ote country town, and would, we
may plausibly conjecture, have succumbed in a contest from which the
more worldly-wise Horace emerged in triumph.

Pollio remained a steadfast friend, and Augustus and Maecenas took him
under their protection. He was on terms of close intimacy with the
latter, and introduced Horace to that great minister and patron of
letters. The two poets were close friends, and Horace mentions Virgil
as being in the party which accompanied Maecenas from Rome to
Brundisium about the year 41 B.C. Between 41 B.C. and 37 B.C., he
composed, as already stated, his "Eclogues" or "Bucolics." In these
idylls we find many simple and natural touches, great beauty of metre
and language, and numerous allusions to the persons and circumstances
of the time. The fourth of these ten short poems is dedicated to
Pollio, and is to be noted as the one quoted by Constantine as leading
to his conversion to Christianity. "It is bucolic only in name, it is
allegorical," writes George Long, "mystical, half historical, and
prophetical, enigmatical, anything in fact but bucolic." The
best-known imitation of his idyll is Pope's "Messiah." Pleasing as all
these poems are, they do not represent rural life in Italy, they are
in most part but echoes of Theocritus.

It is to the suggestion of Maecenas that we owe Virgil's most perfect
poem, his "Georgics," which he commenced after the publication of the
"Bucolics." To suppose these four books of verses on soils,
fruit-trees, horses and cattle, and finally on bees, as a practical
treatise to guide and instruct the farmer, is absurd. Few farmers have
time or inclination to read so elaborate a work. It is probable that
Maecenas, while recognizing the talent of the "Bucolics," saw likewise
the unreality of their pictures of life, and gave him the subject of
the "Georgics" as being in the same line as that the poet seemed to
have chosen for himself, and yet as less liable to lead to imitations
and pilferings from Greek originals. In fact there was no work that he
could follow. In this work we find great improvement in both taste and
versification, and the rather uninviting subject is treated and
embellished in a way that makes his fame rest in great part on the
poem. The fourth book, especially, with its episode of Orpheus and
Eurydice will live forever for its plaintive tenderness. The work was
completed at Naples, after the battle of Actium, 31 B.C., while
Augustus was in the East.

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