At levis ille deus, cui semper ad ulciscendum

was to Cicero the earmark of this style. The _Ciris_ has it less often
than Catullus. Being somewhat unjustly criticized as an artifice it was
usually avoided in the _Aeneid_. There are more harsh elisions in the
_Ciris_ than in the poet's later work, reminding one again of Catullan
technique. In his use of caesuras Vergil in the _Ciris_ resembles
Catullus: both to a certain extent distrust the trochaic pause. Its
yielding quality, however, brought it back into more favor in various
emotional passages of the _Aeneid_; but there it is carefully modified by
the introduction of masculine stops before and after, a nuance which is
hardly sought after in the _Ciris_ or in Catullus. Finally, the sentence
structure has not yet attained the malleability of a later day. While the
_Ciris_, like the _Peleus and Thetis_, is over-free with involved and
parenthetical sentences, it has on the whole fewer run-over lines so that
indeed the frequent coincidence of sense pauses and verse endings almost
borders on monotony.

[Footnote 2: See especially Skutsch, _Aus Vergils Frühzeit_, p. 74;
Drachmann, _Hermes_, 1908, p. 412 ff.; L.G. Eldridge, _Num. Culex et
Ciris_, etc. Giessen, 1914; Rand, _Harvard Studies_, XXX, p. 150. The
introduction which was written last is more reminiscent of Lucretius. On
the question of authenticity, see Drachmann, _loc. cit_. Vollmer, _Sitz.
Bayer. Akad_. 1907, 335, and _Vergil's Apprenticeship_, _Class. Phil_.
1920, p. 103.]

These are but a few of the minor details that show Vergil in his youth a
close reader of Catullus, and doubtless of Calvus, Cinna and Cornificius,
who employed the same methods. It was from this group, not from Homer or
Ennius, that Vergil learned his verse-technique. The exquisite finish of