it all, but our dear Master’s hexameters are preserved by the Empress. She told me herself with pride that she often ‘mends’ his verses for him. And they need mending sadly, because so many stitches in them are dropped. But how delightful it is to have a literary Emperor. He was good enough to ask me to read him a little poetry the other day. I did so. I chose the passage from the ‘Iliad’ where Hector says farewell to Andromache. He said it was very fine but a little old-fashioned. I then recited an ode of Sappho’s, perhaps the loveliest of all of them. He seemed to enjoy it, but said that it was not nearly as good as the original, and that he preferred that kind of song when it was set to music. What the ‘original’ might be to which he alluded I did not ask, as I have always held that a monarch’s business is to have a superficial knowledge of everything but a thorough knowledge of nothing. And therefore I say it is an excellent thing, Vergilius, that our dear Emperor is aware that you and Crassus and myself all write verse. But it would be in the highest degree undesirable that he should know so much about the business as to command you to write verses of society, and myself to write a Georgic.