lecto compositus vix prima silentia noctis carpebam et somno lumina victa dabam: cum me saevus Amor prensat sursumque capillis excitat et lacerum pervigilare iubet. 'tu famulus meus,' inquit, 'ames cum mille puellas, solus, io, solus, dure, iacere potes?' exsilio et pedibus nudis tunicaque soluta omne iter incipio, nullum iter expedio. nunc propero, nunc ire piget, rursumque redire paenitet et pudor est stare via media. ecce tacent voces hominum strepitusque viarum et volucrum cantus turbaque fida canum: solus ego ex cunctis paveo somnumque torumque et sequor imperium, magne Cupido, tuum.[341] I lay on my bed and began to enjoy the silence of the night scarce yet begun, and was yielding my wearied eyes to sleep, when fierce Love laid hold of me, and, seizing me by the hair, aroused me, tore me, and bade me wake. 'Canst thou, my servant,' he cried, 'the lover of a thousand girls, lie thus alone, alone, hard-hearted?' I leapt from my couch, and barefoot, with dishevelled robe, started on my errand, yet never accomplished it. Now I hurry forward, now am loth to go; now repent me that I have returned, and feel shame to stand thus aimless in mid-street. So the voices of men, the murmur of the streets, the song of birds, and the trusty watchdogs all are silent; and I alone dread the slumbers of my couch and follow thy behest, great god of love. If this is not great poetry, it is at least one of the most perfect specimens of conventional erotic verse in all ancient literature. If we except a very few of the best poems of Propertius, Latin Elegiacs have nothing to show that combines such perfection of form with such exquisite sensuous charm. It breathes the fragrance of the Greek anthology. The general impression left by the poetical work of Petronius is curiously unlike that left by any Latin poet. Sometimes dull, he is never eccentric; without the originality of the greatest artists, he has all the artist's sensibility for form. He writes not as one inspired, but as one steeped in the best literature. Many were greater stylists, but few were endowed with such an exquisite sense of style. As a poet he is a _dilettante_, and his claim to greatness lies in the brilliant and audacious humour of his 'picaresque novel'. But his verse at its best has a charm and fragrance of its own that is almost unique in Latin, and reveals a combination of grace and facility, to find a parallel for which among writers of the post-Augustan age we must turn to the pages of Martial. CHAPTER VI MINOR POETRY, 14-70 A.D. I DIDACTIC POETRY Only two didactic poems of this period have survived, the poem of Columella on gardening, and the anonymous work on Mount Etna, setting forth a theory of volcanic action. i THE 'AETNA'