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Then, like Vergil, he seems to have turned from rhetoric to philosophy, from philosophy to poetry, and to poetry of the Catullan romances, as a matter of course.

A Celtic strain of romance has been from time to time claimed for Vergil's poetry, though those who employ such terms seldom agree in their definition of them. His romanticism may be more easily explained by his early devotion to the Catullan group of poets, and the Celtic traits whatever they may be by the close racial affiliations between Celts and Italians, vouched for by anthropologists.

Yet we may say that on the whole the modulation of the verse, the treatment of the caesural pauses and the phrasing compare rather favorably with the Catullan hexameters which obviously served as its models, that in the best lines the poet shows himself sensitive to delicate effects, and that the pastoral scene which Horace compliments a few years later is, despite its imitative notes, written with enthusiasm, and reminds us pleasantly of the Eclogues.

The Ciris has it less often than Catullus. Being somewhat unjustly criticized as an artifice it was usually avoided in the Aeneid. There are more harsh elisions in the Ciris than in the poet's later work, reminding one again of Catullan technique. In his use of caesuras Vergil in the Ciris resembles Catullus: both to a certain extent distrust the trochaic pause.

But to trace these ideals in their contact with Vergil's mental development, we must look back for a moment to the tendencies of the Catullan age from which he was emerging. In a curious passage written not many years after this, Horace, when grouping the poets according to their styles and departments, places Vergil in a class apart. He mentions first a turgid epic poet for whom he has no regard.