Professors V. — Attius Tiro Delphidius, a Rhetorician

Eloquent, learned, quick in word and wit, genial in humour, Delphidius, even as you rose to rival your father in renown, so must your praises follow hard upon the tearful lament that I have made for him. Almost in the cradle itself, you began to be the poet of a famous god; a boy, wearing on your brow the garland of the Olympian crown, you sang Jove's praises: next, pressing onward like a raging flood, you strung together an epic all in verse more rapidly than any man free from the handicap of prosody could shape as much in prose. In divers fields your eloquence achieved renown, until its fame stood as high abroad as here at home; now when you appeared before the prefect of the pretorian cohort, and now in the presence of the provincial judges when you were briefed to defend the threatened honour or the life of the accused. How happy had you been had you pursued the Muses' tasks amid the peaceful toil of letters; had not the impulse of revenge armed the hatred which great lawsuits breed; or had you never sought to climb up to the unrestful Palace in the days of tyranny! While you ever conjured up far-distant hope, disdaining that which lay in your way, and preferred success to be your work rather than Fate's, you lost full much, wandering through all the empty titles of distinction and deserving greater prizes than you won. Hence arose the crushing charges which ensued, though your father's sorrow won your pardon. Thereafter you became a rhetorician; but lack of diligence in teaching disappointed the hopes of your pupil's fathers. It was by the grace of God you suffered no worse ill, but were carried off in middle age and spared the pain of your daughter's perversity and the execution of your wife.