'Oh, my Athenian, my Glaucus, you have come to hear my ode! That is indeed an honour; you, a Greek--to whom the very language of common life is poetry.

How I thank you.

It is but a trifle; but if I secure your approbation, perhaps I may get an introduction to Titus.

Oh, Glaucus! a poet without a patron is an amphora without a label; the wine may be good, but nobody will laud it! And what says Pythagoras?
--"Frankincense to the gods, but praise to man." A patron, then, is the poet's priest: he procures him the incense, and obtains him his believers.' 'But all Pompeii is your patron, and every portico an altar in your praise.' 'Ah! the poor Pompeians are very civil--they love to honour merit.

But they are only the inhabitants of a petty town--spero meliora! Shall we within ?' 'Certainly; we lose time till we hear your poem.' At this instant there was a rush of some twenty persons from the baths into the portico; and a slave stationed at the door of a small corridor now admitted the poet, Glaucus, Clodius, and a troop of the bard's other friends, into the passage.
'A poor place this, compared with the Roman thermae!' said Lepidus, disdainfully.
'Yet is there some taste in the ceiling,' said Glaucus, who was in a mood to be pleased with everything; pointing to the stars which studded the roof.
Lepidus shrugged his shoulders, but was too languid to reply.
They now entered a somewhat spacious chamber, which served for the purposes of the apodyterium (that is, a place where the bathers prepared themselves for their luxurious ablutions).