Seneca - College of Stoic Philosophers

198 CAIUS MAECENASIt is often the case with men whose friendshipis valuable and enduring that their manner inthe early stages of acquaintance shows a certaintentative reserve. The plant of genuine affectionbetween male friends isapt to be of slow growth.Maecenas was no exception to this rule. Horacetells us that when he was first introduced toMaecenas, to whom he was recommended byVirgil, he was received rather coldly and notrecalled for nine months. But from that timeonwards there seems to have been no break in amutual sympathy that ever increased. As afriend Maecenas was no respecter of persons.With the emperor he used a freedom which hepermittedto those who were more or less dependenton himself. The well-known story of how,when Augustus was sitting at the seat of justiceand about to condemn many men to death,Maecenas, unable from the press to approach him,threw to him a little scroll with ' Surge tandemcarnifex ' (' Rise,!hangman written on') it, andhow the emperor at once rose and left the tribunalwithout another word, is equally creditableto both these friends. The lives of theaccused were spared, and the bold ministergained rather than lost credit with his master.^Nor did he lose his favour when, by his indiscretionin confiding to his wife Terentia the secretof the discovery of Murena's conspiracy, he riskedthe failure of the measures taken for its suppression.To his own dependents he extended theindulgence received by him from the emperor.*Dion Cassius, iv. 7