After a rather long silence: 

“I will conceal nought from thee.  He sent for me; one of his messengers, a simple man, came to say that I was expected, and that, although I had not been initiated into their mysteries, in consideration of my prophetic verses, a place had been reserved for me among those of the new sect.  But I refused to accept that invitation; I had no desire to change my lace.  I did so not because I share the admiration of the Greeks for the Elysian fields, or because I taste here those joys which caused Proserpine to lose the remembrance of her mother.  I never believed much myself in what I say about these things in the ‘Aeneid.’  I was instructed by philosophers and men of science and I had a correct foreboding of the truth.  Life in hell is extremely attenuated; we feel neither pleasure nor pain; we are as if we were not.  The dead have no existence here except such as the living lend them.  Nevertheless I prefer to remain here.”

“But what reason didst thou give, O Virgil, for so strange a refusal?”

“I gave excellent ones.  I said to the messenger of the god that I did not deserve the honour he brought me, and that a meaning had been given to my verses which they did not bear.  In truth I have not in my fourth Eclogue betrayed the faith of my ancestors.  Some ignorant Jews alone have interpreted in favour of a barbarian god a verse which celebrates the return of the golden age predicted by the Sibylline oracles.  I excused myself then on the ground that I could not occupy a place which was destined for me in error and to which I recognised that I had no right.  Then I alleged my disposition and my tastes, which do not accord with the customs of the new heavens.

“‘I am not unsociable,’ said I to this man.  ’I have shown in life a complaisant and easy disposition, although the extreme simplicity of my habits caused me to be suspected of avarice.  I kept nothing for myself alone.  My library was open to all and I have conformed my conduct to that fine saying of Euripides, “all ought to be common among friends.”  Those praises that seemed obtrusive when I myself received them became agreeable to me when addressed to Varius or to Macer.  But at bottom I am rustic and uncultivated.  I take pleasure in the society of animals; I was so zealous in observing them and took so much care of them that I was regarded, not altogether wrongly, as a good veterinary surgeon.  I am told that the people of thy sect claim an immortal soul for themselves, but refuse one to the animals.  That is a piece of nonsense that makes me doubt their judgment.  Perhaps I love the flocks and the shepherds a little too much.  That would not seem right amongst you.  There is a maxim to which I endeavour to conform my actions, “Nothing too much.”  More even than my feeble health my philosophy teaches me to use things with measure.  I am sober; a lettuce and some olives with a drop of Falernian wine form all my meals.  I have, indeed, to some extent gone