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collect other evidence of this fact drawn from coincidences of language between Propertius and Virgil.

In 26 and 25 B.C. Augustus was absent in Spain, and wrote to Virgil pressing him to send him either his first sketch of the Aeneid, or any paragraph or passage he pleased." Virgil refused,' urging that he had as yet nothing sufficiently finished, and dwelling on the vastness of the material, and the new studies that he was about to give to the subject. The second, fourth, and sixth books were, however, at length read to Augustus and Octavia. This must have been after the death of the young Marcellus in 23 B.C. When Virgil came to the famous passage, "Tu Marcellus eris," Octavia is said to have fallen into a long swoon. The events of 19 B.C. are alluded to in the sixth and seventh books (6. 794, 7. 606), which shows that Virgil was still busy with this part of the Aeneid till within a short time of his death. Ribbeck supposes that he was also engaged in the latter years of his life upon a fresh edition of the Georgics. However this may be, there seems no reason to doubt that the end of the fourth Georgic was altered in or after the year 26, when the poet Gallus came to his tragical and untimely end. The original conclusion of the book, which in some way or other had been intended by Virgil as a compliment to Gallus, was, at the instance of Augustus, cut out, and the episode of Aristaeus substituted for it."

In the year 19 Virgil had intended to travel into Greece and Asia Minor, with the view of spending three years there in finishing and polishing the Aeneid. This done, he hoped to devote the rest of his life to philosophy. But it was not to be. At Athens he met Augustus, who was returning from the East, and decided to return with him to Italy. On a very hot September day he went to Megara, and afterwards fell ill. He was worse when he arrived, after an uninterrupted voyage, at Brundisium, where he died a few days afterwards, on the 20th of September.

Sueton. 31,"supplicibus atque etiam minacibus per iocum litteris efflagitabat ut sibi 'de Aeneide,' ut ipsius verba sunt, ‘vel prima carminis iroуpapʼn vel quod libet colon mitteretur.'"

Macrob. Sat. 1. 24. 11, "tanta incohata res est ut paene vitio mentis tantum opus ingressus mihi videar."

5 Suetonius 31, "cui (Augusto) tamen multo post perfectaque demum materia tres omnino libros recitavit, secundum quartum et sextum, sed hunc notabili Octaviae adfectione, quae cum recitationi interesset, ad illos de filio suo versus Tu Marcellus eris' defecisse fertur atque aegre focilata est."

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Servius G. 4. 1, "sciendum, ut supra diximus, ultimam partem huius libri esse mutatam. Nam laudes Galli habuit locus ille qui nunc Orphei continet fabulam, quae inserta est postquam irato Augusto Gallus occisus est."

Sueton. 35 foll.

Before leaving Italy Virgil had tried in vain to extract a promise from Varius that if anything should happen to him, he would burn the Aeneid. On his deathbed he constantly asked for his manuscript to burn it; but this request being also refused he left his writings in his will to Varius and Tucca, with the proviso that they were to publish nothing which had not been already given to the world. With the sanction of Augustus, if not at his instance, Virgil's last wish was judiciously disregarded, and the Aeneid was published by Varius and Tucca, with such corrections only as were absolutely necessary, even the unfinished verses being left as they stood.

Virgil is said to have been tall, dark, and of a rustic appearance. His health was indifferent, for he suffered from weakness in the throat and stomach, as well as from headaches and spitting of blood. Little is known of his character, but what is known is (with doubtful exceptions) in his favour. His own language about his poems in the Eclogues leads us to imagine him fastidious, modest, and sensitive, and this apparently was the general impression. The modesty of his looks procured him at Naples the punning nickname of Parthenias. He objected very much to the demonstrations made in his honour if ever he appeared in the streets of Rome, an event, if we may believe Suetonius, of very rare occurrence. Virgil's father must, if we may trust the little poem in the Catalepton addressed to the villa of Siron,' have been alive at the time of the confiscations of 41 B.C. He was blind at the time of his death. Virgil had two brothers, Silo and Flaccus. Silo died in his boyhood; Flaccus, who died in riper years, is said by Suetonius to have been the Daphnis of the fifth Eclogue.3

Virgil's mother, Magia, survived her husband and married again. A son, named Valerius Proculus, was the issue of this union.

Virgil seems to have been much beloved by his friends, among whom

Suetonius 39-41. "Egerat cum Vario priusquam Italia decederet ut si quid sibi accidisset Aeneida combureret; at is facturum se pernegarat. Igitur in extrema valetudine adsidue scrinia desideravit crematurus ipse; verum nemine offerente nihil quidem nominatim de ea cavit, ceterum eidem Vario ac simul Tuccae scripta sua sub ea condicione legavit ne quid ederent quod non a se editum esset. Edidit autem auctore Augusto Varius, sed summatim emendata, ut qui versus etiam imperfectos sicuti erant reliquerit": ib. 37. "L. Varium et Plotium Tuccam, qui eius Aeneida post obitum iussu Caesaris emendaverunt." 9 Ibid. 8-12.

Catal. 8. "Villula quae Sironis eras et pauper agelle,
Verum illi domino tu quoque deliciae,

* Sueton. 14.

Me tibi et hos una mecum, quos semper amavi,
Si quid de patria tristius audiero,

Commendo, in primisque patrem : tu nunc eris illi
Mantua quod fuerat quodque Cremona prius."

3 Ibid. 14.

perhaps the most intimate were Horace, Quintilius Varus, Varius, ar Tucca. Horace describes Virgil and Varius, whom he constant mentions together, as most transparent and lovable souls.

Owing to the generosity of his friends Virgil enjoyed a fortune nearly £100,000. It is interesting to know that when August offered him the property of an exiled citizen, whose name has n been preserved, he could not bring himself to accept it. He w seldom at Rome, though he had a house there near the gardens Maecenas, and spent most of his time in Sicily or Campania.

He was a very bad speaker,' and failed completely when in his ear life he attempted the profession of advocate. But his reading was beautiful that Julius Montanus, a contemporary poet, said that ver which in themselves seemed lifeless and trivial sounded well when recited them.

Half of his property he left to his half-brother Valerius Proculus quarter to Augustus, a twelfth part to Maecenas, and the rest to Var and Tucca. His remains were taken to Naples and buried in a to on the road to Puteoli, with the epitaph

4 Probus.

"Mantua me genuit, Calabri rapuere, tenet nunc
Parthenope: cecini pascua, rura, duces."

5 Sat. 1-5.

• Sueton. 12-13.

Ibid. 15-16, "egit et causam apud iudices unam omnino, nec amplius q semel, nam et in sermone tardissimum ac paene indocto similem fuisse Meli tradidit."

8 Ibid. 28-29.

• Ibid. 36-37.

ON SOME OF THE EARLY CRITICISMS OF

VIRGIL'S POETRY.

THAT Virgil was attacked during his life-time for his innovations in style we are assured by express statements in the memoir by Suetonius. After his death Carvilius Pictor published an Aeneidomastix, on the analogy of the Homeromastix of Zoilus, and the Ciceromastia mentioned at the beginning of the seventh book of Aulus Gellius; Herennius collected his vitia, which I suppose means faults of expression, Perellius Faustus his plagiarisms (furta); while an apparently neutral work, called oμolótηtes, or a collection of his translations from the Greek, by Octavius Avitus, filled eight books.

A reply to the obtrectatores Vergilii was written by Asconius Pedianus ; a fact which may throw some light on the date of the works mentioned by Suetonius. For Asconius lived in the first part of the first century A.D.; and if, as it is reasonable from the language of Suetonius to infer, his work was a reply to the three books of Carvilius Pictor, Herennius, and Perellius Faustus, it follows that those works cannot have been published at any very great distance of time from Virgil's death, which took place in 19 B.C.

I propose to ask whether it is possible to trace any remains of these criticisms, and the replies to them, in the notes of Servius1 and Macrobius, or elsewhere.

I.

And first as to criticisms passed upon Virgil for new combinations of words. Agrippa said that Virgil had been suborned by Maecenas to invent a new kind of affectation (kaкočŋλía), which consisted in an unusual employment of ordinary words, and was therefore difficult of detection. With this criticism I am strongly inclined to connect a passage in Horace's Ars Poetica (v.45 foll.), a work which, as Michaelis

In the following pages, when the name of Servius is mentioned without any addition, the so-called Vulgate or uninterpolated text of Servius is meant. By Servius (Dan.), on the other hand, is meant the Servius edited by Peter Daniel, and containing the additional notes printed by Thilo (in his recent edition) in italics. The relation of these notes to those of the Vulgate is discussed below in the section on Servius.

* Sueton. 44, "M. Vipsanius a Maecenate eum suppositum appellabat novae cacozeliae repertorem, non tumidae nec exilis, sed ex communibus verbis atque ideo latentis." In the Commentationes Philologicae recently published in honour of Mommsen.

3

has recently argued, may very probably have been written when Virgil was alive

"In verbis etiam tenuis cautusque serendis,

Hoc amet, hoc spernat promissi carminis auctor:

Dixeris egregie, notum si callida verbum

Reddiderit iunctura novum."

Horace asserts that new combinations of ordinary words, if made with nicety and caution (tenuis cautusque), are to be put down to a poet's credit. Now in the whole context of this passage (to which I shall have to return again) Horace is defending himself and his school against the attacks of hostile criticism; and it is therefore very probable that his remarks about new combinations of words may be intended as a covert reply to such charges as that brought by Agrippa.

Herennius, says Suetonius, made a collection of Virgil's vitia. Vitium would, I suppose, mean any fault in style or expression. Quintilian says of kakoŋλía (8. 3. 56), that it is omnium in eloquentia vitiorum pessimum. Vitia, therefore, would include affectation real or alleged, and we can hardly doubt that the work of Herennius included instances of this. Perhaps it may also have included the vitia in versibus quae a nonnullis imperite reprehenduntur mentioned by Macrobius 5. 14.1: such alleged metrical errors as arietat in portas, parietibus textum caecis, duros obice postes, quin protinus omnia, arbutus horrida. Macrobius goes on (ib. § 5) to mention verses vulsis ac rasis similes et nihil differentes ab usu loquendi, as omnia vincit Amor, et nos cedamus Amori: Nudus in ignota, Palinure, iacebis harena. These are defended by the example of Homer: but the words vulsis ac rasis similes have all the air of a quotation from a hostile critic. It must be remembered that Macrobius' Saturnalia is a mere succession of extracts from older works, sometimes strung together in no logical order, and without anything to show where the transition from one writer to another is to be looked. for. The only interest in reading him is, therefore, that he makes us curious to get back, if possible, to the sources on which he is drawing. In Macrobius 6. 6 Servius is represented as quoting some instances of new figures, or combinations of words, employed by Virgil, "Vates iste venerabilis varie modo verba modo sensus figurando multum Latinitati leporis adiecit." His instances are Supposita de matre nothos furatae creavit, creavit being used for creari fecit: tepida recentem Caede locum socii cesserunt aequore iusso: caeso sparsurus sanguine flammas : vota deum primo victor solvebat Eoo: et me consortem nati concede sepulchro: illa viam celerans par mille coloribus arcum, and some others, two only of which I will quote as bearing specially on the question before us: "frontem obscenam rugis arat: arat non nimie sed pulchre dictum"; and "discolor unde auri per ramos aura refulsit: quid enim est aura auri, aut quemadmodum aura refulget? Sed tamen pulchre usurpavit.”

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