character irresistibly suggest Cleopatra,[9] why half the lines of the
fourth book are reminiscent of Caesar's dallying in Egypt in 47? Do
not the protracted battle scenes of the last book--otherwise so
un-Vergilian--remind one of Caesar's never-ending campaigns against foes
springing up in all quarters, and of the fact that Vergil had himself
recently had a share in the struggle? The young Octavius, also, whose
boyhood is so sympathetically sketched by Nicolaus (5-9)--a leader among
his companions always, but ever devoted and generous--seems to peer
through the portrait of Ascanius.[10] Vergil's memories of the boy at
school, the recipient of the _Culex_, the leader of the Trojan troop at
Caesar's games, the lad of sixteen sitting for a day in the forum as
_praefectus urbi_, seem very recent in the pages of the epic.

[Footnote 9: Nettleship, _Ancient Lives of Virgil_, 104; Warde Fowler,
_Religious Experience of the Roman People_, p. 415.]

[Footnote 10: See Warde Fowler, _The Death of Turnus_, pp. 87-92, on the
character of Ascanius.]

It would be futile to attempt to pick out definite lines and claim that
these were parts of the youthful poem. Indeed the artistry of most of the
verses discussed is, as any reader will notice, more on the plane of the
later work than of the _Ciris_, written about 47-3 B.C. It is safe to say
that Vergil did not in his youth write the sonorous lines of _Aen_. I,
285-290, just as they now stand. But as we may learn from the _Ciris_,
which Vergil attempted to suppress, no poet has more successfully
retouched lines written in youth and fitted them into mature work without
leaving a trace of the process.

Critics have always expressed their admiration for the comprehensive