However, we must
intrude. Vergil's associations with Gallus, as has been intimated, were
those, apparently, of Neapolitan school days and of poetry. The sixth
_Eclogue_ delicately implies that the departure of Gallus from the circle
had made a very deep impression upon his teacher and fellow students.
What would we not barter of all the sesquipedalian epics of the Empire
for a few pages written by Cornelius Gallus, a thousand for each! This
brilliant, hot-headed, over-grown boy, whom every one loved, was very
nearly Vergil's age. A Celt, as one might conjecture from his career,
he had met Octavius in the schoolroom, and won the boy's enduring
admiration. Then, like Vergil, he seems to have turned from rhetoric to
philosophy, from philosophy to poetry, and to poetry of the Catullan
romances, as a matter of course. It was Cytheris, the fickle actress--if
the scholiasts are right--who opened his eyes to the fact that there were
themes for passionate poetry nearer home than the legendary love-tales;
and when she forgot him, finding excitement elsewhere during his months
of service with Octavian, he nursed his morbid grief in un-Roman
self-pity, this first poet of the _poitrinaire_ school.
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