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Updated: June 26, 2025
By the two friends above mentioned, he was recommended to the patronage not only of Mecaenas, but of Augustus, with whom he, as well as Virgil, lived on a footing of the greatest intimacy. Satisfied with the luxury which he enjoyed at the first tables in Rome, he was so unambitious of any public employment, that when the emperor offered him the place of his secretary, he declined it.
So were the great baths of Titus, Caracalla, and Diocletian, the villa of Hadrian, the city walls, the villa of Mecaenas at Tivoli, and most of the palaces of the nobility, although, like many of the temples, they were faced with stone. The Colosseum was of travertine, a cheap white limestone, and faced with marble.
How, therefore, was he my Mecaenas? In what manner was I protected by him? This was incomprehensible to me, and still remains so. It is true, he was more or less arrogant with everybody, but I was the only person with whom he was brutally so.
There was the retirement of Horace and Mecaenas: there Brutus forgot his harsher genius; and there the inscrutable and profound Augustus indulged in those graceful relaxations-those sacrifices to wit, and poetry, and wisdom which have made us do so unwilling and reserved a justice to the crimes of his earlier and the hypocrisy of his later years.
Besides many pretty minor cascades, I saw a number of ruins; the most remarkable among these was the villa of Mecaenas. November 23d. At six o'clock this morning I commenced my journey to Florence with a Veturino. Almost the whole distance the weather was in the highest degree unfavourable it was foggy, rainy, and very cold.
I believe he went straight home and wrote an epistle to Mecaenas, or whatever the man's name was, asking how it comes about that people who travel hundreds of miles to see things can never see what is all the time under their noses. In fact, I saw him take out his note-book and begin making notes at once. He need not talk.
It was at this period that he formed the notion of being at once a political leader and a Mecaenas; and it was at this period that he became acquainted with both his daughters, and determined that his Julia should never resemble the Lady Sarah. He saw his own genius in Julia; and he resolved, as he said, to give her fair play, and to make her one of the wonders of the age.
There, too, his eunuchs about him, Mecaenas lounged, companioned by Varus, by Horace and the mime Bathylle, all of whom he was accustomed to invite to that lovely villa of his which overlooked the blue Sabinian hills, and where suppers were given such as those which Petronius has described so alertly and so well.
"Look here," said Glanville, "are two works, one of poetry one on the Catholic Question both dedicated to me. Seymour my waistcoat. See what it is to furnish a house differently from other people; one becomes a bel esprit, and a Mecaenas, immediately. Believe me, if you are rich enough to afford it, that there is no passport to fame like eccentricity. Seymour my coat. I am at your service, Pelham.
How, therefore, was he my Mecaenas? In what manner was I protected by him? This was incomprehensible to me, and still remains so. It is true, he was more or less arrogant with everybody, but I was the only person with whom he was brutally so.
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