Book IX, 572

“Let us begin our song from the Heliconian Muses”; so Hesiod wrote, they say, while he kept his sheep. “Sing, O goddess, the wrath,” and “Tell me, Muse, the man,” said Calliope by the mouth of Homer. Now I have got to write a proem of some sort. But what shall I write now I am beginning to publish this second book? “Olympian Muses, daughters of Zeus, I should not have been saved unless Nero Caesar had given me money.”