His great aim was the consolidation of that empire for the possession of which he himself had waged five civil wars. This is the reason why Maecenas so urgently begged Horace to essay a great heroic Epic and why Horace, who had taken his own literary measure correctly, refused (Carm. 2, 12, 1), nolis longa ferae bella Numantiae nec dirum Hannibalem nec Siculum mare IV. It now remains to inquire into the philosophical reading or philosophical convictions of Virgil. At the age of seventeen Virgil came to Rome where he studied both grammar and rhetoric, and also philosophy under the guidance of the Epicurean Siro (Zipwr). Compare the lines from the Catalecta (VII), nos ad beatos vela mittimus portus, vitamque ab omni vindicabimus cura. There is little doubt that the gentle and reverential spirit of Virgil had little sympathy for the bold and bald statements of Epicurean physics and ethics. But Epicurism was the doctrine of the day in the Roman world. "Epicuri ratio quac plerisque notissima est," says Cicero, De Finibus I, 13; cf. Ritter, History of Greek and Roman philosophy, IV, p. 84 sqq. Virgil formed some historical and learned acquaintance with Epicurean philosophy, and in the earlier portion of his career he exhibits vestiges of his philosophic preferences. Thus in Ecl. 6, 31 sqq. Silenus sang, uti magnum per inane coacta semina terrarumque animaeque marisque fuissent et liquidi simul ignis, etc. The same poem betrays a kind of blending of philosophic tenets with the conventional and traditional forms of mythology. Another Epicurean doctrine is suggested Ecl. 8, 35: nec curare deum credis mortalia quemquam. In Georg. I 415 sqq. we have a passage which controverts a view held probably by the Stoics: speaking of the joyful cawing and fluttering of crows at the end of rain-storms, the poet goes on by explaining, haut equidem credo, quia sit divinitus illis but from purely physical causes. The Stoics explained instinct and similar phenomena in organic nature as manifestations of the anima mundi which pervaded the universe and the practical effect of which constituted providence itself (cf. Ritter and Preller, 5th ed., p. 392). The Epicurean aim of emancipating the soul through a full understanding of the natural history of the universe is clearly presented in Georg. II 490 sqq., felix, qui potuit rerum cognoscere caussas subjecit pedibus strepitumque Acherontis avari. Compare the exposition of this practical point in sede doctrinae, Lucretius I 62 sqq. The passage too on the generative principle in nature (Georg. III 242 sqq.) reminds one of Lucretius. The Stoic argument of deducing the anima mundi from the instinct of bees, e. g., is again introduced, IV 220,his quidam signis atque haec exempla secuti esse apibus partem divinae mentis et haustus without the adding of any controversy however on the part of the poet himself. Professor Sellar, pages 119-257, has discussed at some length the influence exerted by Lucretius' de Rerum natura on the Georgica of Virgil, from the several points of view coming into question, and on p. 38 Mr. Sellar says concisely: "Virgil may have been as assiduous a student of philosophy as Lucretius, but he does not feel the same need of consistency of view and firmness of speculative conviction." At no time probably in the history of Roman letters had so much attention been bestowed upon the Greek philosophic writers as prevailed at the end of the Republic and at the beginning of the Augustan age. The evolution of Greek philosophy had been completed, and this varied inheritance of letters was becoming an intellectual or spiritual property of many; but more were they to whom these things were mainly matters of erudition. Lucretius, the thorough-going Epicurean, shows ample acquaintance (book I) with Thales, Anaximander, Heraclitus, Anaxagoras. In the Augustan age, as was noted above, there was a great deal of philosophic study involved or implied in the courses of rhetorical instruction, and their very refined and advanced character is reflected in the rhetorical and critical monographs and controversies of Dionysius, where, e.'g., the chronological order of Aristotle's books was quoted in an argument intended to defend the originality of rhetorical composition in Demosthenes. In the preceding generation, Caesar, Cicero, Brutus, and Atticus had studied at one or more seats of Greek erudition. Augustus, Horace, and others had done the same in the present generation (Sueton. Aug. 89). It was the correct thing for eminent men to keep a Greek philosophic scholar in their establishment. Cicero in his day wrote (Tuscul. 2, 8): Platona reliquosque Socraticos..... legunt omnes; in most of Cicero's philosophic books are evidences of his Greek philosophic library. Augustus himself wrote Hortationes ad Philosophiam (Sueton. Aug. 85), and on the Palatinus he built (Ibid. 29) porticus cum Bibliotheca Latina Graecaque. At one time, too, when all foreigners were expelled from the capital, the physicians and teachers were favored by an exception. Horace in many places reflects the philosophic reading of the day; thus, Carm. 1, 29, 13: cur tu coemptos undique nobilis libros Panaeti Socraticam et domum pollicitus meliora, tendis? or Epodes 8, 15 sq., quid quod libelli Stoici inter Sericos Cf. Sat. 2, 3, 11, 43 sqq. So much for the philosophic erudition of the day. If we return to Virgil and direct our attention to the very decided contrast between the Epicurism in his earlier writings and the half-mythic Platonism in Aen. VI, are we to assume a grave and deliberate change of schools? Prof. Sellar (p. 84) is of opinion that the tenets advanced in the Aeneid present real philosophic convictions of Virgil; Mr. Nettleship (Introduction, pp. 11, 13, 38) takes them at least as seriously. I hesitate to dissent from these eminent scholars; but it seems safer to me to consider the philosophic element of Aen. VI merely as a matter of erudition. Virgil had a practical desire to advance the legend of Aeneas into the glorious future, of Roman history and Roman greatness and so down to the universal empire of Caesar Augustus. The metempsychosis of Plato offered to his learned glance a convenient literary shift to accomplish that practical aim. One thing more should be noticed. Some years before the Aeneid was in its long course of construction, Cicero wrote his de Republica, which, in imitation of Plato's Hoλreia, he wound up by a vision, the Somnium Scipionis. There the first Africanus spoke to the second about eminent Roman dead and about the life of the soul: about the deceased qui e corporum vinculis. tamquam e carcere evolaverunt (p. 241, ed. of Baiter and Kayser); Macrobius (p. 238) speaks of Cicero as indicans quo his perveniendum vel potius revertendum sit, qui rempublicam cum prudentia fortitudine ac moderatione tractaverint. Cicero's imitation or adaptation of Plato seems to have been a very accurate one; it is, then, quite probable that the apologus of the Platonic Er suggested itself all the more readily to the learned eye of Virgil. Erudition was a principal element in Virgil's preparation and work. He did not rely on bursts of poetic inspiration; but, rather, with his compeer Horace, he could truly say, me doctarum hederae praemia frontium VII. The Battle of Mons Graupius. BY WILLIAM F. ALLEN, PROFESSOR OF LATIN AND HISTORY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN. The battle in which, after a resistance of many years, the people of northern Britain were finally defeated and the subjugation of the island was completed, is described by Tacitus in the 35th, 36th, and 37th chapters of his Life of Agricola; a splendid piece of narrative, which is said to have inspired Milton in one of his most famous descriptions. The account of this battle is no doubt the most perplexing passage in the work in which it is contained, its inherent difficulties being increased by the uncertainties and corruption of the text. Not feeling entirely satisfied with the explanation given to this passage in any of the commentaries with which I am acquainted, I have thought that the difficulties arose largely from a failure to comprehend the operations of the battle as a whole and that the successive points of detail in these operations could be best understood, and especially that the uncertainties of the text could be best cleared up, from the point of view of the military operations. My aim, in the present paper, is to obtain a clear and consecutive notion of the operations of the battle, and incidentally to discuss the successive questions of text and commentary as they arise. First a word as to the locality of the battle. It was observed by Wex that the manuscript reading, Chap. 29, is not ad montem Grampium, but Graupium; it was by some error on the part of the early editors that the more familiar name made its way into the text. But Wex did not know that the familiar name finds as little support in Scotch geography, as in Latin manuscripts. The "Grampian Hills" of our modern maps, of Scotch tourists, and of the friend of our youth, Norval, are wholly a modern invention. The name does not occur before the fifteenth century, and appears to have been adopted from an erroneous reading of Tacitus' Agricola. But even supposing that the name were a genuine one, and were |