VI. 622):
Fixit leges pretio atque refixit.
[Footnote 1: _Hermes_, 1918, p. 382.]
[Footnote 2: Three other epigrams, VI, XII, XIII, have been assumed by
some critics to be direct attacks upon Antony, but the key to them has
been lost and certainty is no longer attainable.]
If Servius is correct, we have here again a reminder of those stormy
years. This, too, is a dagger drawn from Cicero's armory. Again and again
the orator in the _Philippics_ charges Antony with having used Caesar's
seal ring for lucrative forgeries in state documents. It is interesting
to find that Vergil's school friend, Varius, in his poem on Caesar's
death, called _De Morte_[3] first put Cicero's charges into effective
verse:
Vendidit hic Latium populis agrosque Quiritum
Eripuit: fixit leges pretio atque refixit.
[Footnote 3: Some recent critics have suggested that the poem may have
been a general discussion of the fear of death, but Varius is constantly
referred to as an epic poet (Horace, _Sat_. I. 10, 43; _Carm_. I. 6
and Porphyrio _ad loc_). His poem was written before Vergil's eighth
_Eclogue_ which we place in 41 B.C. (Macrobius, _Sat_. VI. 2. 20) and
probably before the ninth (see I.
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