When spring is young and the birds begin to pipe once more, and the swallow returns to plaster its nest anew, then move all your flock from its winter fold. For then the wood sprouts in fresh glory with its spring shoots and builds anew the shades of summer, then all the glades are bright with flowers and the green year is born again. we seem to catch a glimpse of the real countryside; but for the most part Calpurnius paints little save theatrical and _maniéré_ miniatures. Of such a character is the clever and not unpleasing description of the tame stag in the sixth eclogue (30). He shows a pretty fancy and no more. The metre is like the language, easy, graceful, and correct. But the pauses are poorly managed; the rhythm is unduly dactylic; the verse trips all too lightly and becomes monotonous. The total impression that we receive from these poems is one of insignificance and triviality. The style is perhaps less rhetorical and obscure than that of most writers of the age; as a result, these poems lack what is often the one saving grace of Silver Latin poetry, its extreme cleverness. To find verse as dull and uninspired, we must turn to Silius Italicus or the _Aetna_. * * * * * The two short poems contained in a MS. at Einsiedeln and distinguished by the name of their place of provenance are also productions of the Neronian age. The first, in the course of a contest of song between Thamyras and Ladas, with a third shepherd, Midas, as arbiter, sets forth the surpassing skill of Nero as a performer on the _cithara_.[384] The second celebrates the return of the Golden Age to the world now under the beneficent guidance of Nero. Neither poem possesses the slightest literary importance; both are polished but utterly insipid examples of foolish court flattery. The author is unknown. An ingenious suggestion[385] has been made that he is no other than Calpurnius Piso, the supposed Meliboeus of Calpurnius Siculus. The second of these eclogues begins, 'Quid tacitus, Mystes?' The fourth eclogue of Calpurnius Siculus begins (Meliboeus loquitur), 'Quid tacitus, Corydon?' Is Meliboeus speaking in person and quoting his own poem? It may be so, but the evidence is obviously not such as to permit any feeling of certainty. But it is at least probable that the poet had access to the court and had been praised by Nero. Such is the most plausible interpretation of a passage in the first eclogue, where Ladas, in answer to Thamyras, who claims the prize on the ground that his song shall be of Caesar, replies (16, 17): et me sidereo respexit Cynthius ore laudatamque chelyn iussit variare canendo.[386] On me, too, has the Cynthian god cast his starry glance and bidden me accompany the lyre he praised with diverse song. Whether the author be Piso or another, the poems do him small credit.