Was not this the act that prompted the happy idea of writing the epic of Aeneas?  Vergil was then living at Naples, and we can picture the poet fevered with the new impulse, sailing away from his lectures across the fair bay for a day’s brooding.  Could one find a more fitting place than Venus’s shrine at Sorrento for the invocation of the Aeneid?

How far this first attempt proceeded we shall probably not know.  Vergil’s own words would imply that his early effort centered about Aeneas’ wars in Italy; the sixth Eclogue,

  Cum canerem reges et proelia,

is rather explicit on this point.  Furthermore, the erroneous reference of Calaeno’s omen to Anchises in the seventh book (l. 122) would indicate that this part at least was written before the harpy-scene of the third, for the latter is so extensive that the poet could hardly have forgotten it if it had already been written.

It is, however, in reading the first and fifth books that I think we may profit most by keeping in mind the fact that the poet had begun the Aeneid before Caesar’s death.  In Book I, 286 ff., occurs a passage which Servius referred to Julius Caesar.  It reads: 

  Nascetur pulchra Troianus origine Caesar,
  Imperium Oceano, famam qui terminet astris,
  Iulius, a magno demissum nomen Iulo. 
  Hunc tu olim caelo, spoliis Orientis onustum,
  Accipies secura; uocabitur his quoque uotis.[5]

[Footnote 5:  The following lines (291-6) refer to the succeeding reign of Augustus as the poet is careful to indicate in the words tum positis-bellis.]

Very few modern editors have dared accept Servius’ judgment here, and yet if we may think of these lines as adapted from (say) an original dedication to Julius Caesar written about 45 B.C., the difficulties of the commentators will vanish.  The facts that Vergil seems to have in mind are these:  in September 46 B.C., Julius Caesar, after returning from Thapsus, celebrated his four great triumphs over Gaul, Egypt, Pontus, and Africa, displaying loads of booty such as had never before been seen at Rome.  He then gave an extended series of athletic games, of the kind described in Vergil’s fifth book, including a restoration of the ancient ludus Troiae.  When these were over he dedicated the temple of Venus Genetrix, thereby publicly announcing his descent from Venus, and presently proclaimed his own superhuman rank more explicitly by placing a statue of himself among the gods on the Capitoline (Dio, XLIII, 14-22).  Are not the phrases, imperium Oceano and spoliis Orientis onustum a direct reference to this triumph which, of course, Vergil saw?  And did not these dedications inspire the prophecy uocabitur hic quoque uotis? Be that as it may, it is difficult to refuse credence to Servius in this case, for Vergil here (I, 267-274 and 283) accepts Julius Caesar’s claim of descent from Iulus, whereas in the sixth