Some time later (53 B.C.), we find him at Rome studying rhetoric under Epidius, and soon afterwards philosophy under Siro the Epicurean. The recent publication of Lucretius's poem must have invested Siro's teaching with new attractiveness in the eyes of a young author, conscious of genius, but as yet self-distrustful, and willing to humble his mind before the "temple of speculative truth," The short piece, written at this date, and showing his state of feeling, deserves to be quoted:-- "Ite hinc inanes ite rhetorum ampullae... Scholasticorum natio madens pingui:... Tuque o mearum cura, Sexte, curarum Vale Sabine: iam valete formosi. Nos ad beatos vela mittimus portus Magni patentes docta dicta Sironis, Vitamque ab omni vindicabimus cura. Ite hinc Camenae... Dulces Camenae, nam (fatebimur verum) Dulces fuistis: et tamen meas chartas Revisitote, sed pudenter et varo." These few lines are very interesting, first, as enabling us to trace the poetic influence of Catullus, whose style they greatly resemble, though their moral tone is far more serious; secondly, as showing us that Virgil was in aristocratic company, the names mentioned, and the epithet _formosi_, by which the young nobles designated themselves, after the Greek _kaloi, kalokagathoi_, indicating as much; and thirdly, as evincing a serious desire to embrace philosophy for his guide in life, after a conflict with himself as to whether he should give up writing poetry, and a final resolution to indulge his natural taste "seldom and without licentiousness." We can hardly err in tracing this awakened earnestness and its direction upon the Epicurean system to his first acquaintance with the poem of Lucretius. The enthusiasm for philosophy expressed in these lines remained with Virgil all his life. Poet as he was, he would at once be drawn to the theory of the universe so eloquently propounded by a brother-poet. And in all his works a deep study of Lucretius is evidenced not only by imitations of his language, but by frequent adoption of his views and a recognition of his position as the loftiest attainable by man. [4] The young Romans at this time took an eager interest in the problems which philosophy presents, and most literary men began their career as disciples of the Lucretian theory. [5] Experience of life, however, generally drew them away from it. Horace professed to have been converted by a thunder-clap in a clear sky; this was no doubt irony, but it is clear that in his epistles he has ceased to be an Epicurean. Virgil, who in the _Eclogues_ and _Georgics_ seems to sigh with regret after the doctrines he fears to accept, comes forward in the _Aeneid_ as the staunch adherent of the national creed, and where he acts the philosopher at all, assumes the garb of a Stoic, not an Epicurean. But he still desired to spend his later days in the pursuit of truth; it seemed as if he accepted almost with