we happen to know.  We have now learned to be more wary.  It is usually a safer assumption that our observation is in error.  A recent study of “trees, shrubs and plants of Vergil,” illuminating in numberless details, has fallen into the same error here and there by failing to notice that Vergil wrote his Bucolics and Georgics not near Mantua but in southern Italy.  The modern botanical critic of Vergil should, as Mackail has said, study the flora of Campania not of Lombardy.  In every line of composition Vergil took infinite pains to give an accurate setting and atmosphere.  Carcopino[6] has just astonished us with proof of the poet’s minute study of topographical details in the region of Lavinium and Ostia, Mackail[7] has vindicated his care as an antiquarian, Warde Fowler[8] has repeatedly pointed out his scrupulous accuracy in portraying religious rites, and now Sergeaunt,[9] in a study of his botany, has emphasized his habit of making careful observations in that domain.

[Footnote 6:  Carcopino, Virgile et les origines d’Ostie.]

[Footnote 7:  Mackail, Journal of Roman Studies, 1915.]

[Footnote 8:  Warde Fowler, Religious Experience of the Roman People. p. 408.]

[Footnote 9:  Sergeaunt, Trees, Shrubs, and Plants of Virgil.]

This modern habit it is that makes the Georgics read so much like Fabre’s remarkable essays.  The study of the bees in the fourth book is, of course, not free from errors that nothing less than generations of close scrutiny could remove.  But the right kind of observing has begun.  On the other hand the book is not merely a farmer’s practical manual on how to raise bees for profit.  The poet’s interest is in the amazing insects themselves, their how and why and wherefore.  It is the mystery of their instincts, habits, and all-compelling energy that leads him to study the bees, and finally to the half-concealed confession that his philosophy has failed to solve the problems of animate nature.

XV

THE AENEID

While Caesar Octavian, now grown to full political stature, was reuniting the East and the West after Actium, Vergil was writing the last pages of the Georgics.  The battle that decided Rome’s future also determined the poet’s next theme.  The Epic of Rome, abandoned at the death of Caesar, unthinkable during the civil wars which followed, appealed for a hearing now that Rome was saved and the empire restored.  Vergil’s youthful enthusiasm for Rome, which had sprung from a critical reading of her past career, seemed fully justified; he began at once his Arma virumque.