be rectified in the place where he first lived, nor afterwards, because the weakness of his stomach would not permit him to take exercise.

He was of a thoughtful and melancholy temper, spoke little, loved retirement and contemplation, and was an enemy to those talkative impertinents, from which no court, not even that of Augustus, could be free. He had a delightful villa in Sicily, and a fine house and well-furnished library near Mæcenas' gardens on the Esquiline hill at Rome.

He died with such steadiness and tranquillity, as to be able to dictate his own epitaph in the following words:

Mantua me genuit, Calabri rapuere, tenet nunc
Parthenope; cecini Pascua, Rura, Duces.

His bones were carried to Naples, according to his earnest request, and a monument was erected at a small distance from the city.

ECLOGUE I.-TITY RUS.

ARGUMENT. ·

THE subject of this Eclogue, which was probably composed (after the Alexis, the Palamon, and the Daphnis) A, C. 41, A. U. C. 713, is presumptively the division of the lands of the conquered provinces among the soldiery after the battle of Philippi, and the consequent expulsion of their rightful proprietors. Tityrus, or Virgil (as it is generally imagined) under that name, expresses his joy at being restored to his estate in the neighborhood of Mantua; which he owed-as it has been inferred from the ninth Eclogueeither to the intercession of his friend Pollio with Varus, or with some other of Octavius' favorites, or to the circumstance of his having deified Julius Cæsar the year before in his Daphnis. In retaking possession, however, he nearly incurred from the usurping intruder the loss of life, and only saved himself by swimming across the Mincio. On this he returned to Rome, where he seems soon afterward to have composed his Maris; from which, as well as from Appian's fifth book on the Civil Wars, it appears that portions of the Mantuan territory had been seized without authority by the encroaching soldiers, to whom the lands about Cremona had been assigned. This induced numbers of complainants to flock to Rome in quest of redress.

Melibaus. BENEATH this beech you, Tityrus, thrown

at ease,

Pour through the reed your sylvan melodies:

1 Professor Martyn, in his valuable edition of the Bucolics, suggests that Tityrus' (the 'happy old man,' with the 'grey