of Messala's great victory.

Varro was a translator of

Besides his

respectable talents, but not remarkable for the copiousness of his diction (Quintil. Instit. Orat. x. 1, 8). satires, he wrote "Argonautics," in imitation of Apollonius, a poem on Cæsar's wars in Aquitain, a translation from Aratus, and a Leucadia, probably elegiac, on a mistress of that name.

VIRGILIUS PUBLIUS MARO.-Born u. c. 684, at Andes, near Mantua: five years before Horace. Took the toga virilis, according to Donatus, under the same Consuls as those under whom he was born, u. c. 699 (Cn. Pompeius Magnus II., M. Licinius Crassus II.) His estate was confiscated by the Triumvirate, the territory of Mantua being seized in order to make up the deficient quantity belonging to Cremona. " Mantua væ miseræ nimium vicina Cremonæ, U. c. 713." He obtained the patronage of Asinius Pollio, the legate of Antony in Cisalpine Gaul. His estate, as it appears, was ordered to be restored, but the poet was ill-treated by a soldier in possession of it. The final restitution did not take place till after the battle of Perugia, U. C. 714. His intimacy with Horace commenced about

the same year.

Heyne dates the Before u. c. 713, the

9th, and 6th; in 714,

Virgil wrote poems earlier than the Eclogues, one named the Culex, but those extant under his name, contain but little, if any, of his work. Eclogues in the following order: 2nd, 3rd, and 5th; in 713, the 1st, the 4th; in 715, the 8th and 7th; in 717, the 10th; this latter date, therefore, he assumes for their publication. The Georgics were finished u. c. 729. The Eneid was unfinished at his death. In 735, Virgil, according to Donatus, set out for Greece; he was taken ill at Megara,

and died the same year, x. Kal. Octob. at Brundusium

on

his return to Rome. To this journey the third Ode of the first book of Horace is usually referred, and this raises the most embarrassing point in the Horatian chronology.-See Life, p. 62.

VIRGILIUS.-Carm. IV. xii. 13. Though probably no poet, is here inserted on account of the identity of name. He is the most perplexing personage in the Horatian poetry. That he is not the great Poet is clear. The whole fourth book of Odes was published, and most probably written after the Poet's death. Nor can this Ode possibly be a poem put by and forgotten, and revived at the time of the publication of the fourth book. For this Virgilius seems altogether an humbler person, "the client of noble youths." Nor is there that intimacy or rather tenderness of attachment, expressed in all the poems of Horace, in which he names his brother Poet. The title of Unguentarius given by one scholiast to this Virgilius, is no doubt from a misinterpretation of the words "Nardo vina merebere." Another old commentator names a certain Virgilius the physician of the Neros, who may have been the noble youths of whom he was the client. A grandson of P. Virgilius or Vergilius, the Prætor, the friend of Cicero, has likewise been suggested, but there is no clue to the labyrinth.

VISCUS.(Sat. 1. ix. 22, 83.) One of two sons of Vibius Viscus, of the equestrian order. The Scholiast, Acron, and Schol. Cruq. assert that they were both poets, and xcellent ones. If so, their fame has entirely perished.

JUL 6 1916

AX