The whole plot of the _Ciris_ is in fact unravelled by means of
a series of allusions and suggestions, exclamations and soliloquies,
parentheses and aposiopeses, interrogations and apostrophes.
In verse-technique[2] the _Ciris_ is as near Catullus' _Peleus_ and
_Thetis_ as it is the _Aeneid_: indeed it is as reminiscent of the former
as it is prophetic of the latter. The spondaic ending which made the line
linger, usually over some word of emotional content, (l. 158):
At levis ille deus, cui semper ad ulciscendum
was to Cicero the earmark of this style. The _Ciris_ has it less often
than Catullus. Being somewhat unjustly criticized as an artifice it was
usually avoided in the _Aeneid_. There are more harsh elisions in the
_Ciris_ than in the poet's later work, reminding one again of Catullan
technique. In his use of caesuras Vergil in the _Ciris_ resembles
Catullus: both to a certain extent distrust the trochaic pause. Its
yielding quality, however, brought it back into more favor in various
emotional passages of the _Aeneid_; but there it is carefully modified by
the introduction of masculine stops before and after, a nuance which is
hardly sought after in the _Ciris_ or in Catullus.
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