an _Aeneid_, with Julius Caesar in the background, and that parts of the
early epic were finally merged into the great work of his maturity. The
question is of such importance to the study of Vergil's developing art
that we may be justified in going fully into the evidence[3]. As it
happens we are fortunate in having several references to this early
effort. The ninth _Catalepton_, written in 42, mentions the poet's
ambition to write a national poem worthy of a place among the great
classics of Greece (l.62):

Si patrio Graios carmine adire sales.

The sixth _Eclogue_ begins with an allusion to it:

Prima Syracusio dignata est ludere versu
Nostra, nec erubuit silvas habitare Thalia.
Cum canerem reges et proelia, Cynthius aurem
Vellit et admonuit, pastorem Tityre pinguis
Pascere oportet oves, deductum dicere carmen.

[Footnote 3: Cf. _Classical Quarterly_, 1920, 156.]

This may be paraphrased: "My first song--the _Culex_--was a pastoral
strain. When later I essayed to sing of kings and battles, Phoebus
warned me to return to my shepherd song." On this passage Servius
has the comment: significat aut Aeneidem aut gesta regum Albanorum.
Donatus finally in his _Vita_ says explicitly: mox cum res Romanas
inchoasset, offensus materia, ad Bucolica transit. The poem, therefore,
was on the stocks before the _Bucolics_. We may surmise that the death
of Caesar, whose deeds seem to have brought the idea of such a poem to
Vergil's mind, caused him to lay the work aside.