“What you say,” replied Publius, “sounds convincing, but it is still not perfectly clear to me; no doubt because I learned at an early age to prefer deeds to words.  I find it more easy to reconcile my mind to your painful and minute labors when I reflect that to you is entrusted the restoration of the literal tenor of laws, whose full meaning might be lost by a verbal error; or that wrong information might be laid before me as to one single transaction in the life of a friend or of a blood-relation, and it might lie with me to clear him of mistakes and misinterpretation.”

“And what are the works of the great singers of the deeds of the heroes-of the writers of past history, but the lives of our fathers related either with veracious exactness or with poetic adornments?” cried Aristarchus.  “It is to these that my king and companion in study devotes himself with particular zeal.”

“When he is neither drinking, nor raving, nor governing, nor wasting his time in sacrificing and processions,” interpolated Euergetes.  “If I had not been a king perhaps I might have been an Aristarchus; as it is I am but half a king—­since half of my kingdom belongs to you, Philometor—­and but half a student; for when am I to find perfect quiet for thinking and writing?  Everything, everything in me is by halves, for I, if the scale were to turn in my favor”—­and here he struck his chest and his forehead, “I should be twice the man I am.  I am my whole real self nowhere but at high festivals, when the wine sparkles in the cup, and bright eyes flash from beneath the brows of the flute-players of Alexandria or Cyrene—­ sometimes too perhaps in council when the risk is great, or when there is something vast and portentous to be done from which my brother and you others, all of you, would shrink—­nay perhaps even the Roman.  Aye! so it is—­and you will learn to know it.”

Euergetes had roared rather than spoken the last words; his cheeks were flushed, his eyes rolled, while he took from his head both the garland of flowers and the golden fillet, and once more pushed his fingers through his hair.

His sister covered her ears with her hands, and said:  “You positively hurt me!  As no one is contradicting you, and you, as a man of culture, are not accustomed to add force to your assertions, like the Scythians, by speaking in a loud tone, you would do well to save your metallic voice for the further speech with which it is to be hoped you will presently favor us.  We have had to bow more than once already to the strength of which you boast—­but now, at a merry feast, we will not think of that, but rather continue the conversation which entertained us, and which had begun so well.  This eager defence of the interests which most delight the best of the Hellenes in Alexandria may perhaps result in infusing into the mind of our friend Publius Scipio—­and through him into that of many young Romans—­a proper esteem for a line of intellectual effort which he could not have condemned had he not failed to understand it perfectly.