TITYRUS

MELIBOEUS. TITYRUS

The historical groundwork of this Eclogue is the assignment of lands in Italy by the triumvirs to their veterans in 713. “The spoliation,” says Mr. Merivale (History of the Roman Empire, vol. iii. p. 222), “spread from the suburban lands to remote tracts, from municipal to private possessions. Even loyalty to the Caesarian party proved of no avail: the faithful Mantua shared the fate of its neighbour, the disaffected Cremona; and the little township of Andes, Virgil's birth-place, in the Mantuan territory, was involved in the calamities of its metropolis.” The story as drawn out from Donatus' Life, and the scattered notices in Servius' commentary, is that Virgil went to Rome on the seizure of his property, and obtained from Octavianus a decree of restitution, which however was resisted and nearly rendered ineffectual by the violence of the new occupant, referred to in the ninth Eclogue, so that a second appeal for protection had to be made. That the poet's inheritance was twice threatened seems evident from Eclogue 9, vv. 7 foll., while we know from the present Eclogue that on one occasion he received an assurance of protection from Octavianus himself, and it may be inferred from other passages that Alfenus Varus, the legatus in the Cisalpine after the battle of Perusia, if not his predecessor C. Asinius Pollio, interfered on Virgil's behalf. These facts agree sufficiently well with the traditional account, at the same time that they do not enable us to decide on all its details, even as contained in the abbreviated summary just given.