After Masthlion was satisfied with a good meal, a young lad, the son of the landlord, was commissioned to guide him, on a stroll through the adjacent parts of the city, as far as the decreasing light of day would allow. On returning, he found his friend Silo released from his engagements, and together they passed the evening. ‘Know you anything of the Pretorians?’ asked Masthlion of the innkeeper, ere he retired to his bed. ‘I know they are camped on the far side of the city, beyond the Viminal,’ replied the lusty‐tongued publican, ‘I know that Caesar brought them there some years ago, and that Sejanus is their Prefect—who is, between ourselves, you know, a greater man in Rome than Caesar himself. All this I know, and what is left is, that they are a set of overpaid, underworked, overdressed, conceited, stuck‐up, strutting puppies. That’s about as much as I can tell you of them.’ ‘Ah!’ said Masthlion, somewhat disheartened by these bluff, energetic words, which were delivered with a readiness and confidence, as if expressing a generally received opinion; ‘then have you in Rome a poet by name Balbus?’ ‘A poet named Balbus!’ repeated the host, with a comical look; ‘faith, but poetry is a trade I never meddled with, and I am on the wrong side of the Aventine, where sailors and traders swarm, and not poets. I doubt not, worthy Masthlion, that poets abound in Rome, for Rome is a very large place, I warrant you. But you must go and seek them elsewhere. What, gentlemen! does any one know of a poet named Balbus in Rome?’ cried he abruptly, putting his head inside of a room tolerably well filled with drinkers. A laugh arose at the question. ‘North, south, east, or west?’ cried one. ‘Scarce as gladiators,’ shouted another; ‘the times have starved them.’ ‘Nothing can starve them—the poets, I mean,’ answered a thin dry voice, which seemed to quell the merriment for a space, ‘they are as thick as bees in the porticoes and baths of Agrippa. Your Balbus, not being there, landlord, enter the bookshops and you will find as many more, reading their own books, since nobody else will. You will find plenty of Balbi, be assured, but no poets—Horace was the last——’ Laughter drowned the remainder of his speech, and the landlord withdrew his head into the passage, where Masthlion was awaiting. ‘Balbus the poet does not seem to be very well known,’ he said to the potter. ‘But what do these rough swinkers know of these things any more than myself? Nevertheless, he says true, and you might do worse than inquire at the bookshops, the baths and porticoes, where the men of the calamus and inkpot love to air the wit they have scraped together by lamplight in their garrets at home.’ The potter, thereupon, retired with an uneasy feeling of helplessness and hopelessness filling his mind, at least as far as regarded Balbus.