By Water & Blood

Chapter 2: Decius Asks About the Banquet

"As I try, Postumianus, your approaches and the softest times for consulting, the holidays which a great part of the month dedicated to Janus grants conveniently present themselves. For on nearly all the other days that are suitable for pleading causes, absolutely no hour can be found when you are not either defending your clients' business in the forum or studying it at home. But now—for I know that you keep holiday not in play but in earnest—if it is convenient to answer what I come to ask, you will do, as I judge, something not unpleasant to yourself, and to me most welcome. I ask of you this first: whether you were present at the banquet renewed through several days with continuous courtesy, and at that conversation which you are said to proclaim foremost and to adorn among all with the greatest praises? Which indeed I should have heard from my father, had he not, after those banquets, left Rome and been staying at Naples; but I was lately present among others admiring the powers of your memory, as you often related in order everything that was then said."

"This one thing, Decius, has seemed to us best in every course of life—as you yourself, so far as your youth allows, could see, and could hear from your father Albinus—that as much as it was permitted to cease from the defense of causes, so much we should bring to some gathering and conversation of learned men and of those like yourself. For a rightly trained mind cannot rest more usefully or more honorably anywhere than in some opportunity of conversing learnedly and liberally, and in the courtesy of asking and answering. But what banquet is that? Or is there no doubt that you mean the one that lately took place among the most learned of the nobles and the rest at Vettius Praetextatus's, and which a welcome succession, running afterward among the rest, varied?"

"About this very one I come to inquire, and I would have you explain what sort of banquet that was—from which I do not think you were absent, on account of everyone's singular friendship toward you."

"I should indeed have wished it, and it would not, as I judge, have been unwelcome to them; but since there were several causes of friends that I had to examine thoroughly in those days, when then invited to dinner I answered that that time for me was for meditating, not for eating, and I urged them rather to seek another man wrapped in no business and free from care. And so it was done. For Praetextatus ordered to be invited in my place a fluent and learned man, Eusebius the rhetor, outstanding among the Greeks above all who profess the same in our age, and not unacquainted with Latin learning."

"Whence then are those things known to you which, as I hear, were brought forth and arranged so pleasantly and courteously for the training of life, with examples most abundant in matter and with a richness of varied learning?"

"When on the solstitial day that followed the feast of the Saturnalia at which those banquets were celebrated I was at home free from forensic care and of a more cheerful mind, Eusebius came there with a few of his followers and at once, his face beaming, said: 'I confess myself bound to you, Postumianus, by very great gratitude, both for other reasons and especially for this, that by asking leave of Praetextatus you cleared a place for me at dinner. And so I understand that not only your zeal but fortune herself also, that some convenience may come to me from you, consents and breathes favorably.' 'Do you wish,' I said, 'to restore to us what you so kindly and so willingly confess is owed, and to lead this leisure of ours—which we are rarely enough allowed to enjoy—to this, that we may now seem to be present at those things at which you then were present?' 'I will do as you wish,' he said. 'I will narrate to you not food or drink—though those too were present abundantly and chastely—but also, as far as I can, I will recall in mind what was said by the same men through so many days, either at the banquets or especially away from the table.' And when I heard these things, I seemed to myself to approach the life of those who are called blessed by the wise: for both what was said among them the day before he arrived I learned through Avienus's introducing it to me, and I committed everything to writing, lest forgetfulness steal anything away. If you desire to hear these from me, beware of thinking that one day is enough for relating what was said through so many days."

"What conversation then, and among whom, or whence arisen, did he say it was, Postumianus? Thus I am present as an untiring hearer."

Then he: "As the day was declining toward evening which the Saturnalian feast was about to follow," he said, "when Vettius Praetextatus was giving opportunity at his house to those eager to assemble, there came Aurelius Symmachus and Caecina Albinus, most closely joined to one another both in age and also in character and studies. Servius, who had lately professed himself a teacher among the grammarians, wonderful in learning and lovable in modesty, followed them looking at the ground and as if like one hiding. When Praetextatus had seen them and gone to meet them and greeted them most courteously, he turned to Rufius Albinus, who then happened to be present with Avienus: 'Do you wish, my Albinus,' he said, 'that with these men whom you see have arrived most opportunely, and whom we may rightly call the lights of our city, we share that matter about which conversation had begun to arise among us?' 'Why should I not wish it most of all?' said Albinus; 'for conversation about no other thing than learned questions can be more pleasant either to us or to them.' And when they had sat down, then Caecina: 'What that is, my Praetextatus, although I do not yet know, yet I ought not to doubt that it is most excellent to know, since it has both brought you a cause for conversing and you do not allow us to be without a share in it.' 'And yet you ought to know that that conversation among us was this: since tomorrow will give a beginning to the festivals dedicated to Saturn, when we should say the Saturnalia begin—that is, when we should judge that tomorrow's day takes its beginning. And among ourselves we have indeed tasted a little of this dispute; but because it is better known than that you could deny it through modesty that you investigate whatever lies hidden in books, I wish you to go on and bring into the open whatever has been taught you and grasped by you about this which we ask.'"