cture of himself
or his own circumstances. Tityrus is an old man, and a slave in a typical
shepherd's country, such as could be seen every day in the mountains near
Naples. And there were as many evictions near Naples as in the North.
Indeed it is the Neapolitan country--as picturesque as any in Italy--that
constantly comes to the reader's mind. We are told by Seneca that
thousands of sheep fed upon the rough mountains behind Stabiae, and
the clothier's hall and numerous fulleries of Pompeii remind us that
wool-growing was an important industry of that region. Vergil's excursion
to Sorrento was doubtless not the only visit across the bay. Behind
Naples along the ridge of Posilipo,[2] below which Vergil was later
buried, in the mountains about Camaldoli, and behind Puteoli all the
way to Avernus--a country which the poet had roamed with observant
eyes--there could have been nothing but shepherd country. Here, then,
are the crags and waterfalls and grottoes that Vergil describes in the
_Eclogues_.

[Footnote 2: The picturesque road from Naples to Puteoli clung to the
edge of the rocky promontory of Posilipo, finally piercing the outermost
rock by means of a tunnel now misnamed the "grotto di Sejano." Most of
the road is now under twenty feet of water: See Guenther, _Pausilypon_. To
see the splendid ridge as Vergil saw it from the road one must now row
the length of it from Naples to Nesida, sketching in an abundance of
ilexes and goats in place of the villas that now cover it.]

And here, too, were doubtless as many melodious shepherds as ever
Theocritus found in Sicily, for they were of the same race of people as
the Sicilians. Why should the slopes of Lactarius be less musical than
those of Aetna? Indeed the reasonable reader will find that, except for
an occasional transference of actual persons into Arcadian setting--by an
allegorical turn invented before Vergil--there is no serious confusion
in the scenery or inconsistent treatment in the plots of Vergil's
_Eclogues_. But by failing to make this simple assumption--naturally due
any and every poet--readers of Vergil have needlessly marred the effect
of some of his finest passages.

The fifth _Eclogue_, written probably in 41 B.C., is a very melodious
Daphnis-song that has always been a favorite with poets. It has been and
may be read with entire pleasure as an elegy to Daphnis, the patron god
of singing shepherds. Those, however, who in Roman times knew Vergil's
lo