details which the Georgics and the last six books of the Aeneid reveal.  We know, of course, from Horace’s third ode that Vergil went to Greece.  This famous poem, a “steamer-letter” as it were, is undated, but it may well be a continuation of the Brundisian diary.  The strange turn which the poem takes—­its dread of the sea’s dangers—­seems to point to a time when Horace’s memories of his own shipwreck were still very vivid.

There was also time for extensive reading.  That Vergil ranged widely and deeply in philosophy and history, antiquities and all the world’s best prose and poetry, the vast learning of the Georgics and the Aeneid abundantly proves.  The epic story which he had early plotted out must have lain very near the threshold of his consciousness through this period, for his mind kept seizing upon and storing up apposite incidents and germs of fruitful lore.  References to Aeneas crop out here and there in the Georgics, and the mysterious address to Mantua in the third book promises, under allusive metaphors, an epic of Trojan heroes.  Nor could the poet forget the philosophic work he had so long pondered over.  Doubts increased, however, of his capacity to justify himself after the sure success of Lucretius.  A remarkable confession in the second book of the Georgics reveals his conviction that in this poem he had, through lack of confidence, chosen the inferior theme of nature’s physical and sensuous appeal when he would far rather have experienced the intellectual joy of penetrating into nature’s inner mysteries.[5]

[Footnote 5: 
    Me vero primum dulces ante omnia Musae,
    Quarum sacra fero ingenti percussus-amore,
    Accipiant, caelique vias et sidera monstrent—­
    Sin, has ne possim naturae accedere partes,
    Frigidus obstiterit circum praecordia sanguis,
    Rura mihi et rigui placeant in vallibus amnes.
                                          Georgics, II. 475. ff.

Was this striking apologia of the Georgics forced upon Vergil by the fact that in the Aetna, 264-74, he had pronounced peasant-lore trivial in comparison with science?]

Though we need not take too literally a poet’s prefatorial remarks, Vergil doubtless hoped that his Georgics might turn men’s thoughts towards a serious effort at rehabilitating agriculture, and the practical-minded Maecenas certainly encouraged the work with some such aim in view.  The government might well be deeply concerned.  The veterans who had recently settled many of Italy’s best tracts could not have been skilled farmers.  The very fact that the lands were given them for political services could only have suggested to the shrewd among them that the old Roman respect for property rights had been infringed, and that it was wise to sell as soon as possible and depart with some tangible gain before another revolution resulted in a new redistribution.