niSCOVEHY 



conclusion contained an account of Egypt, including 

 its production of honey, and " the praises of Callus " ; 

 but after (lallus had fallen into disgrace and committed 

 suicide, Wrgil substituted the present ending with 

 the stories of Aristaus and Orpheus. The e.xplanation 

 is, in fact, by no means hard to accept ; for no account 

 of farming in Vergil's time could have altogether 

 omitted Iigypt, then the world's greatest granary ; 

 nor could any poem whose author desired to help 

 Augustus have been altogether silent about his addition 

 of that famous and ancient kingdom to the Roman 

 Kmpire ; nor can anyone who has realized the kind 

 of man \'ergil was, and tlie kind of affection he had 

 for his friends, imagine that he could have failed to 

 notice the fact that the newly added realm was 

 governed by his friend and fellow-poet Callus. 



Nevertheless our pastors and teachers who belonged 

 to the epoch of Mommsen (when it was almost a point 

 of honour to reject every ancient statement against 

 which even the faintest doubt could be raised) , though 

 they did not indeed deny that Callus had been governor 

 of Egypt and had fallen out of power, would not recog- 

 nize this as a sufliciont basis for Servius' story, and 

 wrote of Vergil and Callus as though they belonged to 

 different worlds, instead of being what they surely 

 were, the David and Jonathan of their day. Perhaps 

 unconsciously they were influenced by the desire not 

 to connect Vergil so intimately with a man whom they 

 regarded merelj' as a traitor. 



Now, what does the inscription of Philae add to our 

 knowledge ? It gives us the very words written to 

 record the victories of Callus, in Egyptian, Latin, and 

 Greek ; those in Latin at least being certainly what 

 Callus himself wished to state. He makes a votive 

 offering to " the gods of his country and to the River 

 Nile who aided him," and describes himself in flowery, 

 poetical language as " the subduer of the whole Thcbaid 

 region in fifteen days " ; as " having carried his armies 

 above the cataract of the Nile to a spot never before 

 reached by the Roman people or by Egyptian Kings," 

 as having " inspired with terror all the chieftains of the 

 region," and taken five cities (now lost in the desert 

 sand). All this Callus has done ; whereas his imperial 

 master receives only a brief mention at the beginning 

 as having " conquered the Kings of Egypt " — that is, 

 Cleopatra and (probably) Antony. 



And what was the large portrait cut deep in the stone 

 in the centre of the inscription ? It represented some- 

 one on horseback riding down upon a suppliant foe — 

 and Callus was a Roman knight — but the features 

 have been dehberately hacked out. For what reason ? 

 For the same reason which led the builders of the 

 Temple of Augustus to place the whole slab with the 

 inscription face upwards to be trodden on by evcrj'one 

 who approached to worship at the Emperor's shrine — 



namely, to do dishonour to Callus ; it was Callus' own 

 picture that Callus the prefect set up, and that his 

 successors cast down and defaced ; and to set up one's 

 own portrait in the East in ancient times was to claim 

 for it something like divine honours. Now wc sec 

 the boyish vanity into which the young poet-soldier 

 was betrayed, partly no doubt by his first experience 

 of the flattery of Oriental attendants, partly by his own 

 love of glorious words ; and we see also how fatally 

 easy it was for his enemies to misrepresent his attitude 

 towards the Emperor. 



One curious circumstance indeed reveals, almost by 

 accident, what Callus' inscription looked like to people 

 in Egypt, and what a real danger it was, in fact, to the 

 supremacy of Augustus for his lieutenants to be so 

 boastful. The Egyptian inscription, which comes first, 

 makes no mention, so the Egyptologists assure us, of 

 Callus' own name, but summarizes the events briefly 

 and gives the credit cither to Cxsar himself or " the 

 priefect of Cxsar," if that be the right restoration of 

 the Egyptian text. This was the true and old Egyptian 

 fashion, and may, indeed, have been done with Callus' 

 approval or even at his command ; but to anyone who 

 could understand the Latin or Creek as well as the 

 Egyptian the contrast would be striking ; and to every- 

 one, the appearance of Callus' own portrait, not that 

 of the Emperor, in full Roman style, between the names 

 of six Egyptian deities, would be not less startling. 

 Poor Callus ! Like many another lad of brilliant powers 

 and quick imagination, he lacked the sense of pro- 

 portion without which no man is safe in high places, 

 least of all in the East. Callus was accused before the 

 Senate and deprived of his command ; and learning 

 that Augustus had expressed displeasure at what he had 

 done, he killed himself. But the Emperor wept when 

 the news was brought to him, and complained bitterly 

 that he alone of all men was not allowed to be angry 

 with a friend without some tragic consequence. The 

 inscription which Phila; has preserved for us shows in 

 every line the real nature of the tragedy. With no 

 thought of treason to his master, though with no 

 sense of the restraints which his own position demanded, 

 the young Proven9al poet plunged into a folly which 

 even veteran statesmen have found it hard to resist. 

 But his folly was not one that greatly lowers our regard; 

 still less can it have robbed him of Vergil's affection, 

 alien though it was from Vergil's own temper. \\'ith 

 Callus' words and his expunged portrait before us we 

 understand the pathos of his fall — how innocent he 

 seemed to himself, how guilty to everyone else. And 

 we understand something of the tragic disappointment 

 and lifelong sorrow of his friend Vergil, and something 

 of the bitter regret of the Emperor. And it is no 

 longer strange, but perfectly natural, that after such a 

 tragedy, the name and achievements of Callus could not 



