Neither is the following allusion to the Jews and their creed without its value, especially when followed, as it is, by Horace's avowal, almost in the words of Lucretius (B. VI. 56), of what was then his own. Later in life he came to a very different conclusion. When the travellers reach Egnatia, their ridicule is excited by being shown or told, it is not very clear which, of incense kindled in the temple there miraculously without the application of fire. "This may your circumcisèd Jew Believe, but never I. For true I hold it that the Deities Enjoy themselves in careless ease;[1] Nor think, when Nature, spurning Law, Does something which inspires our awe, 'Tis sent by the offended gods Direct from their august abodes." [1] So Tennyson, in his "Lotus-Eaters:"-- "Let us swear an oath, and keep it with an equal mind, In the hollow Lotus-land to live and lie reclined On the hills like gods together, careless of mankind." See the whole of the passage. Had Horace known anything of natural science, he might not have gone so far to seek for the explanation of the seeming miracle. Gibbon speaks contemptuously of many of the incidents recorded in this poem, asking, "How could a man of taste reflect on them the day after?" But the poem has much more than a merely literary interest; thanks to such passages as these, and to the charming tribute by Horace to his friends previously cited. Nothing can better illustrate the footing of easy friendship on which he soon came to stand with Maecenas than the following poem, which must have been written before the year B.C. 32; for in that year Terentia became the mistress of the great palace on the Esquiline, and the allusion in the last verse is much too familiar to have been intended for her. Horace, whose delicacy of stomach was probably notorious, had apparently been the victim of a practical joke--a species of rough fun to which the Romans of the upper classes appear to have been particularly prone. It is difficult otherwise to understand how he could have stumbled at Maecenas's table on a dish so overdosed with garlic as that which provoked this humorous protest. From what we know of the abominations of an ordinary Roman banquet, the vegetable stew in this instance must have reached a climax of unusual atrocity. "If his old father's throat any impious sinner Has cut with unnatural hand to the bone, Give him garlic, more noxious than hemlock, at dinner. Ye gods! the strong stomachs that reapers must own! "With what poison is this that my vitals are heated? By viper's blood--certes, it cannot be less-- Stewed into the potherbs; can I have been cheated? Or Canidia, did she cook the villainous mess? "When Medea was struck by the handsome sea-rover, Who in beauty outshone all his Argonaut band, This mixture she took to lard Jason all over, And so tamed the fire-breathing bulls to his hand.