Finally, I would suggest that the strange and still unexplained[8] omen of Acestes’ burning arrow in 11. 520 ff. probably refers to some event of importance to Segesta in the same year, 46 B.C.  We are told by the author of the Bellum Africanum that Caesar mustered his troops for the African campaign at Lilybaeum in the winter of 47.  We are not told that while there he ascended the mountain, offered sacrifices to Venus Erycina, and ordered his statue to be placed in her temple, or that he gave favors to the people of Segesta who had the care of that temple.  But he probably did something of that kind, for as he had already vowed his temple to Venus Genetrix he could hardly have remained eight days at Lilybaeum so near the shrine of Aeneas’ Venus without some act of filial devotion.  If Vergil wrote any part of the fifth book in or soon after 46 this would seem to be the solution of the obscure passage in question.

[Footnote 8:  See however DeWitt, The Arrow of Acestes, Am.  Jour.  Phil. 1920, 369.]

It is of importance then in the study of the Aeneid to keep in mind the fact that the plot was probably shaped and many episodes blocked out while Vergil was young and Julius Caesar still the dominant figure in Rome.  Many scenes besides those in the fifth book may find a new meaning in this suggestion.  Does it not explain why so many traits in Dido’s character irresistibly suggest Cleopatra,[9] why half the lines of the fourth book are reminiscent of Caesar’s dallying in Egypt in 47?  Do not the protracted battle scenes of the last book—­otherwise so un-Vergilian—­remind one of Caesar’s never-ending campaigns against foes springing up in all quarters, and of the fact that Vergil had himself recently had a share in the struggle?  The young Octavius, also, whose boyhood is so sympathetically sketched by Nicolaus (5-9)—­a leader among his companions always, but ever devoted and generous—­seems to peer through the portrait of Ascanius.[10] Vergil’s memories of the boy at school, the recipient of the Culex, the leader of the Trojan troop at Caesar’s games, the lad of sixteen sitting for a day in the forum as praefectus urbi, seem very recent in the pages of the epic.

[Footnote 9:  Nettleship, Ancient Lives of Virgil, 104; Warde Fowler, Religious Experience of the Roman People, p. 415.]

[Footnote 10:  See Warde Fowler, The Death of Turnus, pp. 87-92, on the character of Ascanius.]

It would be futile to attempt to pick out definite lines and claim that these were parts of the youthful poem.  Indeed the artistry of most of the verses discussed is, as any reader will notice, more on the plane of the later work than of the Ciris, written about 47-3 B.C.  It is safe to say that Vergil did not in his youth write the sonorous lines of Aen.  I, 285-290, just as they now stand.  But as we may learn from the Ciris, which Vergil attempted to suppress, no poet has more successfully retouched lines written in youth and fitted them into mature work without leaving a trace of the process.