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Among the short pieces called Catalecta we have some of exquisite beauty, as the dedicatory prayer to Venus and the address to Siro's villa; others show a vein of invective which we find it hard to associate with the gentle poet; others, again, are parodies or close imitations of Catullus; while one or two are proved by internal evidence to be by another hand than Virgil's.
The recent publication of Lucretius's poem must have invested Siro's teaching with new attractiveness in the eyes of a young author, conscious of genius, but as yet self-distrustful, and willing to humble his mind before the "temple of speculative truth," The short piece, written at this date, and showing his state of feeling, deserves to be quoted:
The whole poem, therefore, is a delightful commentary upon Vergil's life in Siro's garden, written probably after Siro had died, the school closed, and Varus gone off to war. The younger man's school days are now over; he had found his idiom in a poetic form to which Messalla's experiments had drawn him. The Eclogues are already appearing in rapid succession.
It is well to bear in mind that the ensuing years of philosophical study were spent at Naples a Greek city then and very largely among Greeks. This fact provides a key to much of Vergil. Our biographies have somehow assumed Rome as the center of Siro's activities, though the evidence in favor of Naples is unmistakable.
Indeed Vergil himself in the Aetna if it be his somewhat naïvely introduced the battle of the giants for its picturesque interest. Vergil was, therefore, on familiar ground when he tried to remind his schoolmate of Siro's philosophical themes by designating each of them by means of an appropriate myth.
Of Plotius Tucca we know little except that he is called a poet, was a constant member of the circle, and with Varius the literary executor who published Vergil's works after his death. Quintilius Varus had, like Varius, come from Cremona, known Catullus intimately, and, if we accept the view of Servius for the sixth Eclogue, had been Vergil's most devoted companion in Siro's school.
The preface written in Siro's garden is addressed to Messalla, who was a student at Athens in 45-4 B.C., and served in the republican army of Brutus and Cassius in 43-2. In it Vergil begs pardon for sending a poem of so trivial a nature at a time when his one ambition is to describe worthily the philosophic system that he has adopted.
Siro's villa apparently proved attractive to Vergil, for he made Naples his permanent home, despite the gift of a house on the Esquiline from Maecenas. This, however, is not Vergil's last mention of Siro, if we may believe Servius, who thinks that "Silenum" in the sixth Eclogue stands for "Sironem," its metrical equivalent.
For other possible references, see Am. Jour. Even after Siro's death about 42 B.C. Vergil seems to have remained at Naples, probably inheriting his teacher's villa.
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