uld recruit legionaries, the school boys must have seen many a maniple march off to the battle-fields of Belgium. Those boys read their Bellum Gallicum in the first edition

cipal point in the court circuit that Caesar traveled during the

ered upon their second consulship-a notice to all the world that the triumvirate

as hurrying boys into classrooms of rhetoricians who were supposed to turn them into finished public men at an early age; it was assumed that a political career was every gentleman's business and that every young man of any pretensions must acquire the art of speaking effectively and of "thinking on his feet." The claims of pure literature, of philosophy, and of history were accorded too

Milan between the days of Sulla and Caesar were those who in due time passed on the torch of literary art at Rome, while the Roman youths were being enticed away into rhetoric. Vergil's remarkable catholicity of taste and his aversion to the cramping technique of the rhetorical course are probably to be explained in large measure, therefore, by his contact with the teachers of the provinces. Vergil did not scorn Apollonius because Homer was rev

Suetonius,

ontained in the Berne MS.-a document of doubtful value-mentions Epidius as Vergil's teacher in rhetoric, and adds that Octavius, the future emperor, was a fellow pupil. This is by no means unreasonable despite a difference of seven years in the ages of the two pupils. Vergil coming from the provinces entered rhetoric rather late in years, whereas Octavius must have required the aid of a master of declamati

anist he advocates the claims of the "grand-style," so pleasing to senatorial audiences, with its well-balanced periods, carefully modulated, nobly phrased, precisely cadenced, and pronounced with dignity. To be sure, Calvus had already raised the banner of Atticism and had in several biting attacks shown what a simple, frugal and direct style could accomplish; Calidius, one of the first Roman pupils of the great Apollodorus, had already begun making campaign speeches in his neatly polished orations which painfully eschewed all show of ornament or passion; and Caesar himself, efficiency personified, had demonstrated that the leader

to the Atticistic principles b

d orthodox. His farewell[3] to rhetoric-written probably in 48-shows unmistakably the nature of the stuff on which he

t, Jugendverse und Heimatpoesie Vergils, 1910, ha

ess paint-pots

eek, but not w

d Selius' and

w, with learn

, ye tinkling

youths to driv

Cicero-was devoted to the Asianic principles. And Epidius, the teacher of the flowery Mark Antony, may

tious controversies. The analytical rules of rhetoric were growing ever more intricate and time-wasting, and how pedantic they were even before Vergil's childhood may be seen by a glance into the anonymous Auctor ad Herennium. The student had to know the differences between the various kinds of cases, demonstrativum, deliberativum and judiciale; he must know the proportionate value to the orator of inventio, dispositio, elocutio, memoria, and pronuntiatio, and how to manage each; he must know how to

lic career could not continue long. The triumvirate was rapidly suppressing the free republic. Even in 52, when Pompey became sole consul, the trial of Milo was conducted under milita

s apparently the circumstance mentioned in his thirteenth Catalepton. "Draft," however, may not be the right word, for we do not know whether Caesar at this time claimed the right to enforce the rules of conscription. In any case, it is clear from all of Vergil's references to Caesar that the great general always retained a strong hold upon his imagination. Like most youths who had beheld Caesar's work in the province close at hand, he was probably ready to respond to

ic. Ad Att. IX

is poem speak of service on the seas, but his poems throughout reveal a remarkable acquaintance with Adriatic geography. If he took part in the work of that s

r 47 B.C., directed against some hated martinet of an officer, it bears various disagreeable traces of camp life, which

caitiff, say

n, and that I

ms and summer's

victor's arms

Caesar himself, inured though he was to the storms of the North, found unusually severe. Vergil, it would seem from these line

tnot

uod alta non

, vecta

rum frigus a

ma victo

before 46 B.C. when th

Birt, Rhein. M

in thinking Pompey the subject of the lines-seems to

alido subnixu

aeli sedibu

ello magnum co

iae fregerat

ium tibi iam, ti

e viri cuspid

medio rerum ce

atria pulsus

umen, tali

to temporis

of Asia had he broken, grievous slavery was he bringing even to thee, O Rome,-for all else had fallen before that man's sword,-when suddenly, in the midst of his struggle f

hat Pompey would, if victorious, establish practically or virtually a monarchy.[7] Vergil, therefore, if he wrote this when Pompey fled to Greece in 49, or after the rout at Pharsalia, was only giving expr

parce, genus q

a manu, sa

. Ad Att. VIII,

ding the civil war in which he served; hi

rdissimum ac paene indocto similem. The poet himself seems to allude to his disappointing failure in the Ciris: expertum fallacis praemia volgi. How could he but fail? He never learned to cram his convictions into mere phrases, and his judgments into all-inclusive syllogisms. When he has done his best with hum