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Updated: June 15, 2025
He took special pleasure in studying Grecian mythology, the influence of which is so apparent in his poetry. While at school, he also voluntarily wrote a translation of much of Vergil's AEneid.
What would we not barter of all the sesquipedalian epics of the Empire for a few pages written by Cornelius Gallus, a thousand for each! This brilliant, hot-headed, over-grown boy, whom every one loved, was very nearly Vergil's age. A Celt, as one might conjecture from his career, he had met Octavius in the schoolroom, and won the boy's enduring admiration.
It may well be, therefore, that a stray image whose ultimate source was none other than Isaiah came in this indirect fashion into Vergil's poem, and that the monks of the dark ages guessed better than they knew. To attempt to identify Vergil's child with a definite person would be a futile effort to analyze poetic allegory.
Indeed we must admit that with the very inadequate psychology of that time no reasonable solution of the then central problem of determinism could be found. But there is no reason for supposing that the poet did not have a complete mastery of what the best teachers of his day had to offer. Vergil's Epicureanism, however, served him chiefly as a working hypothesis for scientific purposes.
Finally, when, as we shall see presently, Horace in his second Epode, accords Vergil the honor of imitating a passage of the Culex, Vergil returns the compliment in his Georgics. We have therefore not only Vergil's recognition of Horace's courtesy, but, in his acceptance of it, his acknowledgment of the Culex as his own. Nicolaus Damascenus confirms this. His birthday was Sept. 23, 63.
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.
Vergil's enthusiasm for the new peace expresses itself as an answer to Horace: the "Golden Age" need not be sought for elsewhere; in the new era of peace now inaugurated by Octavian the Virgin Justice shall return to Italy and the Golden Age shall come to this generation on Italian soil.
Accordingly the pacification of the Transpadane region continued with little intermission until Polybius could say two generations before Vergil's birth that the Gauls had practically been driven out of the Po Valley, and that they then held but a few villages in the foothills of the Alps. If this be true, the open country of Mantua must have had but few survivors.
The pastoral scenery seldom, except in the ninth Eclogue, pretends to be Mantuan. Even where, as in the first, the poem is intended to convey a personal expression of gratitude for Vergil's exemption from harsh evictions, the poet is very careful not to obtrude a picture of himself or his own circumstances.
The story of Probus, otherwise not very reliable, may, therefore, be true that sixty soldiers received their allotments from the estates taken from Vergil's father. Of no little significance is the fact that Vergil first prepared himself for public life, and progressed so far as to accept one case in court.
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