[Footnote 5:  Lines 3-5: 
  lusimus (haec propter culicis sint carmina docta,
    omnis ut historiae per ludum consonet ordo
  notitiae) doctumque voces, licet invidus adsit.]

[Footnote 6:  Martial, XIV. 185.]

The Culex is then, after all, a poem of unique interest; it takes us into the Roman schoolroom to find at their lectures the two lads whose names come first in the honor roll of the golden age.

The poem is of course not a masterpiece, nor was it intended to be anything but a tour de force; but a comprehension of its purpose will at least save it from being judged by standards not applicable to it.  It is not naively and unintentionally incongruous.  To the modern reader it is dull because he has at hand far better compendia; it is uninspired no doubt:  the theme did not lend itself to enthusiastic treatment; the obscurity and awkwardness of expression and the imitative phraseology betray a young unformed style.  To analyze the art, however, would be to take the poem more seriously than Vergil intended it to be when he wrote currente calamo.  Yet we may say that on the whole the modulation of the verse, the treatment of the caesural pauses[7] and the phrasing compare rather favorably with the Catullan hexameters which obviously served as its models, that in the best lines the poet shows himself sensitive to delicate effects, and that the pastoral scene—­which Horace compliments a few years later—­is, despite its imitative notes, written with enthusiasm, and reminds us pleasantly of the Eclogues.

[Footnote 7:  For stylistic and metrical studies of the Culex, see The Caesura in Vergil, Butcher, Classical Quarterly, 1914, p. 123; Hardie, Journal of Philology, XXXI, p. 266, and Class Quart. 1916, 32 ff.; Miss Jackson, Ibid. 1911, 163; Warde Fowler, Class.  Rev. 1919, 96.]

IV

THE “CIRIS”

It was at about this same time, 48 B.C., that Vergil began to write the Ciris, a romantic epyllion which deserves far more attention than it has received, not only as an invaluable document for the history of the poet’s early development, but as a poem possessing in some passages at least real artistic merit.  The Ciris was not yet completed at the time when Vergil reached the momentous decision to go to Naples and study philosophy.  He apparently laid it aside and did not return to it until he had been in Naples several years.  It was not till later that he wrote the dedication.  As we shall see, the author again laid the poem away, and it was not published till after his death.  The preface written in Siro’s garden is addressed to Messalla, who was a student at Athens in 45-4 B.C., and served in the republican army of Brutus and Cassius in 43-2.  In it Vergil begs pardon for sending a poem of so trivial a nature at a time when his one ambition is to describe worthily the philosophic system that he has adopted.  “Nevertheless,” he says, “accept meanwhile this poem:  it is all that I can offer; upon it I have spent the efforts of early youth.  Long since the vow was made, and now is fulfilled.” (Ciris, 42-7.)[1]