Seneca - College of Stoic Philosophers

CAIUS MAECENAS195Heindolence and softness more than feminine.^delighted in the games of the Campus Martius.His friends he chose from inclination and withoutrespect of persons from among the poets and witsof his time ; his acquaintance with a view toamusement. Horace describes a dinner-party atthe house of the rich parvenu Nasidienus atwhich Maecenas was present attended by twoboon companions (umbrae). For the diversionof the great man the pomposity and vanity ofthe host were ruthlessly exploited by his twofollowers under the forms of politeness ;thenoise increased as the wine circulated ;and thefeast came to an end amid riotous buffoonery.*We see him, through the eyes of Propertius,driving through Rome in a cunningly-wrought twowheeledchariot of a kind lately imported fromBritain ^ while at other times he would; forgetthe cares of State and dine merrily with Horace'sine aulaeis et ostro ' at the Sabine farm whichthe poet owed to his munificence.The Palace of Art, the construction of whichas an habitation for his soul was the object ofMaecenas's later life, proved, as we shall see, buta crumbling and unstable edifice. But in themeantime it demanded a splendid material environment,and this he provided by his house andgardens on the Esquihne. Here he transformedthe old Roman plebeian cemetery into a park,famous through many succeeding generations;and here he built a lofty tower, from the sunmiitof which he would spend hours in contemplating1 ii. 88.«Hon, Sai. ii. 8.» Prop.ii. i.