was ANSER. He was a partisan of Antony, and from this fact, together with the possible allusion in the _Eclogues_, later grammarians discovered that he was, like Bavius and Maevius, unhappy bards only known from the contemptuous allusions of their betters, [34] an _obtrectator Virgilii_. As such he of course called down the vials of their wrath. But there is no real evidence for the charge. He seems to have been an unambitious poet, who indulged light and wanton themes. [35] AEMILIUS MACER, of Verona, who died 16 B.C., was certainly a friend of Virgil, and has been supposed to be the Mopsus of the _Eclogues_. He devoted his very moderate talents to minute and technical didactic poems. The _Ornithogonias_ of Nicander was imitated or translated by him, as well as the _Thaeriaka_ of the same writer. Ovid mentions having been frequently present at the poet's recitations, but as he does not praise them, [36] we may infer that Macer had no great name among his contemporaries, but owed his consideration and perhaps his literary impulse to his friendship for Virgil. CHAPTER II. VIRGIL (70-19 B.C.). PUBLIUS VIRGILIUS, or more correctly, VERGILIUS [1] MARO, was born in the village or district [2] of Andes, near Mantua, sixteen years after the birth of Catullus, of whom he was a compatriot as well as an admirer. [3] As the citizenship was not conferred on Gallia Transpadana, of which Mantua was a chief town, until 49 B.C., when Virgil was nearly twenty-one years old, he had no claim by birth to the name of Roman. And yet so intense is the patriotism which animates his poems, that no other Roman writer, patrician or plebeian, surpasses or even equals it in depth of feeling. It is one proof out of many how completely the power of Rome satisfied the desire of the Italians for a great common head whom they might reverence as the heaven-appointed representative of their race. And it leads us to reflect on the narrow pride of the great city in not earlier extending her full franchise to all those gallant tribes who fought so well for her, and who at last extorted their demand with grievous loss to themselves as to her, by the harsh argument of the sword. To return to Virgil. We learn nothing from his own works as to his early life and parentage. Our chief authority is Donatus. His father, Maro, was in humble circumstances; according to some he followed the trade of a potter. But as he farmed his own little estate, he must have been far removed from indigence, and we know that he was able to give his illustrious son the best education the time afforded. Trained in the simple virtues of the country, Virgil, like Horace, never lost his admiration for the stern and almost Spartan ideal of life which he had there witnessed, and which the levity of the capital only placed in stronger relief. After attending school for some years at Cremona, he assumed at sixteen the manly gown, on the very day to which tradition assigns the death of the poet Lucretius.