Excerpt: ... on images and reflection, Pasiphae (I. 46) of unruly passions, explained perhaps as in Lucretius' fourth book, Atalanta (I. 61) of greed, and Phaeton of ambition. As for Scylla, Vergil had himself in the Ciris (I. 69) mentioned, only to reject, the allegorical interpretation here presented, according to which she portrays: "the sin of lustfulness and love's incontinence." Vergil had not then met Siro, but he may have read some of his lectures. Finally, the strange lines on Cornelius Gallus might find a ready ...
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Excerpt: ... on images and reflection, Pasiphae (I. 46) of unruly passions, explained perhaps as in Lucretius' fourth book, Atalanta (I. 61) of greed, and Phaeton of ambition. As for Scylla, Vergil had himself in the Ciris (I. 69) mentioned, only to reject, the allegorical interpretation here presented, according to which she portrays: "the sin of lustfulness and love's incontinence." Vergil had not then met Siro, but he may have read some of his lectures. Finally, the strange lines on Cornelius Gallus might find a ready explanation if we knew whether or not Gallus had also been a member of the Neapolitan circle. Probus, if we may believe him, suggests the possibility in calling him a schoolmate of Vergil's, and a plausible interpretation of this eclogue turns that possibility into a probability. The passage (II. 64-73) may well be Vergil's way of recalling to Varus a well-beloved fellow-student who had left the circle to become a poet. The whole poem, therefore, is a delightful commentary upon Vergil's life in Siro's garden, written probably after Siro had died, the school closed, and Varus gone off to war. The younger man's school days are now over; he had found his idiom in a poetic form to which Messalla's experiments had drawn him. The Eclogues are already appearing in rapid succession. IX MATERIALISM IN THE SERVICE OF POETRY It has been remarked that Vergil's genius was of slow growth; he was twenty-eight before he wrote any verses that his mature judgment recognized as worthy of publication. 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 which stimulate boys of the city to rapid mental growth. The first few years at Rome were in some measure wasted upon a subject for which he had neither taste nor endowment. The banal rhetorical training might indeed have made a Lucan or a Juvenal out of him had he not finally revolted so decisively....
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