Subjects of Study
Plin. Fetch also my boy-scribe. For I should like to dictate something. Give me those reed-pens and two or three feather pens, those with thick stalk, and the sand-case. Bring me also from the chest the Cicero and Demosthenes, and from the desk, the book in which I make all my notes and important extracts. Do you hear? And my extemporaneous MS. book in which I will polish up some passages.
Dyd. I believe the MS. book is not in the desk but in the chest, locked up.
Plin. Do you yourself search for it. And bring me the Nazianzenus.
Dyd. I don’t know it.
Plin. The book is of slight thickness, sewn together and roughly bound in parchment. Bring also the volume, the fifth from the end.
Dyd. What is its title?
Plin. Xenophon’s Commentaries. The book is in finished style. It is bound in leather with fastenings and knobs of copper.
Dyd. I don’t find it.
Plin. Now I remember. I put it in the fourth case. Fetch it. In the same case there are only loose sheets and rough books just as they have come straight from the press.
Dyd. Which volume of Cicero do you want, for there are four?
Plin. The second.
Epict. It is not yet back from the book-gluer, who had it, I believe, five days ago to glue.
Dyd. How do you like that pen?
Plin. On that point I am not very particular; whatever comes into my hand I use it as if it were good.
Dyd. You have learned that from Cicero.
Plin. You just be quiet. Open me the Cicero. Look me up three or four pages of the Tusculan Questions. Seek the passages on gentleness and joy.
Epict. Whose verses are these?
Plin. They are his own translations of Sophocles. This he does with keen pleasure and therefore often.
Epict. He was, I think, sufficiently apt in writing verses.
Dyd. Most apt and facile, and, for his time, not unhappy in his verse, contrary to what very many think.
Epict. But wherefore hast thou left off pursuing the art of poetry?