‘“Filled the grim horns with Mimallonean buzz”’--
repeated Lucan. ‘How energetic! how picturesque!’
‘He is laughing at you in his sleeve, Cæsar,’ whispered Tigellinus; ‘and he thinks his own most impromptu line far superior.’
Lucan did not overhear the remark, and he proceeded to quote and praise the three lines on the river Tigris, which
‘“Deserts the Persian realms he loved to lave, And to non-seekers shows his sought-for wave.”
‘Of course they will,’ said Tigellinus, ‘long after your poems are forgotten.’
The young poet only shrugged his shoulders, and turned on the adventurer a glance of disdain. Petronius, however, who disliked and despised Tigellinus, was now thoroughly disgusted by his malignity, and did not hesitate to express his contempt. ‘Tigellinus,’ he said. ‘if you are so rude I shall ask Cæsar to dismiss you. What nonsense on your part to pretend to know anything about poetry! You know even less than Calvisius Sabinus, who confounds Achilles with Ulysses, and has bought ten slaves who know all the poets by heart to prompt him when he makes a mistake.’[40]
Tigellinus reddened with anger, but he did not venture to reply.
‘For my part,’ said Senecio, ‘I prefer the line
‘“Thou who didst chine the long-ribb’d Apennine,”
not to speak of the fine effect of the spondaic, there is the daring image.’
‘There is something finer than both,’ said Petronius, and he quoted a line of real beauty which Seneca has preserved for us in his ‘Natural Questions,’ and in which Nero describes the ruffled iridescence of a dove’s neck:
‘Fair Cytherea’s startled doves illume With sheeny lustre every glancing plume.’[41]
‘Many,’ said the polished courtier, ‘have seen the mingled amethyst and emerald on the necks of doves and peacocks, but it has been reserved for Cæsar to describe it.’
Somehow or other, in spite of all they said, Nero was not satisfied. He had an uneasy misgiving that all of them except Petronius--whom he knew to be genuinely good-natured--were only fooling him to the top of his bent. Not that this misgiving at all disturbed his conceit. He was convinced that he was a first-rate poet, as well as a first-rate singer and lyrist, and indeed a first-rate artist in all respects. It was the thing of which he was most proud, and if these people were only _pretending_ to recognise his enormous merits, that was simply the result of their jealousy.