A survey of his early life reveals some of the reasons for this tardy development. Born and schooled in a province he was naturally held back by lack of those contacts whi

t to be a total loss. His choice of a national theme for an epic and his insight into the true qualities of imperial Rome owe something to the study of political qu

ats must be caught early. Indeed the very dogmas of the Epicurean school, if taken in all earnestness, were suppressive of lyrical enthusiasm. The Aetna shows perhaps the worst effects of Epicurean doctrine in its scholastic insistence that myths must now

prove its science inadequate, its implications unethical, and its attitude towards art banal. But that is not a sound historical method of approach. The student of Vergil should rather remember how great was the need of that age for some practical philosophy capable of lif

ith. Stoicism had first been brought over by Greek teachers as a possible guide, but the Roman, now trained by his extraordinary career in world politics to think in terms of experience, could have but little patience with a metaphysical system that constantly took refuge in a faith in aprioristic logic which had already been successfully challenged by two centuries of skeptics. The Epicurean at least kept his feet on the ground, appealed to the practical man's faith in his own senses, and plaus

uriosity regarding the universe with tangible answers[1] that especially attracted Romans of Vergil's day to the new philosophy. Their experience was not unlike that of

uite accurate to say tha

t which destroyed scie

and Zeno as freely as

cur

icism of that attitude. But to the clear of vision Stoicism immediately took from nature with one hand what it had given with the other. Invariably, its rule of "follow nature" had to be defined in terms that proved its distru

alth of ancient myths. But the nymphs of that stream were dead, slain by philosophical questioning. The new poetic myth-making that still showe

etic treatment to nature unless he can feel a vital bond of fellowship with it, the poetry of romance became possible only upon the discovery of that unity. This is doubtless why Lucretius, fi

cies patefactas

m volucres t

itum perculsae

udes persultan

e same philosophy, expr

cudes, pictaeque voluc

ag

nant avibus v

rtis repetunt

ger Zepherique t

arva

ion that he never hesitates to compare men of various temperaments with animals of sundry natures-the fiery lion, the

re? Why curse the body, any man's body, as the root-ground of sin? Were not the instincts a part of man? Might not the scientific view prove that the passions so far from being diseases, conditioned the very life and survival of the race? Perhaps the evils of excess, called sin, were after all due to defects in social and political institutions t

us, III, 37-93; II,

insisted only upon formal correctness, seldom upon ethical decorum, or than Stoicism with its categorical imperative, which could restrain only those who were already convinced. The Stoic pretence

r a lower ethical standard. Cicero, as statesman, does; but the question had doubtless come to him first out of the literature of the Academy which he was wont to read. Despite their creed, Lucretius and Vergil are indeed Rome's foremost apostles of Righteousness; and if anyone had pressed home the charge of possible moral weakness in their system they might well have pointed to the exemplary life of Epicurus and many of his followers. To the Romans this p

his later work,-a romantic charm in the treatment of nature, a deep comprehension of man's temper, a broader sympathy with humanity and a cl

s of age and only eleven years from his death when he published the Georgics, which are permeated with the Epicurean view of

Glover, and Norden,-to mention but a few of those who hold that Ve