Abstract

Donatus, after enumerating Vergil's early poems, proceeds : ‘Mox cum res Romanas inchoasset, offensus materia, ad Bucolica transiit.’ We have learned to distrust such statements about Vergil's early life, having discovered that an all too literal interpretation of the Bucolics provided a large part of Suetonius' data. The line quoted above may be nothing but an inference from Eclogue VI. 3: cum canerem reges et proelia, Cynthius aurem uellit et admonuit, etc.