The empire of Augustus gave literature an environment both good and bad. On the one hand, its suppression of the turbulence of republican times meant a certain amount of restriction in public life and, in particular, left political oratory almost without any excuse for existence. On the other, it furnished to those who had eyes to see it the noblest of political ideals, that of a world-wide empire of peace and justice. Almost of necessity, therefore, liter ature became idealistic, or reflective, or purely personal, where fore, apart from the prose epic of Livy, to be considered later, the work of this age is largely in verse, which includes epic and didactic poetry (Virgil), lyrics, in large measure personal (Horace), satire, avoiding personalities (Horace again), and ele giac poetry, fanciful or dealing with the affections (Gallus, Tibul lus, Propertius, Ovid).
Gallus.—The work of Gallus is unfortunately lost, unless, as Skutsch has plausibly suggested (Aus Vergils Friazeit, 19o1, Gallus and V ergil, 1906), the pseudo-Virgilian poem Ciris, an epullion in the Alexandrian manner, is his, and the Sixth and Tenth Eclogues of Virgil contain a poetical summary of his ele gies. He certainly was Virgil's friend, and an elegiac poet of considerable merit, to judge by the references to him in the later elegiasts. As governor of Egypt, in 26 B.C. he allowed his vanity to lead him into appropriating honours to himself, or at least allowing them to be paid him, which properly belonged to Augus tus. Disgrace and suicide followed, and Virgil found himself obliged to mutilate the fourth Georgic, which should have ended with a panegyric on his friend, and substitute the episode of Orpheus, perhaps originally an independent composition, beautiful in itself but dragged in very unnaturally where it stands. Gallus's amatory pieces were addressed to a lady whom he called Lycoris, no doubt a feigned name.
Virgil.—The greatest surviving Augustan poet, and also the earliest, is P. Vergilius (often miswritten Virgilius, whence the English spelling Virgil) Maro (70-19 B.c.). A native of Andes (Calvisano? certainly not Pietole) in the Mantuan territory, he began his poetical career with a few fugitive pieces in various styles, represented for us by the so-called Appendix V ergiliana, a miscellaneous collection, ranging from compositions in all prob ability his to others which can by no sound criticism be attributed to him, even in his salad days. The little pieces called catalepta ("trifles") are an example of the former, the Culex ("Gnat") of the latter.'
Next came the Eclogues or Bucolics, a series of ten pieces some what in the manner of Theocritus's pastorals, the scene of the odd-numbered ones at least being laid in the Mantuan territory or the neighbouring Italian Alps, and containing many allusions to the poet and his friends. They are slight, but full of ex quisitely accurate observation of nature, a mastery of metre and style, and what Horace calls tender humour (molle atque facetum, Sat., 1, Io, 44) in the handling of the subject-matter.
In the Georgics we are struck by the great advance in the originality and self-dependence of the artist, in the mature per fection of his workmanship, in the deepening and strengthening of all his sympathies and convictions. Although he draws upon Greek authors for material and form, yet by sheer force of original genius he, like Lucretius, has put the didactic poem among the highest forms of serious poetry, so transmuting his material that, without violation of truth, he has made the whole poem alive with poetic feeling. The homeliest details of the farmer's work are transfigured through the poet's love of nature; through his religious feeling and his pious sympathy with the sanctities of human affection ; through his patriotic sympathy with the national greatness ; and through the rich allusiveness of 'The objection to attributing the Culex to Virgil, despite good ancient testimony that he wrote a poem so called, is not that it is trash, for the early efforts of great poets have often been rubbish, but that it is a kind of trash, both in content and in style, which could by no psychological possibility have been the fore-runner of Virgil's acknowledged works. R. Radford (Trans. Amer. Phil. Ass., ii., p. 159, and elsewhere) , and one or two others, would attribute much of the Appendix to Ovid.
his art to everything in poetry and legend which can illustrate and glorify his theme.
In the Eclogues and Georgics Virgil is the idealizing poet of the Italian countryside. In the Aeneid he is the idealizing poet of the empire and of Augustus. The epic of national life, vividly conceived but rudely executed by Ennius, was perfected in the years that followed the decisive victory at Actium. To do jus tice to his idea Virgil enters into rivalry with no less a poet than Homer. That he does not thereby make himself ridiculous is no small tribute to his greatness; that out of the poor, late and artificial legend of Aeneas he has reared up a lasting monument of the grandeur of Rome marks him a consummate artist and a master of epic.