A survey of his early life reveals
some of the reasons for this tardy development. Born and schooled in
a province he was naturally held back by lack of those contacts which
stimulate boys of the city to rapid mental growth. The first few years at
Rome were in some measure wasted upon a subject for which he had neither
taste nor endowment. The banal rhetorical training might indeed have
made a Lucan or a Juvenal out of him had he not finally revolted so
decisively. However, this work at Rome proved not to be a total loss.
His choice of a national theme for an epic and his insight into the
true qualities of imperial Rome owe something to the study of political
questions that his preparation for a public career had necessitated. He
learned something in his Roman days that not even Epicurean scorn for
politics could eradicate.
However, his next decision, to devote his life to philosophy, again
retarded his poetic development. Certainly it held him in leash during
the years of adolescent enthusiasms when he might have become a lyric
poet of the neoteric school. A Catullus or a Keats must be caught
early. Indeed the very dogmas of the Epicurean school, if taken in all
earnestness, were suppressive of lyrical enthusiasm.
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