I'll tell you why later. The truth ofthe matter, however, is that I honestly don't know whether I espied those cheekbones first and learned that my sepia-shaded target was from Leptis Magna second, or vice versa. For I'd seen a reproduction of that floor-mosaic likeness some time before. And I believed it was from Leptis Magna. I can't recall why or where. On the frontispiece of some Russian edition, perhaps? Or maybe it was a postcard. Main thing, it was from Leptis Magna and done in Virgil's lifetime, or shortly thereafter. So what I beheld in my dream was a somewhat familiar sight; the sensation itself wasn't so much that of beholding as that of recognition. Never mind the armpit muscle and the breast bustling in the bodice.
Or precisely because of that: because, in Latin, poetry is feminine. That's good for allegory, and what's good for allegory is good for the subconscious. And if the target of my affections stood—lay down, rather—for a body of Latin poetry, its high cheekbones could just as well resemble Virgil's, regardless ofhis own sexual preferences, ifonly because the body in my dream was from Leptis Magna. First, because Leptis Magna is a ruin, and every bedroom endeavor resembles a ruin, what with sheets, pillows, and the prone and jumbled limbs themselves. Second, because the very name "Leptis Magna" always struck me as being feminine, like Latin poetry, not to mention what I suppose it literally means. Which is, a great offering. Although my Latin stinks. But be that as it may, what is Latin poetry after all if not a great offering? Except that my reading, as you no doubt would charge, only ruins it. Well, hence this dream.
Let's avoid murky waters, Flaccus; let's not saddle ourselves with exploring whether dream can be reciprocal. Let me hope at least you won't proceed in a similar fashion about my own scribblings should you ever get acquainted with them. You won't pun about pen and penis, will you? And why shouldn't you get acquainted with my stuff quite apart from this letter. Reciprocity or no reciprocity, I see no reason why you, so capable of messing up my dreams, won't take the next step and interfere with my reality.
You do, as it is; if anything, my writing you this letter is the proof. But beyond that, you know full well that I've written to you, in a manner of speaking, before. Since everything I've written is, technically, addressed to you: you personally, as well as the rest of you. Because when one writes verse, one's most immediate audience is not one's own contemporaries, let alone posterity, but one's predecessors. Those who gave one a language, those who gave one forms. Frankly, you know that far better than I. Who wrote those asclepiadics, Sapphics, hexameters, and Alcaics, and who were their addressees? Caesar? Maecenas? Rufus? Varus? Lydias and Glycerias? Fat lot they knew about or cared for trochees and dactyls! And you were not aiming at me, either. No, you were appealing to Asclepiades, to Alcaeus and Sappho, to Homer himself. You wanted to be appreciated by them, first of all. For where is Caesar? Obviously in his palace or smiting the Scythians. And Maecenas is in his villa. Ditto Rufus and Varus. And Lydia is with a client and Gly- ceria is out of town. Whereas your beloved Greeks are right here, in your head, or should I say in your heart, for you no doubt knew them by heart. They were your best audience, since you could summon them at any moment. It's they you were trying to impress most of all. Never mind the foreign language. In fact, it's easier to impress them in Latin: in Greek, you wouldn't have the mother tongue's latitude. And they were talking back to you. Theywere saying, Yeah, we're impressed. That's why your lines are so twisted with en- jambments and qualifiers, that's whyyour argument is always so unpredictable. That's why you advise your grief-stricken pal to praise Augustus' triumphs.
So if you could do this to them, why can't I do that to you? The language difference at least is here; so one condition is being met. One way or the other, I've been responding to you, especially when I use iambic trimeters. And now I am following this up with a letter. Who knows, I may yet summon you here, you may yet materialize in the end even more than you've done already in my verses. For all I know, logaoedics with dactyls beat any old seance as a means of conjuring. In our line ofwork, this sort ofthing is called pastiche. Once the beat ofa classic enters one's system, its spirit moves in, too. And you are a classic, Flaccus, aren't you, in more ways than one, which alone would be complex enough.
And ultimately who else is there in this world one can talk to without revulsion, especially if one is ofa misanthropic disposition by nurture. It is for this reason, not vanity, that I hope you get acquainted with my iambs and trochees in some netherworldly manner. Stranger things have happened, and my pen at least has done its bit to that end. I'd much rather, of course, talk to Naso or Propertius, but with you I have more in common metrically. They stuck to elegiac couplets and hexameters; I seldom use those. So it's between you and me here, presumptuous as this may sound to everybody. But not to you. "All the literati keep I An imaginary friend," says Auden. Why should I be an exception?
At the very least, I can sit myself down in front of my mirror and talk to it. That would be fairly close, although I don't believe that you looked like me. But when it comes to the human appearance, nature, in the final analysis, doesn't have that many options. What are they? A pair of eyes, a mouth, a nose, an oval. For all their diversity, in two thousand years nature is bound to repeat itself. Even a God will. So I could easily claim that that face in the mirror is ultimately yours, that you are me. Who is there to check, and in what way? As conjuring tricks go, this might do. But I am afraid I am going too far: I'll never write myself a letter. Even ifl were truly your look-alike. So stay faceless, Flaccus, stay unconjured. This way, you may last for two millennia more. Otherwise, each time I mount a woman she might think that she is dealing with Horace. Well, in a sense she is, dream or no dream. Nowhere does time collapse as easily as in one's mind. That's why we so much like thinking about history, don't we? Ifl am right about nature's options, history is like surrounding oneself with mirrors, like living in a bordello.
Two thousand years—of what? By whose count, Flaccus? Certainly not in terms of metrics. Tetrameters are tetrameters, no matter when and no matter where. Be they in Greek, Latin, Russian, English. So are dactyls, and so are anapests. Et cetera. So two thousand years in what sense? When it comes to collapsing time, our trade, I am afraid, beats history, and smells, rather sharply, ofgeography. What Euterpe and Urania have in common is that both are Clio's seniors. You start talking your Rufus Valgius out of his protracted grieving by evoking the waves of Mare Caspium; even they, you write, do not remain rough forever. This means that you knew about that mare two thousand years ago—from some Greek author, no doubt, as your own people didn't cast their quills that wide. Herein, I suppose, lay this mare's first attraction for you as a Roman poet. An exotic name and, on top of that, one connoting the farthest point of your Pax Romana, if not of the known world itself. Also, a Greek one (actually, perhaps even Persian, but you could bump into it only in Greek). The main thing, though, about "Caspium" is that this word is dactylic. That's why it sits at the second line's end, where every poem's meter gets established. And you are consoling Rufus in an asclepiad.