Magnus ab integro saeclorum nascitur ordo.

XIII

THE CIRCLE OF MAECENAS

Julius Caesar had learned from bitter experience that poets were dangerous enemies.  Cicero’s innuendoes were disagreeable enough but they might be forgotten.  When, however, Catullus and Calvus put them into biting epigrams there was no forgetting.  This was doubtless Caesar’s chief reason for his constant endeavor to win the goodwill of the young poets, and he ultimately did win that of Calvus and Catullus.  Whether Octavian, and his sage adviser Maecenas, acted from the same motive we do not know, though they too had seen in Vergil’s epigrams on Antony’s creatures, and in Horace’s sixteenth epode that the poets of the new generation seemed likely to give effective expression to political sentiments.  At any rate, the new court at Rome began very soon to make generous overtures to the literary men of the day.

Pollio, Octavian’s senior by many years, and of noble family, could hardly be approached.  Though gradually drawing away from Antony, he had so closely associated himself with this brilliant companion of his Gallic-war days, that he preferred not to take a subordinate place at the Roman court.  Messalla, who had entered the service of Antony, was also out of reach.  There remained the brilliant circle of young men at Naples, men whose names occurred in the dedications of Philodemus’ lectures:  Vergil, Varius, Plotius and Quintilius Varus, three of whom at least were from the north and would naturally be inclined to look upon Octavian with sympathy.

Varius had already written his epic De Morte which seems to have mourned Caesar’s death, and, though in hidden language, he had alluded bitterly to Antony’s usurpations in the year that followed the murder.  Before Vergil’s epic appeared it was Varius who was always considered the epic poet of the group.  Of Plotius Tucca we know little except that he is called a poet, was a constant member of the circle, and with Varius the literary executor who published Vergil’s works after his death.  Quintilius Varus had, like Varius, come from Cremona, known Catullus intimately, and, if we accept the view of Servius for the sixth Eclogue, had been Vergil’s most devoted companion in Siro’s school.  He also took some part in the civil wars, and came to be looked upon as a very firm supporter of sound literary standards.[1] Horace’s Ouis desiderio, shows that Varus was one of Vergil’s most devoted friends.

[Footnote 1:  Cf.  Horace, Ars Poetica, 440.]