All too little is known about this friend of Catullus and Cinna, but what is known excites a keen interest.  Though he was younger than Cicero by nearly a generation, the great orator[5] did him no little deference as a representative of the Atticistic group.  In verse writing he was of Catullus’ school, composing at least one epyllion, besides lyric verse.  According to Macrobius, Vergil paid him the compliment of imitating him, and he in turn is cited by the scholiasts as authority for an opinion of Vergil’s.  If the Daphnis-song is an elegy written at his death—­and it would be difficult to find a more fitting subject—­the poem, undoubtedly one of the most charming of Vergil’s Eclogues, was composed in 41 B.C.  It were a pity if Vergil’s prayer for the poet should after all not come true: 

  Semper honos, nomenque tuum laudesque manebunt.

[Footnote 5:  See Cicero’s letter to him:  Ad Fam.  XII, 17, 2.]

The tenth Eclogue, to Gallus, steeped in all the literary associations of pastoral elegies, from the time of Theocritus’ Daphnis to our own “Lycidas” and “Adonais,” has perhaps surrounded itself with an atmosphere that should not be disturbed by biographical details.  However, we must intrude.  Vergil’s associations with Gallus, as has been intimated, were those, apparently, of Neapolitan school days and of poetry.  The sixth Eclogue delicately implies that the departure of Gallus from the circle had made a very deep impression upon his teacher and fellow students.

What would we not barter of all the sesquipedalian epics of the Empire for a few pages written by Cornelius Gallus, a thousand for each!  This brilliant, hot-headed, over-grown boy, whom every one loved, was very nearly Vergil’s age.  A Celt, as one might conjecture from his career, he had met Octavius in the schoolroom, and won the boy’s enduring admiration.  Then, like Vergil, he seems to have turned from rhetoric to philosophy, from philosophy to poetry, and to poetry of the Catullan romances, as a matter of course.  It was Cytheris, the fickle actress—­if the scholiasts are right—­who opened his eyes to the fact that there were themes for passionate poetry nearer home than the legendary love-tales; and when she forgot him, finding excitement elsewhere during his months of service with Octavian, he nursed his morbid grief in un-Roman self-pity, this first poet of the poitrinaire school.  His subsequent career was meteoric.  Octavian, fascinated by a brilliancy that hid a lack of Roman steadiness, placed him in charge of the stupendous task of organizing Egypt, a work that would tax the powers of a Caesar.  The romantic poet lost his head.  Wine-inspired orations that delighted his guests, portrait busts of himself in every town, grotesque catalogues of campaigns against unheard-of negro tribes inscribed even on the venerable pyramids did not accord with the traditions of Rome.  Octavian cut his career short, and in deep chagrin Gallus committed suicide.