In 37 or 36 B. C. and the following years he wrote the _Georgics_ in honor of Mæcenas, and the _Æneid_, written at the request of Augustus, was begun in 29 B. C. When the poem was finished and the poet had reached his fifty-first year, he went to Athens, intending to devote three years to the final revision of his work, and then to give himself up to the study of philosophy. But at Athens he met with Augustus, who was on the point of returning to Rome from the East and invited him to join the imperial party. Virgil was already ill from exposure to the heat during a visit to Megara, but accepted the invitation. On the voyage his illness increased, and a few days after his arrival at Brundusium he died, September 21, 19 B. C. He was buried at Naples, where he had passed most of his later years. [Sidenote: Virgil’s Works.] Virgil’s undisputed works are three: the _Eclogues_, called, on account of their pastoral nature, the _Bucolics_; the _Georgics_; and the _Æneid_. [Sidenote: The Eclogues.] The _Eclogues_ are a series of ten idylls in imitation of the poems of the Greek poet Theocritus. The Greek word “idyll” means “little picture,” and since all Virgil’s idylls, except the fourth, and most of those of Theocritus, depict the life of herdsmen in the country, the word is generally applied to pastoral poems. Virgil’s _Eclogues_ are little pictures of pastoral life, but contain many allusions to the poet’s own circumstances and to his friends and patrons, Pollio, Gallus, Varus, Mæcenas, and Augustus. Pastoral poems, written for the cultivated circle of an imperial court, are necessarily artificial, and to this rule the _Eclogues_ are no exception. Yet the charm of their diction, the polish of their verse, the genuine love of nature and appreciation of rural life which they display, have given these poems a well-deserved place among the most famous productions of Roman literature. In the _Eclogues_ Virgil is, even more than in his other poems, dependent on Greek originals. Not only scattered lines, but whole passages are almost literal translations from the idylls of Theocritus, and less noticeable adaptations from other poets also occur. Sometimes Virgil’s version is less beautiful than the original poem from which he borrows, and some of the most admired passages are not his own inventions; but even in the _Eclogues_, the earliest of his authentic works, written when he was about thirty years of age, amid the distress that accompanied his ejection from his little property, Virgil succeeds in making from his Greek originals new and great poems of genuinely Roman character. From first to last Virgil is a national poet. The poem which stands first in the series, but which was not the first in order of composition, has the form of a dialogue between two herdsmen, Melibœus and Tityrus. In it the poet expresses his gratitude to Augustus, whom he calls a god. The poem begins: