[Footnote 14:  See Leo, Hermes, 1903, p. 1 ff., questioned by Stampini, Le Bucoliche,’3 1905, p. 93.]

[Footnote 15:  Capua and Nuceria were two of the cities near Naples where Vergil could see the work of eviction near at hand.]

The very deep sympathy of Vergil for the poor exiles rings also through the Dirae, a very surprising poem which he wrote at this same time, but on second thought suppressed.  It has the bitterness of the first Eclogue without its grace and tactful beginning.  The triumvirs were in no mood to read a book of lamentations.  “Honey on the rim” was Lucretius’ wise precept, and it was doubtless a prudent impulse that substituted the Eclogue for the “Curses.”  The former probably accomplished little enough, the latter would not even have been read.

The Dirae takes the form of a “cursing roundel,” a form once employed by Callimachus, who may have inherited it from the East.  It calls down heaven’s wrath upon the confiscated lands in language as bitter as ever Mt.  Ebal heard:  fire and flood over the crops, blight upon the fruit, and pestilence upon the heartless barbarians who drive peaceful peasants into exile.

The setting is once more that of the country about Naples, of the Campanian hills and the sea coast, not that of Mantua.[16] It is doubtless the miserable poor of Capua and Nuceria that Vergil particularly has in mind.  The singers are two slave-shepherds departing from the lands of a master who has been dispossessed.  The poem is pervaded by a strong note of pity for the lovers of peace,—­“pii cives,” shall we say the “pacifists,”—­who had been punished for refusing to enlist in a civil war.  A sympathy for them must have been deep in the gentle philosopher of the garden: 

     O male deuoti, praetorum crimina, agelli![17]
  Tuque inimica pii semper discordia ciuis. 
  Exsul ego indemnatus egens mea rura reliqui,
  Miles ut accipiat funesti praemia belli. 
  Hinc ego de tumulo mea rura nouissima uisam,
  Hinc ibo in siluas:  obstabunt iam mihi colles,
  Obstabunt montes, campos audire licebit.[18]

[Footnote 16:  It is just possible that “Lycurgus” (l. 8) who is spoken of as the author of the mischief is meant for Alfenus Varus, who boasted of his knowledge of law.  Horace lampoons him as Alfenus vafer.]

[Footnote 17: 
  Ye fields accursed for our statesmen’s sins,
  O Discord ever foe to men of peace,
  In want, an exile, uncondemned, I yield
  My lands, to pay the wages of a hell-born war. 
  Ere I go hence, one last look towards my fields,
  Then to the woods I turn to close you out
  From view, but ye shall hear my curses still.]

[Footnote 18:  The Lydia which comes in the MS. attached to the Dirae is not Vergil’s.  Nor can it be the famous poem of that name written by Valerius Cato, despite the opinion of Lindsay, Class.  Review, 1918, p. 62.  It is too slight and ineffectual to be identified with that work.  The poem abounds with conceits that a neurotic and sentimental pupil of Propertius—­not too well practiced in verse writing—­would be likely to cull from his master.]