and direct style could accomplish; Calidius, one of the first Roman
pupils of the great Apollodorus, had already begun making campaign
speeches in his neatly polished orations which painfully eschewed all
show of ornament or passion; and Caesar himself, efficiency personified,
had demonstrated that the leader of a democratic rabble must be a master
of blunt phrases. But Calvus did not threaten to become a political
force, Calidius was too even-tempered, and Caesar was now in the north,
fighting with other weapons. Cicero's prestige still seemed unbroken. It
was not till Caesar crossed the Rubicon in 49, after Hortensius had died,
and Cicero had been pushed aside as a futile statesman, that Atticism
gained predominance in the schools. Later, in 46, Cicero in several
remarkable essays again took up the cudgels for an elaborate prose, but
then his cause was already lost. Caesar's victory had demonstrated that
Rome desired deeds, not words.

[Footnote 2: Octavius was drawn to the Atticistic principles by the great
master Apollodorus.]

When Virgil, therefore, turned to rhetoric, probably under Epidius,
he received the training which was still considered orthodox. His
farewell[3] to rhetoric--written probably in 48--shows unmistakably the
nature of the stuff on which he had been fed. It is the bombast and the
futile rules of the Asianic creed against which he flings his unsparing
scazons.

[Footnote 3: _Catalepton_ V (Edition, Vollmer). Birt, _Jugendverse und
Heimatpoesie Vergils_, 1910, has provided a useful commentary on the
_Catalepton_.]

Begone ye useless paint-pots of the school;
Your phrases reek, but not with Attic scent,
Tarquitius' and Selius' and Varro's drool:
A witless crew, with learning temulent.
And ye begone, ye tinkling cymbals vain,
That call the youths to drivelings insane.

Epidius, to be sure, is not mentioned, but we happen to know that
Varro--if this be the erudite friend of Cicero--was devoted to the
Asianic principles. And Epidius, the teacher of the flowery Mark Antony,
may well be concealed in Vergil's list of names even if mention of him
was omitted for reasons of propriety.

This poem reveals the fact that Vergil did not, like the young men of
Cicero's youth, enjoy the privilege of studying law, court procedure, and
oratory by entering the law office, as it were, of some distinguished
senator and thus acquiring his craft through observation, guided
practice, and personal i