For Vergil there was henceforth no joy in war or the fruits of war.  His devotion to Julius Caesar had been unquestioned, and Octavian, when he proved himself a worthy successor and established peace, inherited that devotion.  But for the patriots who had fought the losing battle he had only a heart full of pity.

  Ne pueri ne tanta animis adsuescite bella,
  Neu patriae validos in viscera vertite viris;
  Tuque prior, tu parce, genus qui ducis Olympo,
  Projice tela manu, sanguis meus!

XII

POLLIO

We come finally to the two Eclogues addressed to Asinius Pollio.  This remarkable man was only six years older than Vergil, but he was just old enough to become a member of Caesar’s staff, an experience that matured men quickly.  To Vergil he seemed to be a link with the last great generation of the Republic.  That Catullus had mentioned him gracefully in a poem, and Cinna had written him a propempticon, that Caesar had spoken to him on the fateful night at the Rubicon, and that he had been one of Cicero’s correspondents, placed him on a very high pedestal in the eyes of the studious poet still groping his way.  It may well be that Gallus was the tie that connected Pollio and Vergil, for we find in a letter of Pollio’s to Cicero that the former while campaigning in Spain was in the habit of exchanging literary chitchat with Gallus.  That was in the spring of 43, at the very time doubtless when Pollio—­as young men then did—­spent his leisure moments between battles in writing tragedies.  Vergil in his eighth Eclogue, perhaps with over-generous praise, compares these plays with those of Sophocles.

This Eclogue presents one of the most striking studies in primitive custom that Latin poetry has produced, a bit of realism suffused with a romantic pastoral atmosphere.  The first shepherd’s song is of unrequited love cherished from boyhood for a maiden who has now chosen a worthless rival.  The second is a song sung while a deserted shepherdess performs with scrupulous precision the magic rites which are to bring her faithless lover back to her.  There are reminiscences of Theocritus of course, any edition of the Eclogues will give them in full, but Vergil, so long as he lived at Naples, did not have to go to Sicilian books for these details.  He who knows the social customs of Campania, the magical charms scribbled on the walls of Pompeii, the deadly curses scratched on enduring metal by forlorn lovers,—­curses hidden beneath the threshold or hearthstone of the rival to blight her cheeks and wrinkle her silly face,—­knows very well that such folks are the very singers that Vergil might meet in his walks about the hills of the golden bay.