kaloi

Updated: May 11, 2025

These few lines are very interesting, first, as enabling us to trace the poetic influence of Catullus, whose style they greatly resemble, though their moral tone is far more serious; secondly, as showing us that Virgil was in aristocratic company, the names mentioned, and the epithet formosi, by which the young nobles designated themselves, after the Greek kaloi, kalokagathoi, indicating as much; and thirdly, as evincing a serious desire to embrace philosophy for his guide in life, after a conflict with himself as to whether he should give up writing poetry, and a final resolution to indulge his natural taste "seldom and without licentiousness."

Charles Thomas Cruttwell - The History of Roman Literature : From the earliest period to the death of Marcus Aurelius