Page:The Works of Virgil - Davidson - Buckley.djvu/14

viii known to us, but Virgil probably owed the subsequent restitution of his estate (between 42 and 40) to the advice and intercession of Asinius Pollio. The first Eclogue is commonly regarded as a thank-offering of the poet to Augustus.

About the same time Virgil became acquainted with the proverbial patron of men of genius, Mæcenas, at whose mansion his friendship with Horace probably commenced. The writings of the latter show that the most cordial intimacy must have subsisted between these distinguished poets and their liberal entertainer. Critics seem to agree in placing the completion of the Georgics in 31, while his Eclogues were no doubt of an earlier date. As Theocritus formed the model of these brief pastorals, so the Greek agricultural and astronomical poems of Hesiod, Aratus, Nicander, and others, whose works are only known to us in fragments, furnished the materials, and often the language, of the Georgics of Virgil.

The Æneid must have occupied our poet's thoughts for a long time, although we have no certain data of its commencement and progress. At whatever time, however, it was begun, the poet appears to have regarded it as an unfinished production at the time of his death, an opinion in which modern critics have unanimously coincided.

On the return of Augustus from Samos in the year 20, he met Virgil at Athens. An intended tour