classroom of the Epicurean Siro he may have made his first acquaintance
with the poetry of Lucretius.

For the next ten years we know nothing of Virgil's life, which no doubt
was that of a profound student. His father had died, and his mother
married again, and his patrimony was sufficient to support him until a
turn of the wheel of public affairs for a moment lost, and then
permanently secured his fortune. After the battle of Philippi, the first
task of the victorious triumvirs was to provide for the disbanding and
settlement of the immense armies which had been raised for the Civil war.
The lands of cities which had taken the Republican side were confiscated
right and left for this purpose; among the rest, Virgil's farm, which was
included in the territory of Cremona. But Virgil found in the
administrator of the district, Gaius Asinius Pollio, himself a
distinguished critic and man of letters, a powerful and active patron. By
his influence and that of his friends, Cornelius Gallus and Alfenus
Varus--the former a soldier and poet, the latter an eminent jurist, who
both had been fellow-students of Virgil at Rome--Virgil was compensated
by an estate in Campania, and introduced to the intimate circle of
Octavianus, who, under the terms of the triumvirate, was already absolute
ruler of Italy.

It was about this time that the _Eclogues_ were published, whether
separately or collectively is uncertain, though the final collection and
arrangement, which is Virgil's own, can hardly be later than 38 B.C. The
impression they made on the world of letters was immediate and universal.
To some degree no doubt a reception was secured to them by the influence
of Maecenas, the Home Minister of Octavianus, who had already taken up
the line which he so largely developed in later years, of a public patron
of art and letters in the interest of the new government. But had Virgil