225; and
_Class. Phil_. 1920, p. 26. The dedicatory lines of the _Culex_ imply
that the body of the poem was already complete. Whether the interval was
one of weeks or months or years the poet does not say.]
[Footnote 3: _Classical Philology_, 1920, pp. 23, 33.]
The _Culex_, therefore, is the work of a beginner addressed to a young
lad just highly honored, but after all to a schoolboy whom Vergil had,
presumably two years before, met in the lecture rooms of Epidius. Does
this provide a key with which to unlock the hidden intentions of our
strange treasure-trove of miscellaneous allusions? Let the reader
remember the nature of the literary lectures of that day when
dictionaries, reference books, and encyclopedias were not yet to be found
in every library, and school texts were not yet provided with concise
Allen and Greenough notes. The teacher alone could afford the voluminous
"cribs" of Didymus. Roman schoolboys had not, like the Greeks, drunk in
all myths by the easy process of nursery babble. By them the legends of
Homer and Euripides must be acquired through painful schoolroom exegesis.
Even the names of natural objects, like trees, birds, and beasts came
into literature with their Greek names, which had to be explained to the
Roman boys.
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