It speaks well for his love of Rome that despite these
influences it was he who produced the most thoroughly nationalistic epic
ever written.
The first fruit of Vergil's studies in evolutionary science at Naples was
the _Aetna_, if indeed the poem be his. The problem of the authorship
has been patiently studied, and the arguments for authenticity concisely
summarized by Vessereau[9] make a strong case. The evidence is briefly
this. Servius attributed the poem to Vergil in his preface and again in
his commentary on _Aeneid_, III, 578. Donatus also seems to have done so,
though some of our manuscripts of his _Vita_ contain the phrase _de qua
ambigitur_. Again, the texts of the _Aetna_ which we have agree also in
this ascription. Internal evidence proves the poem to be a work of the
period between 54 and 44, which admirably suits Vergilian claims. Its
close dependence upon Lucretius gives the first date, its mention of the
"Medea" of the artist Timomachus as being overseas, a work which was
brought to Rome between 46 and 44, gives the second. Finally, the _Aetna_
is by a student of Epicurean philosophy largely influenced by Lucretius.
It would be difficult to make a stronger case short of a contemporaneous
attribution.
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