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Messalla, who had been chosen commander by the defeated remnant, recognized the hopelessness of his position and surrendered to the victors. Vergil's ninth Catalepton seems to have been written as a paean in honor of Messalla on receipt of the first incomplete report. The poem does not by any means imply that Vergil favored Brutus and Cassius or felt any ill-will towards Octavian.
In Georgics II, 146, Vergil repeats the phrase maxima taurus victima, but the phrase must have had its origin in the Catalepton, since here maxima balances humilis. In the Georgics the phrase is merely a verbal reminiscence, for there is nothing in the context there to explain maxima. Was not this the act that prompted the happy idea of writing the epic of Aeneas?
Vergil also seems to have been drawn in this draft, since this is apparently the circumstance mentioned in his thirteenth Catalepton. "Draft," however, may not be the right word, for we do not know whether Caesar at this time claimed the right to enforce the rules of conscription.
Vergil's companions in the Cecropius hortulus, destined to be his life-long friends, were, according to Probus, Quintilius Varus, the famous critic, Varius Rufus, the writer of epics and tragedies, and Plotius Tucca. Of his early friendship with Varius he has left a remembrance in Catalepton I and VII, with Varus in Eclogue VI. Horace combined all these names more than once in his verses.
The Aetna which seems to date from about 47-6 reveals the young philosopher, if it is Vergil, in a serious mood of single-minded devotion to his new pursuit. But as may be inferred from the fifth Catalepton he was not sure of not backsliding. To the influence of Catullus, plainly visible all through these brief poems, there was added the example of Philodemus who wrote epigrams from time to time.
We have, however, a strange poem of thirty-eight lines, the Copa, which, to judge from its exclusion from the Catalepton, should perhaps be assigned to this period. A study in tempered realism, not unlike the eighth Eclogue, it gives us the song of a Syrian tavern-maid inviting wayfarers into her inn from the hot and dusty road.
The eighth Catalepton is proof that Vergil was at Naples when he heard of the dangers to his father's property in the North. It is doubtful whether Vergil ever again saw Mantua after leaving it for Cremona in his early boyhood. The property, of course, belonged not to him but to his father, who, as the brief poem indicates, had remained there with his family.
It was on September 26 in 46 B.C., that Julius Caesar so strikingly called attention to his claims of descent from Venus and Aeneas by dedicating a temple to Venus Genetrix, the mother of the Julian gens. It was on that day that Caesar "called Venus from heaven" to dwell in her new temple. There is independent proof that Catalepton XIV is earlier than the Georgics.
We may surmise that the death of Caesar, whose deeds seem to have brought the idea of such a poem to Vergil's mind, caused him to lay the work aside. Returning to the fourteenth Catalepton, we find what seems to be a definite key to the date and circumstances of its writing. The closing lines are: Adsis, o Cytherea: tuos te Caesar Olympo Et Surrentini litoris ara vocat.
There is another brief epigram which if we are right in thinking Pompey the subject of the lines seems to date from Vergil's soldier days, the third Catalepton: Aspice quem valido subnixum Gloria regno Altius et caeli sedibus extulerat. Tale deae numen, tali mortalia nutu Fallax momento temporis hora dedit.
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