The weather was still extremely hot and the dinner hour was set late.  Even when Paulus and Gellius left the city the air was heavy and exhausting and never had the villa seemed to them more beautiful.  The great groves of cypresses and pines, of poplars and plane trees, were dark with the shadow of the moonless night.  In the broad pools the stars were reflected.  The birds were hushed, but the sound of cool, running water rang sweet in urban ears.  Within the dining-room an unhampered taste had done all that was possible to obliterate the memory of the scorching day.  A certain restraint in all the appointments perfected the sense of well-being.  As Paulus yielded to it and looked at his fellow guests, he drew a long breath of contentment.  How exquisite, he thought, was Greek life, how vivid the inspiration of this hour!

Conversation naturally turned at first to episodes of the Games and the successes of the victors; then by easy stages drifted to the discussion of the nature of success of any kind.

Alpheus of Mytilene, hailing, by how long an interval, from the city and the craft of the Lesbian Muse, turned to the host.  “Atticus,” he said, “here is an easy question for you.  Tell us how to succeed.”  All the guests paused expectantly, knowing that a chance question would sometimes lead Atticus into one of the vivid displays of extemporaneous oratory for which he was famous.  Nor were they disappointed now.  He looked at the company before him, men, for the most part, younger than himself.  A strange glow, as if from smouldering fires freshly stirred, brightened in his dark eyes, and he began to speak, impetuously.  His voice, low in its first haste, rose shrill with the tide of emotion, as he passed headlong over the barriers of logic and of form.

“You ask me about success because you think I have succeeded.  Do you know what the characteristic moment of my life was?  It was when, almost forty years ago, I failed in my first speech before divine Hadrian and sickened with chagrin.  Most of you are young and will not wonder, as I might now wonder at myself, that I stood by the Danube that night and nearly threw myself into the oblivious water.  Concrete failure is as palpable a thing as concrete success.  The one is like a golden cup which you turn in your hands and lift in the sunlight before you test at your lips the wine it holds.  The other is wormwood forced into your mouth.  Like wormwood, it may be cleansing.  My ‘success’ in my chosen profession, the fact that I have made great speeches, held high positions, acquired fame, is due to the inner sickness that night by the river.  You will find that the name of many a man of my age is in men’s mouths because at the outset Defeat became his trophy, the Gorgon’s head, despoiled by his first sword of hiss and venom.  So there, my friends, you have the rule you ask for—­fail once so ignominiously that you wish to die, and you may wrest from fate a brief name and the cloak of success.