Page:Great Men and Famous Women Volume 7.djvu/31

 VIRGIL 13 indispensable. Hence, after studying his native language in Northern Italy, Vir- gil was sent to Naples, a city founded by Greeks, and possessing a large Greek population. Here he studied under Parthenius for some time, and then pro- ceeded to Rome, where he had as his instructor, Syron, a member of the Epi- curean school, of whose doctrines Virgil's poems bear some traces. Rome, however, offered no career - to a youth who was not yet a citizen, and Virgil seems to have returned to his paternal farm, and there probably he com- posed some of his smaller pieces, which bear marks .of juvenile taste. Among those that have been assigned to this early part of his life, is one of considerable interest to Americans, for in it occurs our national motto, " E pluribus unum." The short poem it consists of only one hundred and twenty-three lines de- scribes how a negro serving-woman makes a dish called Moreium, a kind of salad, in which various herbs are blended with oil and vinegar, till " out of many one united whole " is produced. To the same period critics have assigned his poem on a "Mosquito," and some epigrams in various metres. The home in the country had, however, soon to experience, like thousands of others, a sad change. The battle of Philippi took place, and Marc Antony and Octavius Caesar, the future emperor, known to later ages as Augustus, were masters of the world. We have no hints that Virgil had been, like Horace, engaged in the civil war in a military or any other capacity, or that his father had taken any part in the struggle, but the country in which his property lay was marked out for confiscation. The city of Cremona had strongly sympathized with the cause of Brutus and the republic, and in consequence, the doctrine that " to the victors be- long the spoils," having a very practical application in those days, its territory was seized and divided among the victorious soldiers, and with it was taken part of the territory of its neighbor, Mantua, including Virgil's little farm. Accord- ing to report the new occupier was an old soldier, named Claudius, and it was added that by the advice of Asinius Pollio, the governer of the province, Virgil applied to the young Octavius for restitution of the property. The request was granted, and Virgil, in gratitude, wrote his first " Eclogue," to commemorate the generosity of the emperor. These facts, if at all true, indicate that the young poet had already become favorably known to men of high position and great influence. Pollio was eminent not only as a soldier and statesman who played an important part in politics, but as an orator, a poet, and an historian, and above all as an encourager of literature. It was a fortunate day when a gov- ernor of such power to aid, and such taste to recognize talent, discovered the young poet of Andes, and saved him from a life of struggling poverty. Virgil's health was always feeble, and his temper seems to have been rather melancholy ; he had had little experience of life except in his remote country town, and would, we may plausibly conjecture, have succumbed in a contest from which the more worldly-wise Horace emerged in triumph. Pollio remained a steadfast friend, and Augustus and Maecenas took him under their protection. He was on terms of close intimacy with the latter, and introduced Horace to that great minister and patron of letters. The two