]
Begone ye useless paint-pots of the school;
Your phrases reek, but not with Attic scent,
Tarquitius' and Selius' and Varro's drool:
A witless crew, with learning temulent.
And ye begone, ye tinkling cymbals vain,
That call the youths to drivelings insane.
Epidius, to be sure, is not mentioned, but we happen to know that
Varro--if this be the erudite friend of Cicero--was devoted to the
Asianic principles. And Epidius, the teacher of the flowery Mark Antony,
may well be concealed in Vergil's list of names even if mention of him
was omitted for reasons of propriety.
This poem reveals the fact that Vergil did not, like the young men of
Cicero's youth, enjoy the privilege of studying law, court procedure, and
oratory by entering the law office, as it were, of some distinguished
senator and thus acquiring his craft through observation, guided
practice, and personal instruction. That method, so charmingly described
by Cicero as in vogue in his youth, had almost passed away. The school
had taken its place with its mock courts, contests in oratory, set themes
in fictitious controversies. The analytical rules of rhetoric were
growing ever more intricate and time-wasting, and how pedantic they were
even before Vergil's childhood may be seen by a glance into the anonymous
_Auctor ad Herennium_.
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