that _Catalepton_ XIV is earlier than the _Georgics_. In _Georgics_
II, 146, Vergil repeats the phrase _maxima taurus victima_, but the
phrase must have had its origin in the _Catalepton_, since here _maxima_
balances _humilis_. In the _Georgics_ the phrase is merely a verbal
reminiscence, for there is nothing in the context there to explain
_maxima_. On the order of composition of the Aeneid, see M.M. Crump, _The
Growth of the Aeneid_]

Was not this the act that prompted the happy idea of writing the epic of
Aeneas? Vergil was then living at Naples, and we can picture the poet
fevered with the new impulse, sailing away from his lectures across the
fair bay for a day's brooding. Could one find a more fitting place than
Venus's shrine at Sorrento for the invocation of the _Aeneid_?

How far this first attempt proceeded we shall probably not know. Vergil's
own words would imply that his early effort centered about Aeneas' wars
in Italy; the sixth _Eclogue_,

Cum canerem reges et proelia,

is rather explicit on this point. Furthermore, the erroneous reference of
Calaeno's omen to Anchises in the seventh book (l. 122) would indicate
that this part at least was written before the harpy-scene of the third,
for the latter is so extensive that the poet could hardly have forgotten
it if it had already been written.

It is, however, in reading the first and fifth books that I think we
may profit most by keeping in mind the fact that the poet had begun the
_Aeneid_ before Caesar's death. In Book I, 286 ff., occurs a passage
which Servius referred to Julius Caesar. It reads:

Nascetur pulchra Troianus origine Caesar,
Imperium Oceano, famam qui terminet astris,
Iulius, a magno demissum nomen Iulo.
Hunc tu olim caelo, spoliis Orientis onustum,
Accipies secura; uocabitur his quoque uotis.[5]

[Footnote 5: The following lines (291-6) refer to the succeeding reign
of Augustus as the poet is careful to indicate in the words _tum
positis-bellis_.]

Very few modern editors have dared accept Servius' judgment here, and
yet if we may think of these lines as adapted from (say) an original
dedication to Julius Caesar written about 45 B.C., the difficulties of
the commentators will vanish. The facts that Vergil seems to have in mind
are these: in September 46 B.C., Julius Caesar, after returning from
Thapsus, celebrated his four great triumphs over Gaul, Egypt, Pontus, and
Africa, displaying loads of booty such as had neve