r before been seen at
Rome. He then gave an extended series of athletic games, of the kind
described in Vergil's fifth book, including a restoration of the ancient
_ludus Troiae_. When these were over he dedicated the temple of Venus
Genetrix, thereby publicly announcing his descent from Venus, and
presently proclaimed his own superhuman rank more explicitly by placing a
statue of himself among the gods on the Capitoline (Dio, XLIII, 14-22).
Are not the phrases, _imperium Oceano_ and _spoliis Orientis onustum_
a direct reference to this triumph which, of course, Vergil saw? And did
not these dedications inspire the prophecy _uocabitur hic quoque uotis?_
Be that as it may, it is difficult to refuse credence to Servius in this
case, for Vergil here (I, 267-274 and 283) accepts Julius Caesar's claim
of descent from Iulus, whereas in the sixth book, in speaking of the
descent of the royal Roman line, he derives it, as was regularly done in
Augustus' day, from Silvius the son of Aeneas and Lavinia (VI, 763 ff.).
We must notice also that in the _Aeneid_ as in the _Georgics_ Augustus is
regularly called 'Augustus Caesar' or 'Caesar,' whereas in the only other
references to Julius in the _Aeneid_ the poet explicitly points to him by
saying 'Caesar et omnis _Iuli_ progenies' (VI, 789).

Servius, therefore, seems to be correct in regarding Julius as the
subject of the passage in the first book, and it follows that the passage
contains memories of the year 46 B.C., whether or not the lines were, as
I suggest, first written soon after Caesar's triumph.

The fifth book also, despite the fact that its beginning and end show a
late hand, contains much that can be best brought into connection with
Vergil's earlier years. It is, for instance, easier to comprehend the
poet's references to Memmius, Catiline, and Cluentius in the forties than
twenty years later.

Vergil's strange comparison of Messalla to the _superbus Eryx_ in
_Catalepton_ IX, written in 42 B.C.,[6] is also readily explained if we
may assume that he has recently studied the Eryx myth in preparation for
the contest of Book V (11. 392-420). The poet's enthusiasm for the _ludus
Troiae is well understood as a description of what he saw at Caesar's
re-introduction of the spectacle in 46. At Caesar's games Octavian, then
sixteen years of age, must have led one of the troops:[7] in the fifth
book Atys the ancestor of Octavian's maternal line led one column by the
side of Iulus