398), so is the familiar verse of _Eclogue_ VIII
(I. 41):
Ut vidi, ut perii, ut me malus abstulit error,
and _Aeneid_ II. 405:
Ad caelum tendens ardentia lumina frustra,
and the strange spondaic unelided line (_Aen_. III. 74):
Nereidum matri et Neptuno Aegaeo,
and a score of others. The only reasonable explanation[3] of this strange
fact is that the _Ciris_ had not been circulated, that its lines were
still at the poet's disposal, and that he did not suppose the original
would ever be published. The fact that the process of re-using began even
in the _Eclogues_[4] shows that he had decided to reject the poem as
early as 41 B.C. A reasonable explanation is near at hand. Messalla, to
whom the poem was dedicated, joined his lot with that of Mark Antony and
Egypt after the battle of Philippi, and for Antony Vergil had no love.
The poem lay neglected till he lost interest in a style of work that was
passing out of fashion. Finding a more congenial form in the pastoral he
sacrificed the _Ciris_.
[Footnote 3: Drachmann, _Hermes_, 1908, p. 405.]
[Footnote 4: Especially in 8, 10, and 4. This method of re-working old
lines reveals an extraordinary gift of memory in the poet, who so vividly
retained in mind every line he had written that each might readily fall
into the pattern of his new compositions without leaving a trace of the
joining.
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