Vergil / A Biography

estimate of a nation, and that it is the country-boy reared in lonely communion with himself who attains the deepest knowledge of human nature. If

n pious memory: in 1930 they will doubtless invite Italy and the devout

modern biographers to become anthropologists. Vergil has accordingly been referred, by some critic or other, to each of the several peoples that settled the Po Valley in ancient tim

the Latin status, and Mantua with the rest of Cisalpine Gaul had received the Latin status nineteen years before Vergil's birth. The cognomen Maro is in origin a magistrate

Nationality of Vergil, Cla

of two other peoples (presumably Umbrians and Venetians). In this he is doubtless following a fairly reliable

is, sed non gen

lex, populi sub

ulis; Tusco de

2: Aeneid,

ld hardly have been Vergil's meaning, however; for the Celts who flooded the Po Valley four centuries before drove all before them except in the Ven

become Rome's barrier line on the North. Accordingly the pacification of the Transpadane region continued with little intermission until Polybius[3] 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 tru

us, II. 35, 4 (writ

. 8, ex peregrino et cive R

lts and Italians, vouched for by anthropologists. But the difficulty of applying the test of the "Celtic temperament" lies in the fact that there are apparently now no true representatives of the Celtic race from whom to establish a criterion. The peoples that have longest preserved dialects of the Celtic languages appear from anthropometric r

but Vergil's father, according to the eighth Catalepton, had earlier in his life lived in Cremona. That city was colonized by Roman citizens in 218 B.C. and recolonized in 190, and though the colonists were reduced to the "Latin status," the magistrates of the town and their descendants secured citizenship from the beginning, and finally in 89 B.C. the whole colony received full citizenship. But quite apart from this, all of Cisalpine Gaul, as the region was called, was receivin

air with light hair. The Etruscans on the other hand, while dark, were ge

mother of a poet who knew the mysteries of the lower world; that she dreamed prophetically of the coming greatness of her son, we may grant as a matter of course. Sober judgment, however, can hardly accept the miraculous poplar tree which shot up at

ormous output, for they had with their artistic red-figured ware captured the markets of the whole Mediterranean basin. The actual workmen were not Roman citizens by any means, but slaves. And we should add that while industrial producers, like traders, were in general held in low esteem, because most of them were foreigners and freedmen, the producers of earthenware had by accident escaped from the general odium. The reason was simply that earthenware production began as a legitimate extension of agriculture-it was one form of turning the products of the villa-soil to the best use-and agriculture as we remember (including horticulture and stock-raising) continued into Cicero's day the only respectable income-bringing occupation in which a Roman senator could enga

such a career. This was the one occupation that the nobility guarded most jealously. While any foreigner or freedman might become a doctor, banker, architect or merchant prince, he could not presume to stand up before a praetor to discuss the rights and wrongs of Roman citizens; and since the advocate's work was furthermore considered the legitimate preliminary to magisterial offices it must the more carefully be protected. It

15; Ciris, l.2; Cata