The room was Septemberishly still and clear. Outside a rider trotted past on his horse, most likely one of the Imperial messengers. The hoof-beats clattered sharply on the pavement, then the four-four rhythm ebbed off into the distant city noises. A woman called something from somewhere; it sounded like the name of a child.

Suddenly, with long and measured steps, Plotius began to pace the room, backward and forward, trailing a lap of his toga behind him, and suddenly he shouted: “If you want to die, well, that’s your own affair, we will not prevent you from doing it, but for a long time now the Aeneid has not been your affair, so get that out of your head …” And something savage gleamed in his small, fat-sunken eyes.

It was significant that Plotius bore himself so wildly, for there had existed with him for years a silent convention, even though mutually not quite accredited, that their hour-long conversations on the harvest and the cattle were far more important than all the discourses on artistic and scientific themes that had been carried on in the presence of Lucius and Maecenas and the many others comprising their circle. And it was a refutation of that convention for Plotius to attach so much importance to the existence or non-existence of the Aeneid; it was a refutation of that bit of good conscience, embodied for him in the person of the country-nobleman, Plotius Tucca, and was therefore not to be tolerated: “The world is neither richer nor poorer for a few verses, on that we were always agreed, Plotius.”

Lucius shook his head earnestly: “You must not call the Aeneid a few verses!”

“What else is it?”

At that Plotius laughed, actually it was a forced laughter, but nonetheless, it was laughter: “Obtaining praise through modesty is an old vice of poets, Virgil, and as long as a person pursues old vices, there is nothing to fear for him.”

And Lucius added: “Do you really want to hear it again? Do you not know better than any other that the greatness of Rome and the greatness of your poem can no longer be divorced from each other?”

A kind of dismay arose in him and became apparent: these two did not want to understand what a boy had grasped, but the finality of his decision, once taken, was not to be disturbed, and this had to be brought home to them: “Nothing unreal is allowed to survive.”

It had been formally, firmly and sententiously said, and now Lucius seemed to comprehend what it was leading to: “So in your opinion, both the Iliad and the Odyssey should also be called unreal—oh, divine Homer! And how does it stand with Aeschylus and Euripides? Are these not reality? how many names, how many works shall I still quote you, all of them of immortal reality?”

“For instance Thyestes or the Caesar-epic of a certain Lucius Varius,” Plotius could not refrain from adding, and his laughter was again that of a kind, fat man.

Lucius, touched on his most sensitive spot, smiled a little sourly. “The seventeen performances of the Thyestes are certainly no proof of its eternal validity, but …”

“… but it will outlive the Trojan Women … don’t you think so too, Virgil? … now, you are laughing, I am glad that you can laugh again.”

Yes, he was laughing; but he was not able to laugh properly; his chest gave him too much pain and he was even ashamed of this laughter that fed itself on Lucius’ embarrassment, unconcerned that it was really he who had wanted to defend the immortal worth of the Aeneid, and so for this reason it was imperative to return to seriousness: “Homer was the proclaimer of the gods, he lives on in their reality.”

Without bitterness for the laughter directed against him, Lucius answered: “And you are the proclaimer of Rome, you survive in Rome’s reality, you will live as long as Rome endures—forever.”

Forever? He felt the ring on his finger, he felt his body, he felt the past. “No,” he said. “Nothing earthly is eternal, nor Rome either.”

“You yourself have exalted Rome into the divine.”

This was true and not true. What was Lucius talking about? Was this not like the table-talk at Maecenas’s, gliding over the surface, scarcely touching on reality? Darkness was about him as he said: “Within the earthbound, nothing becomes divine; I have adorned Rome, and what I have done has no more worth than the statues in the gardens of Maecenas. Rome does not live by the grace of the artists … the statuary will be torn down, the Aeneid will be burnt …”

Plotius, who would gladly have gone on laughing, stopped in his tracks. “When one considers what these master-artists have patched together recently, you have reserved a nice bit of sanitation for the years to come … what a lot there will be to be burned and cast down … a lifework for a Hercules, that’s what you’ve been planning for yourself …”

The conception of this great work of disposal reacted on Lucius with surprising exhilaration; his dignified author’s face started to fold into merry wrinkles, and he was unable even to continue with the conversation, so much did the picture of a general book-burning amuse him. “The two Sossii have acquired the publishing rights for the Carmen Saeculare from Horace and they will lose a good bit of money on that if you intend to burn his writings as well … and, of course, Horace may not be excluded.”

“Horace sent me some farewell verses to the boat when I left for Athens.”

“That’s the sort of thing,” Plotius supported Lucius so boisterously that one might think they wanted in this way to drown out the sound of death. “That’s just it, and just that is his sin, and that is why his iambics and his odes, in fact everything that he has perpetrated, must perish …”

Actually, why had Horace sent these lovely verses of congratulation to the boat? Had he wished in this way to soothe his own jealousy of the Aeneid? A jealous friend, but still a friend?

But Lucius considered: “One ought to leave the choice to me; Horace I would spare, he is really gifted … but I would clear out all the mediocrity, all this mediocrity that has come up and is constantly on the increase … what decay, what degeneration! No more eloquence, no more theater, no more art … in truth we are the last, and nothing will come after us … that is why there must be a clean sweep, and it is going to be terrific!” Again he was possessed by laughter.

“Laughing in the dome of death as, turned into stone, he descended into the shimmering sea!”

Lucius stopped short. “A wonderful verse, Virgil, say on, or better still, write it down.”

From what unfathomable depth had this line of verse emerged? whence had it come? yet now it pleased him too, and the appreciation of Lucius did him good, although it was not the beauty of the verses that should be praised; no, beauty in itself was never the important thing, but something of a different nature, something greater, something in truth was deserving of praise, and of praise desirous. Oh, now he knew it, now, for the first time, he knew what it was! True esteem could only be an acknowledgment of the verse’s meaning, an acknowledgment of that which rose beyond it, the unachievable full reality, which disclosed its preciousness when a word penetrated to it without rebounding from its stony, smooth surface: he who praised a verse as such, without troubling about the reality of its meaning, confused the thing created with that which creates, became consciously or unconsciously guilty of the perjury which denies or destroys reality, became the accomplice of all perjurers. Oh, the enormous mountain-crag of reality, impervious and opposed to all invasion, permitting at most the outward touch; oh, the enormous crags of reality, over their pathless surface man could only creep along, clinging to the surface, constantly falling, constantly in threat of the fall. Lucius knew nothing of falling; to him surface and reality were one. Oh, craggy mountains of reality, rearing enormous, although rooted in the very depths, impenetrable, with sheer smooth sides; yet creatively opened, and the stumbler dashes into the opened shaft.

Plotius shifted his arms like a rower, resting himself: “Agreed, so let Horace be spared and go on writing … and you, you will do the same, even if you should burn everything; for of course you would continue to write …”

Horace! Yes, he had fought as a soldier for Rome, he had offered himself as a sacrifice that Rome might exist, and that was also the reason for the surprising and repeated outbreaks of reality in his poetry. Not even Plotius realized it, not even he realized how irreplaceable to the poet was the serving deed. “Oh Plotius, the serving deed in its reality … without it there is no poetry.”

“Aeneas,” affirmed Lucius, while Plotius only nodded.

Aeschylus fought as an infantryman at Marathon and Salamis, Publius Vergilius Maro had never fought for anything.

Yet, warmly encouraging him, Plotius spun out his musing: “Besides you have to keep on writing, because before you burn it, the Aeneid must be finished … one does not burn something unfinished, and in a few months, even weeks, you will have got this little piece of work behind you … so even though you may be in haste to die, you must still hold out that little bit longer.”

To finish? To have finished? verily he had finished nothing. What significance had the Aeneid in comparison with a truthful history of Rome like the one Sallustus had written, or even in comparison with the grand scale of that work on which Livy was now engaged? what were the Georgics compared to the real knowledge which that most learned of all scholars, the most honorable Terentius Varro, had dedicated to Roman agriculture?! Compared to such achievements there was nothing that could be finished; whatever he may have written, whatever was left to be written, all this had to remain as unfinished. For, of a surety, Terentius Varro, like Gaius Sallustus, had actually served the Roman State in sober reality whereas Publius Vergilius Maro had never served anyone.

And as if to settle the question, Plotius affirmed: “Oh Virgil, you have only been able to write the Aeneid, just so far have your faculties sufficed, but don’t flatter yourself that you are able to comprehend it. Nor do you know anything of its reality or that of the man Virgil; you know them both only from hearsay.” And folding his hands over his abdomen, he seated himself again in the easy chair near the window.

The man Virgil! Certainly, he lay here, and this was his reality, nothing else. And the reality was that he had been endowed, fed, and kept by Asinius Pollio and by Augustus—they who had fought for Rome, who served Rome, they who had established and maintained the existence of Rome by what they were and what they did. They were the ones who paid him for the shallow enhancement of their works, and they did not even realize what trash they had paid for. That is what the reality of Publius Vergilius Maro looked like. And he said: “I shall not finish the Aeneid.”

Then Lucius smiled: “Do you want someone else to finish it for you?”

“No!” he burst forth, full of apprehension that Lucius would offer himself for the job.

Lucius smiled now quite broadly: “That’s what I thought … and so you must really know that you are still in arrears to us, and to art …”

In arrears? To be sure! He had been in arrears, he was still in arrears—already there below in Misery Street they had known of his arrears—, aye, in himself he was in arrears to existence; however, nothing more could be collected from him. Beyond reach of the glance, he saw the sea before him, spread out to the horizon like liquid quartz, carrying the sun in its azure shimmer, seeming in its luminous, gigantic depths like a yawning mountain summit which, ready to take on and to bear, swallowed all reality in itself and gave it forth again day and night in a brazen booming; and as this brazen surf rose up and subsided he heard the symbol of the voice issue from it, the voice swelling and fading, the symbol of all reality: “What I have written must be consumed by the fire of reality,” he said.

“Since when do you draw a line between reality and truth?” interposed Lucius, ready as always for a discussion, moving up a little pretentiously to begin new arguments: “Epicurus says that …”

Plotius cut short his words: “Epicurus may say what he wants, we two will see to it that the Aeneid is not consumed by any touch of reality.”

But Lucius was not so easily halted: “Beauty and truth are one with reality …”

“Even so,” admitted Plotius peacefully.

Sharper grew the morning light, more azure the sky in the window frame, blacker the root-like branching of the candelabrum in front of it. Without rising, Plotius with a few shoves pushed himself with his chair out of the sunny region of the alcove into the cooler shadows of the room. Why were these two determined not to grasp the true reality? Why did they, who for thirty long years had been his devout familiars, need to come here only to become unfamiliar and strange to him? It was as if a sharper light were penetrating the spheres of existence ever more acutely, as if the surfaces of existence and the reality of existence took on more perceptible distinctness, and it was incomprehensible that everyone should not crave the veritable reality.