practice they were allowed and even encouraged to accumulate possessions
in the hope that they might some day buy their freedom, and with freedom
would naturally come citizenship and the full ownership of their
accumulations. Many of the poor peasants scattered through Italy were
_coloni_ of this type and they doubtless suffered severely in the
evictions. Tityrus is here pictured as going to the city to ask for his
liberty, which would in turn ensure the right of ownership. Such is the
allegory, simple and logical. It is only the old habit of confusing
Tityrus with Vergil which has obscured the meaning of the poem. However,
the real purpose of the poem lies in the second part where the poet
expresses his sympathy for the luckless ones that are being driven from
their homes; and that this represents a cry of the whole of Italy and
not alone of his home town is evident from the fact that he sets the
characters in typical shepherd country,[15] not in Mantuan scenery as in
the ninth. The plaint of Meliboeus for those who must leave their homes
to barbarians and migrate to Africa and Britain to begin life again is
so poignant that one wonders in what mood Octavian read it. "En quo
discordia cives produxit miseros!" was not very flattering to him.

[Footnote 14: See Leo, _Hermes_, 1903, p. 1 ff., questioned by Stampini,
_Le Bucoliche_,'3 1905, p. 93.]

[Footnote 15: Capua and Nuceria were two of the cities near Naples where
Vergil could see the work of eviction near at hand.]

The very deep sympathy of Vergil for the poor exiles rings also through
the _Dirae_, a very surprising poem which he wrote at this same time,
but on second thought suppressed. It has the bitterness of the first
_Eclogue_ without its grace and tactful beginning. The triumvirs were in
no mood to read a book of lamentations. "Honey on the rim" was Lucretius'