their new marble veneer, but beyond these, in the far distant past, the
straw hut of Romulus and the sacred grove on the Capitoline where the
spirit of Jove had guarded a folk of simpler piety.[2] And down the
centuries he beheld the heroes, the law-givers, and the rulers, who had
made the Forum the court of a world-wide empire. The Rome of his own day
was too feverish, it soon drove him back to his garden villa near Naples.

[Footnote 1: Tacitus, _Dialogus_, 13: Malo securum et quietum Vergilii
secessum, in quo tamen neque apud divum Augustum gratia caruit neque apud
populum Romanum notitia. Testes Augusti epistulae, testis ipse populus,
qui auditis in theatro Vergilii versibus surrexit universus et forte
praesentem spectantemque Vergilium veneratus est quasi Augustum.]

[Footnote 2: _Aeneid_ VIII.]

It was well that he possessed such a retreat during those years of petty
political squabbles. The capital still hummed with rumors of civil war.
Antony seemed determined to sever the eastern provinces from the empire
and make of them a gift to Cleopatra and her children--a mad course that
could only end in another world war. Sextus Pompey still held Sicily and
the central seas, ready to betray the state at the first mis-step on
Octavian's part. At Rome itself were many citizens in high position who
were at variance with the government, quite prepared to declare for
Antony or Pompey if either should appear a match for the young heir of
Caesar. Clearly the great epic of Rome could not have matured in that
atmosphere of suspicion, intrigue, and selfishness. The convulsions of
the dying republic, beheld day by day near at hand, could only have
inspired a disgust sufficient to poison a poet's sensitive hope. It was
indeed fortunate that Vergil could escape all this, that he could retain
through the period of transition the memories of Rome's former greatness