He is poisoning me. I saw it in his eyes before we sailed, despite the smile on his lips: 'It's only a fever, Virgil. And you deserve it for traipsing off to Greece without telling me. What made you think the poem needed three years' editing, you beetroot?' It is as artificial as it sounds, this bluff heartiness and rustic eccentricity of language. Like so many of his amiable qualities it serves a very practical purpose. Octavian is nothing if not a pragmatist. Literally nothing. Strip the layers from an onion. The bit that is left, that is Octavian. I, Virgil, the 'autobiography' of Rome's greatest poet, traces the fall of the Republic and the rise of the first emperor, Augustus Caesar. Warts and all.