Hence the teacher of literature at Rome must waste much
time upon elucidating the text, telling the myths in full, and giving
convenient compendia of metamorphoses, of Homeric heroes, of "trees and
flowers of the poets," and the like. Epidius himself, a pedagogue of the
progressive style, had doubtless proved an adept at this sort of
thing. Claiming to be a descendant of an ancient hero who had one day
transformed himself into a river-god, he must have had a knack for these
tales. At any rate we are told that he wrote a book on metamorphosed
trees.[4] When Octavius read the _Culex_, did he recognize in the quaint
passage describing the shepherd's grove of metamorphosed trees (124-145)
phrases from the lecture notes of their voluble teacher? Are there
reminiscences lurking also in the long list of flowers so incongruously
massed about the gnat's grave and in the two hundred lines that detail
the ghostly census of Hades? If this is a parody at all, it is to remind
Octavius of Epidian erudition. In any case it is a kind of prompter of
the poetic allusions that occupied the boys' hours at school. The simple
plot of the shepherd and the gnat was selected from the type of fable
lore thought suitable for school-room reading.
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