He may look in upon a party of carousing friends, with banter that is
not without reproof. We find him lionized in the homes of the first men
of the city in peace and war, where he mystifies the not too
intellectual fair guests with graceful and provokingly passionless
gallantry. He sits at ease with greater enjoyment under the opaque vine
and trellis of his own garden. He appears in the midst of his household
as it bustles with preparation for the birthday feast of a friend, or he
welcomes at a less formal board and with more unrestrained joy the
beloved comrade-in-arms of Philippi, prolonging the genial intercourse

"T_ill Phoebus the red East unbars_
A_nd puts to rout the trembling stars_."

Or we see him bestride an indifferent nag, cantering down the Appian
Way, with its border of tombs, toward the towering dark-green summits of
the Alban Mount, twenty miles away, or climbing the winding white road
to Tivoli where it reclines on the nearest slope of the Sabines, and
pursuing the way beyond it along the banks of headlong Anio where it
rushes from the mountains to join the Tiber. We see him finally arrived
at his Sabine farm, the gift of Maecenas, standing in tunic-sleeves at
his doorway in the morning sun, and contemplating with thankful heart
valley and hill-side opposite, and the cold stream of Digentia in the
valley-bottom below. We see him rambling about the wooded uplands of his
little estate, and resting in the shade of a decaying rustic temple to
indite a letter to the friend whose not being present is all that keeps
him from perfect happiness. He participates with the near-by villagers
in the joys of the rural holiday. He mingles homely philosophy and
fiction with country neighbors before his own hearth in the big
living-room of the farm-house.