_I lay these garlands, Critias sweet, And this my song before thy feet; Song to thyself I dedicate, Wreaths to the Angel of thy fate. The song I send to hymn the praise Of this, the best of all glad days, Whereon the circling seasons bring The glory of thy fourteenth spring; The garlands, that thy brows may shine With splendour worthy spring's and thine, That thou in boyhood's golden hours Mayst deck the flower of life with flowers. Wherefore for these bright blooms of spring Thy springtide sweet surrendering, The tribute of my love repay And all my gifts with thine outweigh. Surpass the twined garland's grace With arms entwined in soft embrace; The crimson of the rose eclipse With kisses from thy rosy lips. Or if thou wilt, be this my meed And breathe thy soul into the reed; Then shall my songs be shamed and mute Before the music of thy flute._ 10. These are the verses, Maximus, which they throw in my teeth, as though they were the work of an infamous rake and had lover's garlands and serenades for their theme. You must have noticed also that in this connexion they further attack me for calling these boys Charinus and Critias, which are not their true names. On this principle they may as well accuse Caius Catullus for calling Clodia Lesbia, Ticidas for substituting the name Perilla for that of Metella, Propertius for concealing the name Hostia beneath the pseudonym of Cynthia, and Tibullus for singing of Delia in his verse, when it was Plania who ruled his heart. For my part I should rather blame Caius Lucilius, even allowing him all the license of a satiric poet, for prostituting to the public gaze the boys Gentius and Macedo, whose real names he mentions in his verse without any attempt at concealment. How much more reserved is Mantua's poet, who, when like myself he praised the slave-boy of his friend Pollio in one of his light pastoral poems, shrinks from mentioning real names and calls himself Corydon and the boy Alexis. But Aemilianus, whose rusticity far surpasses that of the shepherds and cowherds of Vergil, who is, in fact, and always has been a boor and a barbarian, though he thinks himself far more austere than Serranus, Curius, or Fabricius, those heroes of the days of old, denies that such verses are worthy of a philosopher who is a follower of Plato. Will you persist in this attitude, Aemilianus, if I can show that my verses were modelled upon Plato? For the only verses of Plato now extant are love-elegies, the reason, I imagine, being that he burned all his other poems because they were inferior in charm and finish. Listen then to the verses written by Plato in honour of the boy Aster, though I doubt if at your age it is possible for you to learn to appreciate literature: