[74]
Ask your own intimate
friend, that Greek poet; he will recognise and approve of such a figure of
speech, and he will not wonder that you have no taste.
“But” says he, “I cannot digest that other
sentence either: “
The soldier's bays shall yield to true renown.
”” Indeed, I am much obliged to you; for I, too, should stick at that, if you had not released me. For when you, frightened and trembling, threw down at the Esquiline gate the bays which with your own most thievish hands you had stripped off from your blood-stained fasces, you showed that those bays were granted not only to the highest but even to the very paltriest degree of glory. And yet, by this argument you try, O you wretch, to make out that Pompeius was made an enemy to me by that verse; so that, if my verse has injured me, the injury may appear to have been sought for me by that man whom that verse offended.
”” Indeed, I am much obliged to you; for I, too, should stick at that, if you had not released me. For when you, frightened and trembling, threw down at the Esquiline gate the bays which with your own most thievish hands you had stripped off from your blood-stained fasces, you showed that those bays were granted not only to the highest but even to the very paltriest degree of glory. And yet, by this argument you try, O you wretch, to make out that Pompeius was made an enemy to me by that verse; so that, if my verse has injured me, the injury may appear to have been sought for me by that man whom that verse offended.