Vergil, but there is little poetry, pastoral or otherwise. The 'grace of all the Muses' and the breath of the country are fled for ever; the dexterous phrasing of a laborious copyist reigns in their stead. Of the life of Calpurnius Siculus nothing is known and but little can be conjectured. Of his date there can be little doubt. We learn from the evidence of the poems themselves that they were written in the principate of a youthful Caesar (i. 44; iv. 85, 137; vii. 6), beautiful to look upon (vii. 84), the giver of splendid games (vii. 44), the inaugurator of an age of peace, liberty and plenty (i. 42-88; iv _passim_). This points strongly to the opening of Nero's reign. The young Nero was handsome and personally popular, and the opening years of his reign (_quinquennium Neronis_) were famous for good government and prosperity. But there are two further pieces of internal evidence which clinch the argument. A comet is mentioned (i. 77) as appearing in the autumn, an appearance which would tally with that of the comet observed shortly before the death of Claudius in 54 A.D., while the line maternis causam qui vicit Iulis (i. 45) seems clearly to refer to the speech delivered by the young Nero for the people of Ilium,[378] from whom the Iuli, Nero's ancestors on the mother's side, claimed to trace their descent. It may therefore safely be assumed that the poems were written early in the reign of Nero. A most ingenious attempt has been made to throw some light on the identity of their author.[379] He speaks of himself as Corydon, and he has a patron whom he styles Meliboeus. He prays that Meliboeus may bring him before Caesar's notice as Pollio brought Vergil (iv. 157 sqq.; also i. 94). It has been suggested with some plausibility that Meliboeus is no other than C. Calpurnius Piso, the distinguished noble round whom in 65 A.D. centred the great conspiracy against Nero. The evidence rests on the existence of a poem entitled _panegyricus in Pisonem_,[380] in which a nameless poet seeks by his laudations to win Piso for a patron. The style of the poem has a marked resemblance to that of Calpurnius. If, as is possible, it should be assigned to his authorship, it becomes fairly certain that he was a dependent of Piso, and the name Calpurnius would suggest that he may have been the son of one of his freedmen.