suggests Virgil's relation to his own parent. In north Italy Virgil studied at Mantua, Cremona, and Milan, and at seventeen took up his wider studies at Rome itself in the year 53 B.C. Catullus had died the year before, Lucretius was dead two years. At Rome Virgil had the best masters in Greek, rhetoric, and in philosophy, a study in which he especially delighted. In forming his own poetic style Virgil was profoundly influenced by Lucretius, whose great poem On Nature treated of the wondrous physical universe, and by the subtly sweet young Catullus,
"Tenderest of Roman poets."—Tennyson.
In such studies Virgil spent ten years. But in 41 B.C. he appears again in north Italy and this time in storm and stress. In the year of Philippi the triumvirs, settling their victorious legions, confiscated lands about Cremona, and Virgil, attempting to resist dispossession, came near to losing his life. Through fellow-students of the Roman days he secured an introduction to Octavius and was compensated—either recovering his own farm, or receiving in lieu of it an estate in Campania.
Virgil relates his experience in two of his ten Eclogues which were published in their present form in 38 B.C. These charming poems were especially loved by Milton and Wordsworth. Macaulay indeed considered them the best of Virgil's works. At Rome they met immediate success with the people and with Octavius and his wise minister Mæcenas, Horace's patron. In them Virgil tenderly sings love of friends, home, and country.
Then Virgil spent seven years on the four books of the Georgics, publishing them in 29 B.C., two years after Actium. The Georgics Merivale calls "the glorification of labor." In them Virgil hymns the farmer's life in beautiful Italy.
"Hail to thee, land of Saturn, mighty mother of noble fruits and noble men! For thee I essay the theme of the glory and the skill of olden days."
