what is consistent in the statements of Vergil's earlier biographers and
eliminating some conjectures. The passage reads: "When ordered to leave
unoccupied a district of three miles outside the city, you included
within the district eight hundred paces of water which lies about the
walls." The passage, of course, shows that Alfenus was a commissioner on
the colonial board, as Servius says. It does not excuse Servius' error
of making Alfenus Pollio's successor as provincial governor[7] after
Cisalpine Gaul had become autonomous, nor does it imply that Alfenus had
in any manner been generous to Vergil or to any one else. In fact it
reveals Alfenus in the act of seizing an unreasonable amount of land.
Vergil,[8] of course, recognizes Alfenus' position as commissioner in his
ninth Eclogue where he promises him great glory if he will show mercy to
Mantua:

Vare, tuum nomen, superet modo Mantua nobis ...

And Vergil's appeal to him was reasonable, since he, too, was a man of
literary ambitions.[9] But there is no proof that Alfenus gave ear to
his plea; at any rate the poet never mentions him again. Servius'
supposition that Alfenus had been of service to the poet[10] seems
to rest wholly on the mistaken idea that the sixth _Eclogue_ was
obsequiously addressed to him. As we have seen, however, Quintilius
Varus has a better claim to that poem.

[Footnote 6: Servius _Dan_. on _Ecl_. IX. 10; ex oratione Cornelii in
Alfenum. Cf. Kroll, in _Rhein. Museum_ 1909, 52.]

[Footnote 7: Servius _Dan_. on _Ecl_. VI. 6.]

[Footnote 8: Vergil, _Eclogue_ IX, 26-29.]