_grieves for nor pities_. This quite obscures the point. Vergil says
that a country life, with its absence of poverty, so commonly met with
in a town, saves a man from the necessity of feeling a pang of pity for
the poor.
Before you put aside this passage, try to avail yourself of some of the
following suggestions. Thus:--
I. _For the Poet Vergil_[17] (70 B.C.-19 B.C.).--The chief facts of his
life and the subject of his great poems are clearly and shortly given in
the _Student’s Companion to Latin Authors_ (a useful and convenient book
of reference).
[Footnote 17: See Short Lives, p. 343.] [[Appendix VI]]
II. _For the Georgics, Poems on Husbandry._ (The passage for translation
is taken from _Georgic II._ lines 490-499.) See--
(i.) _Student’s Companion to Latin Authors_, pp. 157-8.
(ii.) Nettleship’s _Vergil_, pp. 37-45.
(iii.) Sellar’s _Vergil_, pp. 174-198.
Notice especially the _political purpose_ of the _Georgics_--to help the
policy of Augustus, which aimed at checking the depopulation of the
country districts. Compare the alarming migration from the country to
the towns in England at the present day.
III. _Relation of Lucretius to the Georgics._
(i.) Sellar’s _Vergil_, pp. 199-243.
(ii.) Munro’s _Lucretius_, Notes on Book i. line 78, and Book iii.
line 449.
Notice in this connection the opening lines of the passage, +Felix qui
potuit ... Acherontis avari+, which may be summarised as follows: ‘Happy
he who knows the laws of Nature, and has therefore ceased to fear
natural phenomena and has learnt to despise the fabled terrors of
Hades.’ Munro says: ‘I feel that by his +Felix qui+ Vergil does mean a
poet-philosopher, who can only be Lucretius.’
Cf. also _Lucretius_, iii. 1-30. His address to Epicurus.
For the thought, cf. Wordsworth’s _Happy Warrior_--
‘He therefore does not stoop, nor lie in wait
For wealth, or honours, or for worldly state.’
DEMONSTRATION VI.
_The Tomb of Archimedes._
(a) Archimedis ego quaestor ignoratum ab Syracusanis, cum esse omnino
negarent, saeptum undique et vestitum vepribus et dumetis, indagavi
sepulcrum. |II| Tenebam enim quosdam senariolos, quos in eius monumento
esse inscriptos acceperam: qui declarabant in summo sepulcro sphaeram
esse positam cum cylindro. |III| Ego autem, cum omnia collustrarem
oculis--est enim ad portas Agragantinas magna frequentia
sepulcrorum--animadverti columellam non multum e dumis eminentem, in qua
inerat sphaerae figura et cylindri. |IV| Atque ego statim
Syracusanis--erant autem principes mecum--dixi me illud ipsum arbitrari
esse quod quaererem. |V| Immissi cum falcibus multi purgarunt locum.
|VI| Quo cum patefactus esset aditus, accessimus: |VII| apparebat in
sepulcro epigramma, exesis posterioribus partibus versiculorum,
dimidiatis fere. ||
CICERO.
_The Tomb of Archimedes._
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