one of the first Roman pupils of the great Apollodorus, had already begun making campaign speeches in his neatly polished orations which painfully eschewed all show of ornament or passion; and Caesar himself, efficiency personified, had demonstrated that the leader of a democratic rabble must be a master of blunt phrases.  But Calvus did not threaten to become a political force, Calidius was too even-tempered, and Caesar was now in the north, fighting with other weapons.  Cicero’s prestige still seemed unbroken.  It was not till Caesar crossed the Rubicon in 49, after Hortensius had died, and Cicero had been pushed aside as a futile statesman, that Atticism gained predominance in the schools.  Later, in 46, Cicero in several remarkable essays again took up the cudgels for an elaborate prose, but then his cause was already lost.  Caesar’s victory had demonstrated that Rome desired deeds, not words.

[Footnote 2:  Octavius was drawn to the Atticistic principles by the great master Apollodorus.]

When Virgil, therefore, turned to rhetoric, probably under Epidius, he received the training which was still considered orthodox.  His farewell[3] to rhetoric—­written probably in 48—­shows unmistakably the nature of the stuff on which he had been fed.  It is the bombast and the futile rules of the Asianic creed against which he flings his unsparing scazons.

[Footnote 3:  Catalepton V (Edition, Vollmer).  Birt, Jugendverse und Heimatpoesie Vergils, 1910, has provided a useful commentary on the Catalepton.]

  Begone ye useless paint-pots of the school;
  Your phrases reek, but not with Attic scent,
  Tarquitius’ and Selius’ and Varro’s drool: 
  A witless crew, with learning temulent. 
  And ye begone, ye tinkling cymbals vain,
  That call the youths to drivelings insane.

Epidius, to be sure, is not mentioned, but we happen to know that Varro—­if this be the erudite friend of Cicero—­was devoted to the Asianic principles.  And Epidius, the teacher of the flowery Mark Antony, may well be concealed in Vergil’s list of names even if mention of him was omitted for reasons of propriety.

This poem reveals the fact that Vergil did not, like the young men of Cicero’s youth, enjoy the privilege of studying law, court procedure, and oratory by entering the law office, as it were, of some distinguished senator and thus acquiring his craft through observation, guided practice, and personal instruction.  That method, so charmingly described by Cicero as in vogue in his youth, had almost passed away.  The school had taken its place with its mock courts, contests in oratory, set themes in fictitious controversies.  The analytical rules of rhetoric were growing ever more intricate and time-wasting, and how pedantic they were even before Vergil’s childhood may be seen by a glance into the anonymous Auctor ad Herennium.  The student had to know the differences between the