Dryden, owing to the belief that it contained a prophecy of the birth of
Christ drawn from the Sibylline books, and won for Vergil throughout the
middle ages the title of prophet and magician. Whether this belief was
well founded or not may be left to those whom it may interest to inquire;
it is sufficient for our purpose to note that in the poem in question
Vergil first introduced the convention of the golden age into pastoral
verse.

The first of the long line of imitators of whom we have any notice was a
certain Calpurnius. His diction is correct and his verse smooth, but the
suggestion that he belonged to the age of Augustus has not met with much
favour among those competent to judge. He followed Vergil closely, chiefly
developing the panegyric. His poems, however, include all the usual
conventions, singing matches, invocations, cosmologies, and the rest, in
the treatment of which originality never appears to have been his aim.
Some of his pieces deal with husbandry, and belong more strictly to the
school of the _Georgics_ and didactic poetry. The most interesting of his
eclogues is one in which he contrasts the life of the town with that of
the country, the direct comparison of which he appears to have been the
first to treat. The poem likewise possesses some antiquarian interest,
owing to a description of a wild-beast show in an amphitheatre in which
the animals were brought up in lifts through the floor of the arena.
Calpurnius is sometimes supposed, on account of a dedication to Nemesianus
found in some manuscripts, to have lived at the end of the third century,
but even supposing the dedication to be genuine, which is more than
doubtful, it does not follow that the person referred to is that
Nemesianus who contested the poetic crown with Prince Numerianus about the
year 283[16]. This Nemesianus was probably the author of some eclogues
which have been frequently ascribed to Calpurnius (numbers 8 to 11 in most
editions), but which must be discarded from the list of his authentic