grams, Dirae, and Culex, at the age of 15 years. He wrote also the Aetna, about which there is some question. Presently, having begun Roman history, dissatisfied with his material and the roughness of the names, he changed (transiit) to the Bucolics, especially to do honor to Pollio, Alfenus, Varro, and Cornelius Gallus, because they had saved him from loss in the distribution of land to the veterans of Philippi. Then he published the Georgics in honor of Mæcenas, who had aided him, when almost unknown, against the violence of, some say, a veteran Claudius, others, a centurion Arrius, by whom he came near being killed in a quarrel in reference to their lands. Lastly he began the Æneid, which he left unfinished at his death. AUTHENTIC BIOGRAPHY.—Most of the details in Donatus must be legendary, but as authentic biography it is clear that Virgil was educated at Cremona, Milan, and Rome; and the earlier doubtful poems, Ciris, Culex, etc., must have been written, so far as they are genuine, during this time. Further, in the progress of his education he showed great aptness for poetry and philosophy, but he studied oratory without success. He gave particular attention to the dogmas of the Epicurean school under the instruction of one Syron. The Georgics show many marks of the influence of this creed. When a little under thirty (in the year B.C. 41), he suddenly came to the notice of the great men of Rome. The city of Cremona, forty miles distant from Virgil's home at Mantua, had taken the part of Brutus and Cassius; and, after the defeat of the Republican party, the territory of that city, with a part of that of Mantua, was confiscated to bestow on the victorious soldiery of the triumvirs. Virgil's little farm was seized among the rest. But Asinius Pollio, military governor north of the Po, had already taken a warm interest in the young poet. By his advice Virgil went to Rome, where Octavianus himself assured him of the peaceable possession of his estate (see Ecl. i.). But new troubles followed in the State, and a new division of lands. Pollio had taken part with Antony, and was displaced. Disputes of boundary- a lawsuit, perhaps - exposed Virgil to the rage of the rude claimant, who chased him, sword in hand : he was even forced, it is said, to swim across the Mincius to save his life (see Ecl. ix.). Happily an old fellow-student, Alfenus Varus, who had succeeded Pollio, showed him still more effectual kindness. Another estate perhaps the charming one at Nola, in Campaniaappears to have been given him in exchange for his scanty and rudely disputed native lands. And soon after, partly for the sake of his health, which was delicate, and partly on account of his growing reputation, he removed to the milder climate of Rome. Here he became a favorite in the highest literary and court society. The young Cæsar, not yet emperor or Augustus, was easily accessible to the flattery of genius. According to the well-known anecdote, it was during his celebration of certain splendid games-a bright holiday following a stormy night that Virgil posted, anonymously, the extravagant compliment of the following verses: Nocte pluit tota; redeunt spectacula mane : The verses were claimed by an inferior poet, Bathyllus, who the latter four times repeated. Bathyllus owned himself unable to fill them out; and Virgil proved himself the author by completing them as follows: Hos ego versiculos feci, tulit alter honores : Sic vos non vobis nidificatis aves ; Sic vos non vobis vellera fertis oves; Sic vos non vobis mellificatis apes; Sic vos non vobis fertis aratra boves. So Bathyllus was made a laughing-stock, and Virgil at once became one of the most honored and popular men in Rome. But, with constitutional shyness, it is said he would shrink into the nearest shop or alley to avoid the public gaze. His favorite residence, after the year B.C. 37 (aet. 33), was in the neighborhood of Naples, where he lived a retired and busy life on his estate in Nola, enjoying the charms of the climate and the refined society of the Campanian capital. The next few years were spent in the composition of the Georgics,—four books on husbandry, — considered to be the most finished, elaborate, and complete of all his poems. These were written, it is said, at the request of Mæcenas, who desired by all means to restore the old Roman virtues of thrift, industry, and fondness for rustic life. It was after the events of Actium, and the firm settlement of the empire under the single rule of Augustus (B.C. 30), that Virgil began his chief literary task, the composition of the Æneid. Reports and great expectations soon began to spread as to the coming work, as testified in the celebrated couplet of Propertius (ii. 34. 65, 66): Cedite, Romani scriptores; cedite, Grai: A few years later, Virgil consented to read to Augustus, at Octavia swooned away; and when she recovered, it is said, ordered 10,000 sesterces (about $500) to be paid to the poet for each of the memorial lines. When the Æneid in its general plan was brought to a close, many parts being still left unfinished in detail, Virgil set out on a journey to Greece, that he might give the leisure of a few years to its careful revision, and then devote the remainder of his life to philosophy. It was this voyage to which Horace wished prosperity in the celebrated ode, Sic te diva potens Cypri. (Od. i. 3.) But Augustus, arriving soon after at Athens from the East, prevailed on Virgil to go back with him to Italy. This journey proved fatal to him. He was tall, spare, swarthy, and of consumptive temperament. His delicate lungs hardly bore the harsh air of the coast, while his frame was racked with sea-sickness and worn with the fatigue of a visit to Megara on the homeward voyage. He barely lived to reach Italy, and died at Brundusium, September 22, B.C. 19, aged not quite 51. Unwilling to leave the Æneid in its unfinished state, he is said to have ordered it to be burned, and to have hardly yielded to the request of Augustus that it might be left to the judgment and revision of his friends, Tucca and Varius. He was buried, by his own desire, near Naples. At the crest of the rock that overhangs the grotto of Posilipo, beneath a low ivy-grown roof of stone, was formerly said to be the modest epitaph : MANTVA ME GENVIT: CALABRI RAPVERE: TENET NVNC PARTHENOPE: CECINI PASCVA RVRA DVCES, no doubt of a later date. The exact place of his burial is not certain. VIRGIL'S WORKS. The works ascribed to Virgil, besides the doubtful Carmina Minora, viz.: Culex, a kind of idyllic epic, of some merit, Ciris, a poetical version of the story of Nisus and Scylla, in the manner of Ovid's Metamorphoses, Moretum, a kind of idyl representing the preparation of the moretum, a rustic salad, Copa, an invitation in elegiac verse to the pleasures of the tavern, and some still more doubtful little poems (Catalecta1), are the following, which are unquestionably genuine: The Eclogues, Bucolica; the Georgics, Georgica; the Æneid, Aeneis. The subjects and characters of these works are very various, and they represent several different periods in Virgil's literary career; but they were all composed more or less under the influence of the Alexandrian school, of the general effect of which upon Latin literature in the Augustan age something has been already said. With the Alexandrian writers Virgil obviously became. acquainted very early. Parthenius, his instructor in Greek, was of that school, though he was not himself an Alexandrian. He came to Rome in 72 B.C. as a prisoner, but was evidently freed, and lived in Naples when Virgil came in contact with him. He was a very voluminous author, though his works are now mostly lost. Virgil's Moretum is an imitation of an idyl of his master. The Eclogues are imitations of Theocritus, who was of the same school. The Georgics were modelled after a work of the same name by Nicander of Colophon, also of the school, and the Æneid was no doubt influenced as much by the Argonautica of Apollonius of 1 By some supposed to be Καταληπτά. |