, p. 107, and _Am. Jour. Philology_, XLI, 115. For other possible
references, see _Am. Jour. Phil_.1920, XLI, 280 ff.]

Even after Siro's death--about 42 B.C.--Vergil seems to have remained at
Naples, probably inheriting his teacher's villa. In 38 he with Varius and
Plotius came up from Naples to Sinuessa to join Maecenas' party on their
journey to Brundisium; Vergil wrote the _Georgics_ at Naples in the
thirties (_Georg_. IV. 460), and Donatus actually remarks that the poet
was seldom seen at Rome.

As the charred fragments of Philodemus' rolls are published one by one,
we begin to realize that the students of Vergil have failed to appreciate
the influences which must have reached the young poet in these years of
his life in a Greek city in daily communion with oriental philosophers
like Philodemus and Siro. After the death of Phaedrus these men were
doubtless the leaders of their sect; at least Asconius calls the former
_illa aetate nobilissimus_ (_In Pis_. 68). Cicero represents them as
_homines doctissimos_ as early as 60 B.C., and though in his tirade
against Piso--ten years before Vergil's adhesion to the school--he must
needs cast some slurs at Piso's teacher, he is careful to compliment both
his learning and his poetry. Indeed there seems to be not a little direct
use of Philodemus' works in Cicero's _De finibus_ and the _De natura
deorum_ written many years later. In any case, at least Catullus, Horace,
and Ovid made free to paraphrase some of his epigrams. And these verses
may well guard us against assuming that the man who could draw to his
lectures and companionship some of the brightest spirits of the day is
adequately represented by the crabbed controversial essays that his
library has produced. These essays follow a standard type and do not
necessarily reveal the actual man. Even these, however, disclose a man
not wholly confined to the _ipsa verba_ of Epicurus, for they show more
interest in rhetorical precepts than was displayed by the founder of the
school; they are more sympathetic toward the average man's religion, and
not a little concerned about the affairs of state. All this indicates a
healthy reaction that more than one philosopher underwent in coming in
contact with Roman men of the world, but it also doubtless reflects the
tendencies of the Syrian branch of the school from which he sprang; for
the Syrian group had had to cast off some of its traditional fanaticism
and acquire a few social grac