PREFACE.

THIS edition is based upon the best commentators, especially Conington and Nettleship, Wagner, Ribbeck, Kennedy, and Kappes; and the text is the result of a careful comparison of these. The occasional mention of their names is no gauge of the amount of help which has been derived from their use. A few passages are quoted from the poetical versions of Conington (C.) and Morris (M.), while the brilliant Globe translation (G.) has been freely used throughout.

Illustrative passages are quoted in full, those from the Odyssey in the words of Messrs. Butcher and Lang; which will enable a boy to realise for himself the way in which the artist uses his materials.

I owe my best thanks to the Rev. J. Bond, of the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, for valuable suggestions.

INTRODUCTION.

Publius Vergilius Maro was born, the son of a farmer, near Mantua, B. c. 70; and was educated first at Cremona and Milan, then at Naples under the Greek grammarian Parthenius. Although he was one of the few great Roman writers who did not go to Greece for education, his knowledge and appreciation of Greek literature were wide and deep. In B.C. 42 the confiscation of his farm, in order to give it to the veterans (whose services in the field were thus rewarded at the expense of their civilian neighbours), brought him to Rome. There he became acquainted with Maecenas, the patron also of Horace (to whom Vergil dedicated his Georgics, Horace his Odes), and with Augustus. His earliest poems were Eclogues, pastoral poems in imitation of the Sicilian Greek Theocritus; his most finished work was entitled the Georgics, a poetical