Does it not explain why so many traits in Dido's
character irresistibly suggest Cleopatra,[9] why half the lines of the
fourth book are reminiscent of Caesar's dallying in Egypt in 47? Do
not the protracted battle scenes of the last book--otherwise so
un-Vergilian--remind one of Caesar's never-ending campaigns against foes
springing up in all quarters, and of the fact that Vergil had himself
recently had a share in the struggle? The young Octavius, also, whose
boyhood is so sympathetically sketched by Nicolaus (5-9)--a leader among
his companions always, but ever devoted and generous--seems to peer
through the portrait of Ascanius.[10] Vergil's memories of the boy at
school, the recipient of the _Culex_, the leader of the Trojan troop at
Caesar's games, the lad of sixteen sitting for a day in the forum as
_praefectus urbi_, seem very recent in the pages of the epic.
[Footnote 9: Nettleship, _Ancient Lives of Virgil_, 104; Warde Fowler,
_Religious Experience of the Roman People_, p. 415.]
[Footnote 10: See Warde Fowler, _The Death of Turnus_, pp. 87-92, on the
character of Ascanius.]
It would be futile to attempt to pick out definite lines and claim that
these were parts of the youthful poem.
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