The student of Vergil who has once compared the statements of the scholiasts with the historical facts at these few points, where they run parallel, will have little patience with the petty gossip which was elicited from the Eclogues.  The story of Vergil’s tiff with a soldier, for example, is apparently an inference from Menalcas’ experience in Eclogue IX. 15; but “Menalcas” appears in four other Eclogues where he cannot be Vergil.  The poet indeed was at Naples, as the eighth Catalepton proves.  The estate in danger is not his, but that of his father, who presumably was the only man legally competent of action in case of eviction.  Vergil’s poem, to be sure, is a plea for Mantua, but it is clearly a plea for the whole town and not for his father alone.  The landmark of the low hills and the beeches up to which the property was saved (IX.8) seems to be the limits of Mantua’s boundaries, not of Vergil’s estates on the low river-plains.  We need not then concern ourselves in a Vergilian biography with the tale that Arrius or Clodius or Claudius or Milienus Toro chased the poet into a coal-bin or ducked him into the river.[13] The shepherds of the poem are typical characters made to pass through the typical experiences of times of distress.

[Footnote 13:  See Diehl, Vitae Vergilianae, p. 58.]

The first Eclogue, Tityre tu, is even more general than the ninth in its application.  Though, of course, it is meant to convey the poet’s thanks to Octavian for a favorable decree, it speaks for all the poor peasants who have been saved.  The aged slave, Tityrus, does not represent Vergil’s circumstances, but rather those of the servile shepherd-tenants,[14] so numerous in Italy at this time.  Such men, though renters, could not legally own property, since they were slaves.  But in practice they were allowed and even encouraged to accumulate possessions in the hope that they might some day buy their freedom, and with freedom would naturally come citizenship and the full ownership of their accumulations.  Many of the poor peasants scattered through Italy were coloni of this type and they doubtless suffered severely in the evictions.  Tityrus is here pictured as going to the city to ask for his liberty, which would in turn ensure the right of ownership.  Such is the allegory, simple and logical.  It is only the old habit of confusing Tityrus with Vergil which has obscured the meaning of the poem.  However, the real purpose of the poem lies in the second part where the poet expresses his sympathy for the luckless ones that are being driven from their homes; and that this represents a cry of the whole of Italy and not alone of his home town is evident from the fact that he sets the characters in typical shepherd country,[15] not in Mantuan scenery as in the ninth.  The plaint of Meliboeus for those who must leave their homes to barbarians and migrate to Africa and Britain to begin life again is so poignant that one wonders in what mood Octavian read it.  “En quo discordia cives produxit miseros!” was not very flattering to him.