Many Augustan poets are known by name whose works have perished. On the other hand, some poems by unknown authors are preserved. A curious collection of eighty short poems in elegiac and lyric metres, all addressed to the god Priapus, or at least written with reference to him, belongs for the most part to this period. [Sidenote: Priapea.] Statues of Priapus, the god of gardens and of fruitfulness of all sorts, were set up in public parks, in orchards, and other places, and most of the _Priapea_, as these short poems are called, are supposed to have been inscribed upon or affixed to such statues. Many of the poems are extremely indecent, but many are well written and witty. Far more interesting than the _Priapea_ are the poems falsely ascribed to Virgil, and contained in manuscripts of his works. Three of these are “epyllia,” or short epics, composed, like Virgil’s genuine works, in hexameter verse. [Sidenote: Culex.] The first, entitled _Culex_, “The Gnat,” tells in four hundred and fourteen lines how a herdsman, lying asleep in the noonday heat, was on the point of being killed by a poisonous serpent, when a gnat stung him, and, by arousing him to his danger, saved his life. As he awoke, the herdsman killed the gnat, whose soul afterward appears to him in a dream and reproaches him. Finally the herdsman erects a funeral mound in honor of the gnat. The poem is a mock epic, intended to be humorous, but is not very successful. In versification it shows great similarity to the genuine works of Virgil, but also in some respects to those of Ovid. A poem entitled _Culex_ is ascribed to Virgil’s youthful days by Martial and Statius, but the metrical qualities of the existing poem show that it can not have been written until a later date. Either, therefore, Martial and Statius were mistaken, or this is not the poem to which they refer.