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Updated: June 17, 2025
Balbilla contradicted him with gay vivacity, protested against his desire to play the part of lady's maid, and defended her style of hair-dressing on the score of fashion. "But the fashion is ugly, monstrous, a pain to one's eyes!" cried Pollux. "Some vain Roman lady must have invented it, not to make herself beautiful, but to be conspicuous."
The Empress bowed her thanks again and again to the praetor with much affability, and then said, with a slight infusion of cheerfulness in her tones: "Well and what is there to be seen at Lochias?" "Wonderful things," answered Balbilla readily and clasping her little hands. "A swarm of bees, a colony of ants, have taken possession of the palace.
"Yes indeed, you are the principal architect of the city; Titianus, from whom we have heard of you, has told us great things of you; but how am I to account for your special interest in me?" "It is my duty to serve you if necessary, even with my life." "You," said Balbilla, puzzled. "But I never saw you till yesterday."
"But often," retorted the praetor, "Eros proves to be a substitute for that unhappy friend of the gods." "The true or the sham Eros," asked Balbilla testily. "Certainly not the sham Eros," replied Verus. "On this occasion he merely plays the part of a kindly monitor, taking the place of Pontius, the architect, of whom your worthy matron-companion is so much afraid.
Balbilla had arrived at Lochias about noon, accompanied, as was fitting, by the worthy Claudia, the not wealthy widow of a senator, who for many years had filled the place of lady-in-attendance and protecting companion to the rich fatherless and motherless girl. At Rome, she conducted Balbilla's household affairs with as much sense and skill as satisfaction in the task.
Balbilla looked down on the ground a minute and then said brightly: "It might inspire me, everything strange that I meet with prompts me to write verse." "But follow the counsel of Apollonius the philologer," advised Florus. "You are the Sappho of our day, and therefore you should write in the ancient Aeolian dialect and not Attic Greek."
"This hour restores to the orphaned Balbilla, father and mother and gives her besides the husband that she loves." "Mine, mine!" cried the architect. "Immortal gods! During half a lifetime I have never found time, in the midst of labor and fatigue, to indulge in the joys of love and now you give me with interest and compound interest the treasure you have so long withheld."
"I must put in a word on behalf of Pontius the architect," interposed Verus. "He is a man of at least average height." "Let us admit it to satisfy your sense of justice," returned Balbilla. "Let us admit it a man of average height, with a papyrus-roll in his right-hand and a stylus in the left, controls them. Now, does my way of stating it please you better?"
"And she tried to improve in every bust all that particularly displeased her," continued Claudia. "I only began the work for the slaves to finish," Balbilla threw in, interrupting her companion. "Indeed, my people became quite expert in the work of destruction." "Then my work may, at any rate, hope for a short agony and speedy death," sighed Pollux.
Then turning with a very simple gesture to the bust before him he said: "Hapless clay, if the lovely lady whom thou art destined to resemble will not sacrifice the chaos of her curls, thy fate will undoubtedly be that of thy predecessors." The sleeping matron was roused by this speech. "You were speaking," she said, "of the broken busts of Balbilla?" "Yes," replied the poetess.
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