"Septimius only understands, 'twould seem, How high I stand in, Claudius, your esteem: For when he begs and prays me, day by day, Before you his good qualities to lay, As not unfit the heart and home to share Of Nero, who selects his friends with care; When he supposes you to me extend The rights and place of a familiar friend, Far better than myself he sees and knows, How far with you my commendation goes. Pleas without number I protest I've used, In hope he'd hold me from the task excused, Yet feared the while it might be thought I feigned Too low the influence I perchance have gained, Dissembling it as nothing with my friends, To keep it for my own peculiar ends. So, to escape such dread reproach, I put My blushes by, and boldly urge my suit. If then you hold it as a grace, though small, To doff one's bashfulness at friendship's call, Enrol him in your suite, assured you'll find A man of heart in him, as well as mind." We may be very sure that, among the many pleas urged by Horace for not giving Septimius the introduction he desired, was the folly of leaving his delightful retreat at Tarentum to go once more abroad in search of wealth or promotion. Let others "cross, to plunder provinces, the main," surely this was no ambition for an embryo Pindar or half-developed Aeschylus. Horace had tried similar remonstrances before, and with just as little success, upon Iccius, another of his scholarly friends, who sold off his fine library and joined an expedition into Arabia Felix, expecting to find it an El Dorado. He playfully asks this studious friend (Odes, I. 29), from whom he expected better things--"_pollicitus meliora_"--if it be true that he grudges the Arabs their wealth, and is actually forging fetters for the hitherto invincible Sabaean monarchs, and those terrible Medians? To which of the royal damsels does he intend to throw the handkerchief, having first cut down her princely betrothed in single combat? Or what young "oiled and curled" Oriental prince is for the future to pour out his wine for him? Iccius, like many another Raleigh, went out to gather wool, and came back shorn. The expedition proved disastrous, and he was lucky in being one of the few who survived it. Some years afterwards we meet with him again as the steward of Agrippa's great estates in Sicily. He has resumed his studies,-- "On themes sublime alone intent,-- What causes the wild ocean sway, The seasons what from June to May, If free the constellations roll, Or moved by some supreme control; What makes the moon obscure her light, What pours her splendour on the night." Absorbed in these and similar inquiries, and living happily on "herbs and frugal fare," Iccius realises the noble promise of his youth; and Horace, in writing to him (Epist., I. 12), encourages him in his disregard of wealth by some of those hints for contentment which the poet never tires of reproducing:--