There is, moreover, little straining after effect and little real obscurity. The difficulties of the description of Piso's draught-playing are due to our ignorance of the exact nature of the game.[392] The actual language is at least as lucid as Pope's famous description of the game of ombre in _The Rape of the Lock_. The verse is of the usual post-Augustan type, showing strongly the primary influence of Vergil modified by the secondary influence of Ovid. It is light and easy and not ill-suited to its subject. It has distinct affinities, both in metre and diction, with the verse of Calpurnius Siculus, and may be by the same hand; but the resemblance is not so close as to afford anything approaching positive proof. Minor poets, lacking all individuality, the victims and not the controlling forces of the tendencies of the age, are apt to resemble one another. There are, however, two noteworthy passages which point strongly to the identity of the author of the _Panegyricus_ with the Bucolic poet. The former, addressing Piso as his patron (246), says: mea vota si mentem subiere tuam, memorabilis olim tu mihi Maecenas tereti cantaberé versu. If my prayers reach thy mind, thou shalt be sung of as Maecenas in my slender verse, and future ages shall tell of thy glory. The latter, addressing his patron Meliboeus and begging him to commend him to Caesar, exclaims (iv. 152): o mihi quae tereti decurrent carmina versu tunc, Meliboee, meum si quando montibus istis (i.e. at Rome) dicar habere larem. O how shall my songs trip in slender verse then, Meliboeus, if ever men shall say of me 'He has a house on yonder mountain'. Is it a mere coincidence, a plagiarism, or a direct allusion? There is no certainty, but the coincidence is--to say the least--suggestive. If the identity of authorship be assumed as correct, it is probable that the eclogues are the later production. To place one's patron among the _dramatis personae_ of an eclogue argues a nearer intimacy than the writing of a formal panegyric. That the poet is more at home as a panegyrist than as a writer of idylls does not affect the question. In such an age such a result was to be expected. III THE ILIAS LATINA Latin poetry may almost be said to have begun with Livius Andronicus' translation of the _Odyssey_ into the rude Saturnian metre. This translation had great vogue as a school book. But the _Iliad_ remained untranslated, and it was only natural that later authors should try their hand upon it. Translations were produced in Republican times by Cn. Matius[393] and Ninnius Crassus,[394] but neither work attained to any popularity.