“That almost sounds,” said Balbilla laughing and pointing to her abundant locks, “as if I especially needed to conceal what is covered by my hair.”

“Even the Lesbian swan was called the fair-haired,” replied Florus.

“And you are our Sappho,” said the praetor’s wife, drawing the girl’s arm to her bosom.

“Really! and will you not write in verse all that you have seen to-day?” asked the Empress.

Balbilla looked down on the ground a minute and then said brightly:  “It might inspire me, everything strange that I meet with prompts me to write verse.”

“But follow the counsel of Apollonius the philologer,” advised Florus.  “You are the Sappho of our day, and therefore you should write in the ancient Aeolian dialect and not Attic Greek.”  Verus laughed, and the Empress, who never was strongly moved to laughter, gave a short sharp giggle, but Balbilla said eagerly: 

“Do you think that I could not acquire it and do so?  To-morrow morning I will begin to practise myself in the old Aeolian forms.”

“Let it alone,” said Domitia Lucilla; “your simplest songs are always the prettiest.”

“No one shall laugh at me!” declared Balbilla pertinaciously.  “In a few weeks I will know how to use the Aeolian dialect, for I can do anything I am determined to do—­anything, anything.”

“What a stubborn little head we have under our curls!” exclaimed the Empress, raising a graciously threatening finger.

“And what powers of apprehension,” added Florus.

“Her master in language and metre told me his best pupil was a woman of noble family and a poetess besides—­Balbilla in short.”

The girl colored at the words, and said with pleased excitement: 

“Are you flattering me or did Hephaestion really say that?”

“Woe is me!” cried the praetor, “for Hephaestion was my master too, and I am one of the masculine scholars beaten by Balbilla.  But it is no news to me, for the Alexandrian himself told me the same thing as Florus.”

“You follow Ovid and she Sappho,” said Florus; “you write in Latin and she in Greek.  Do you still always carry Ovid’s love-poems about with you?”

“Always,” replied Verus, “as Alexander did his Homer.”

“And out of respect for his master your husband endeavors, by the grace of Venus, to live like him,” added Sabina, addressing herself to Domitia Lucilla.

The tall and handsome Roman lady only shrugged her shoulders slightly in answer to this not very kindly-meant speech; but Verus said, while he picked up Sabina’s silken coverlet, and carefully spread it over her knees: 

“My happiest fortune consists in this:  that Venus Victrix favors me.  But we are not yet at the end of our story; our Lesbian swan met at Lochias with another rare bird, an artist in statuary.”

“How long have the sculptors been reckoned among birds?” asked Sabina.  “At the utmost can they be compared to woodpeckers.”