the publication of the _Eclogues_. They took Rome by storm, and were even
set to music and sung on the stage, according to an Alexandrian fashion
then prevailing in the capital. Octavian was, of course, attracted to
them by a personal interest. The poet was given a house in Maecenas'
gardens on the Esquiline with the hope of enticing him to Rome. Vergil
doubtless spent some time in the city before he turned to the more
serious task of the _Georgics_, but we are told that he preferred the
Neapolitan bay and established his home there. This group, it would seem,
was definitely drawn into Octavian's circle soon after the peace of
Brundisium, and formed the nucleus of a kind of literary academy that set
the standards for the Augustan age.

The introduction of Horace into this circle makes an interesting story.
He was five years younger than Vergil, and had had his advanced education
at Athens. There Brutus found him in 43, when attending philosophical
lectures in order to hide his political intrigues; and though Horace
was a freedman's son, Brutus gave him the high dignity of a military
tribuneship. Brutus as a Republican was, of course, a stickler for all
the aristocratic customs. That he conferred upon Horace a knight's office
probably indicates that the _libertinus pater_ had been a war captive
rather than a man of servile stock, and, therefore, only technically a
"freedman." In practical life the Romans observed this distinction, even
though it was not usually feasible to do so in political life. After
Philippi Horace found himself with the defeated remnant and returned to
Italy only to discover that his property had been confiscated. He was
eager for a career in literature, but having to earn his bread, he bought
a poor clerkship in the treasury office. Then during spare moments he
wrote--satires, of course. What else could such a wreckage of enthusiasm
and ambitions produce?

His only hope lay in attracting the attention of some kindly disposed
literary man, and for some reason he chose Vergil. The _Eclogues_ were
not yet out, but the _Culex_ was in circulation, and he made the pastoral
scene of this the basis of an epode--the second--written with no little
good-natured humor. Horace imagines a broker of the forum reading that
passage, and, quite carried away by the succession of delightful scenes,
deciding to quit business for the simple life. He accordingly draws in
all his moneys on the Calends--on the Ides he le