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INTRODUCTION.

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THE AUGUSTAN AGE.

HE time of Virgil, the so-called Augustan age, was the most flourishing period of Roman literature. From the first contact of the Romans with the more cultivated Greeks, they had gone on adapting their unpolished tongue to literary uses, practising all forms of literature after Greek models and studying with assiduity the art of writing both in prose and poetry. The process had been a slow one. The chief writers of the early period were foreigners who were content to translate the great works of Greece into Latin, or, at most, rudely to imitate them. But, by the beginning of the first century B.C., prominent Romans had begun to devote themselves to literature. The great Scipionic circle was imbued with the Greek spirit and fostered art in all its forms. Lucilius (B.C. 148-103), a Roman knight, wrote satires in rough verse, but with considerable originality, preserving the spirit without slavishly following the details of his models. And in the first century B.C. we find a long list of Roman names in literature, Varro, Lucretius, Catullus, Cicero, Gallus, Julius Cæsar, and Sallust. Literature, though still looked upon with suspicion by the conservative, could be indulged in without real loss of reputation. All this study came to its full fruit in the reign of Augustus. The Augustan age is usually reckoned from about the death of Cæsar, B.C. 44, to the death of Augustus, A.D. 13. Many circumstances united to make this a flourishing literary

period. First Literature became fashionable. Earlier, except with a very few persons, such pursuits had been looked upon as idle or even pernicious, and devotion to them had brought little or no reward. But Augustus was wise enough to see in literature a powerful agency in establishing sound government and securing his own power. He therefore gave every encouragement to letters, and his people followed his example. Everybody of any consequence became a writer or at least a critic. Second: It was a period of peace, of exhaustion after the great struggles of the civil wars. Third Politics had ceased to present a career for men ambitious of distinction, and Fourth: There was a real pride in the well won glories of Rome, an interest in the subjects of literary art which prompted expression both in prose and poetry.

But probably the greatest stimulus to literary activity at Rome came from the gradual introduction of the literature of Alexandria, which had begun in the last half of the second century B.C. The seeds of Greek culture, which were scattered far and wide by the overthrow of Grecian liberty, had been particularly fruitful in that city. Here two great libraries were established, and a long line of scholars, critics, and authors flourished for centuries. The old literary traditions were broken; civilization had become more complex, and literature assumed a distinctly modern tone. There was a great revival of learning, and writers tried their hand at almost every form of composition, learned treatise, history, epic, lyric, elegiac, didactic poetry, epigram and satire, numerous and voluminous specimens. The study of this great body of literature could not but excite the rude but ambitious Romans to imitation.

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All these influences, added to a skill in the art of writing acquired by the long apprenticeship of the Republican period, contributed to raise Augustan literature to its highest mark.

LIFE OF VIRGIL.

By general consent, Virgil (Publius Vergilius Maro) stands first in rank among the writers of this flourishing period. He was born B.C. 70, in Andes, in the municipality of Mantua, in North Italy.1

DONATUS'S Vita Vergilii.—The life of Virgil which passes under the name of one Ælius Donatus, a work doubtless originally founded on fact,' but much distorted and amplified in the building, is our chief source for details in regard to the poet. According to this, he was the son of humble parents. His father was said by some to have been a workman in pottery, by others a hired servant of one Magius, by whom he was entrusted with important business and later made his son-in-law. Many omens preceded Virgil's birth, and as an infant he gave signs of a happy destiny. His boyhood was passed at Cremona up to his 15th (or 17th) year, when he assumed the virile toga (the Roman boy's 'coming out'). The text here is evidently corrupt. Probably the time at Cremona was the last two or three years of his boyhood, during the completion of his early education. From here, the author says, he went to Milan (a still larger city with superior advantages), and shortly afterwards to Naples. Here he gave his most urgent attention to Greek and Latin literature, but was very zealous also in the pursuit of medicine and mathematics. Having become unusually learned and skilful in these branches of study, he went to Rome, where he became acquainted with the head groom of Augustus and practised veterinary medicine in the imperial stables. Hereupon he received as pay regular rations of bread as one of the grooms. A colt was sent to Augustus,

1 Five years before Horace, and seven before Augustus. His birthday is said to have been October 15.

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