[Footnote 4: Pliny, _Nat. Hist_. XVII. 243; Suetonius, _De Rhetoribus_,
4.]

[Footnote 5: Lines 3-5:
lusimus (haec propter culicis sint carmina docta,
omnis ut historiae per ludum consonet ordo
notitiae) doctumque voces, licet invidus adsit.]

[Footnote 6: Martial, XIV. 185.]

The _Culex_ is then, after all, a poem of unique interest; it takes us
into the Roman schoolroom to find at their lectures the two lads whose
names come first in the honor roll of the golden age.

The poem is of course not a masterpiece, nor was it intended to be
anything but a _tour de force_; but a comprehension of its purpose will
at least save it from being judged by standards not applicable to it. It
is not naïvely and unintentionally incongruous. To the modern reader it
is dull because he has at hand far better compendia; it is uninspired
no doubt: the theme did not lend itself to enthusiastic treatment; the
obscurity and awkwardness of expression and the imitative phraseology
betray a young unformed style. To analyze the art, however, would be to
take the poem more seriously than Vergil intended it to be when he wrote
currente calamo. Yet we may say that on the whole the modulation of the
verse, the treatment of the caesural pauses[7] and the phrasing compare
rather favorably with the Catullan hexameters which obviously served as
its models, that in the best lines the poet shows himself sensitive to
delicate effects, and that the pastoral scene--which Horace compliments
a few years later--is, despite its imitative notes, written with
enthusiasm, and reminds us pleasantly of the _Eclogues_.