Archive image from page 559 of Discovery Discovery discovery0304londuoft Year: 210 DISCOVERY two Eclogues concerned with Vergil's farm. In the First we learn that the farmers of the district generalh- have been turned out to make waj' for soldiers who have been fighting in the Civil Wars. One named Meliboeus has just been evicted and takes a sad leave of TitjTus, who has been permitted to remain in his farm because he went to Rome and secured the favour of a gracious 3'oung ruler. There has never been any doubt that b}- this young ruler Vergil meant Octa\aan, who seems to have done his best
Archive image from page 559 of Discovery Discovery discovery0304londuoft Year: 210 DISCOVERY two Eclogues concerned with Vergil's farm. In the First we learn that the farmers of the district generalh- have been turned out to make waj' for soldiers who have been fighting in the Civil Wars. One named Meliboeus has just been evicted and takes a sad leave of TitjTus, who has been permitted to remain in his farm because he went to Rome and secured the favour of a gracious 3'oung ruler. There has never been any doubt that b}- this young ruler Vergil meant Octa\aan, who seems to have done his best to protect the poet. enough, and a great part of the land of Mantua was seized also. This is indicated in the Ninth Eclogue, in which we learn that Mantua had suffered because it was ' too near a neighbour to unhappy Cremona.' And this same passage shows that Vergil himself (for ' Menalcas ' in this poem means Vergil, as Quintilian tells us) finally had to leave his farm, though it seems clear also that Octavian had not left him in want.' One of the speakers says that he had heard that Menalcas had saved his property by his poetry ; but the other -THE SOC.\I,I,ED FONDO VERGILIO .\T PIETOLE. But why were the farmers round Mantua being turned out ? Because the troops of Antony, in the year after the battle of Philippi in 42 , in which they had helped to defeat Brutus and Cassius, demanded that Antony and Octavian should fulfil the promises which they had made of liberal pensions. (At this time Vergil was twenty-nine years old.) Now the only form of military pension which the Romans knew was a grant of land, and to these soldiers land had been promised in North Italy. For this purpose the territory of Cremona, a town which had offended .\ntony, had been entirely confiscated. But even so there was not replies that the report was untrue, and that in fact both Menalcas and his servant had barely escaped with their lives. Nevertheless the poem goes on to other subjects, and se
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