wise precept, and it was doubtless a prudent impulse that substituted
the _Eclogue_ for the "Curses." The former probably accomplished little
enough, the latter would not even have been read.

The _Dirae_ takes the form of a "cursing roundel," a form once employed
by Callimachus, who may have inherited it from the East. It calls down
heaven's wrath upon the confiscated lands in language as bitter as ever
Mt. Ebal heard: fire and flood over the crops, blight upon the fruit, and
pestilence upon the heartless barbarians who drive peaceful peasants into
exile.

The setting is once more that of the country about Naples, of the
Campanian hills and the sea coast, not that of Mantua.[16] It is
doubtless the miserable poor of Capua and Nuceria that Vergil
particularly has in mind. The singers are two slave-shepherds departing
from the lands of a master who has been dispossessed. The poem is
pervaded by a strong note of pity for the lovers of peace,--"pii cives,"
shall we say the "pacifists,"--who had been punished for refusing to
enlist in a civil war. A sympathy for them must have been deep in the
gentle philosopher of the garden:

O male deuoti, praetorum crimina, agelli![17]
Tuque inimica pii semper discordia ciuis.
Exsul ego indemnatus egens mea rura reliqui,
Miles ut accipiat funesti praemia belli.
Hinc ego de tumulo mea rura nouissima uisam,
Hinc ibo in siluas: obstabunt iam mihi colles,
Obstabunt montes, campos audire licebit.[18]

[Footnote 16: It is just possible that "Lycurgus" (l. 8) who is spoken of