“Zeus and Hera!” repeated Cornelia, laughing.  “You silly Graecule.[73] You may talk about that misbehaved pair, who were anything but harmonious and loving, if Homer tells truly.  I prefer our own Juppiter and our Juno of the Aventine. They are a staid and home-keeping couple, worth imitating, if we are to imitate any celestials.  But nothing Greek for me.”

  [73] Contemptuous diminutive for Greek.

“Intolerant, intolerant,” retorted Drusus, “we are all Greek, we Romans of to-day—­what is left of old Latium but her half-discarded language, her laws worse than discarded, perverted, her good pilum[74] which has not quite lost its cunning, and her—­”

  [74] The heavy short javelin carried by the Roman legionary, only
  about six feet long.  In practised hands it was a terrible weapon,
  and won many a Roman victory.

“Men,” interrupted Cornelia, “such as you!”

“And women,” continued Drusus, “such as you!  Ah!  There is something left of Rome after all.  We are not altogether fallen, unworthy of our ancestors.  Why shall we not be merry?  A Greek would say that it was always darkest before Eos leaves the couch of Tithonus,[75] and who knows that our Helios is not soon to dawn and be a long, long time ere his setting?  I feel like throwing formality to the winds, crying ‘Iacchos evoe,’ and dancing like a bacchanal, and singing in tipsy delight,—­

  [75] The “rosy-fingered Dawn” of Homer; Tithonos was her consort.

  “’Oh, when through the long night,
    With fleet foot glancing white,
  Shall I go dancing in my revelry,
    My neck cast back, and bare
    Unto the dewy air,
  Like sportive faun in the green meadow’s glee?’[76]

  [76] Milman, translator.

as old Euripides sings in his ‘Bacchae.’  Yes, the Hellenes were right when they put nymphs in the forest and in the deep.  Only our blind practical Latin eyes will not see them.  We will forget that we are Romans; we will build for ourselves some cosey little Phaeacia up in the Sabine hills beside some lake; and there my Sappho shall also be my Nausicaa to shine fair as a goddess upon her distressed and shipwrecked Odysseus.”

“Yes,” said Cornelia, smiling, “a delightful idyl; but Odysseus would not stay with Nausicaa.”

“I was wrong,” replied Drusus, as they walked arm in arm out from the portico, and down the broad avenue of stately shade trees.  “You shall be the faithful Penelope, who receives back her lord in happiness after many trials.  Your clever Agias can act as Telemachus for us.”

“But the suitors whom Odysseus must slay?” asked Cornelia, entering into the fun.

“Oh, for them,” said Drusus, lightly, “we need not search far.  Who other than Ahenobarbus?”

II