Memories of the Neapolitan bay!  The Copa should be read in the arbor of an osteria at Sorrento or Capri to the rhythm of the tarantella where the modern offspring of Vergil’s tavern-maid are still plying the arts of song and dance upon the passerby.[4]

[Footnote 4:  Unfortunately the evidence does not suffice to assign the Moretum to Vergil, though it was certainly composed by a genuine if somewhat halting poet, and in Vergil’s day.  It has many imaginative phrases, and the meticulous exactness of its miniature work might seem to be Vergilian were it not for the unrelieved plainness of the theme.  Even so, it might be considered an experiment in a new style, if the rather dubious manuscript evidence were supported by a single ancient citation.  See Rand, loc.  Cit. p. 178.]

There are also three brief Priapea which should probably be assigned to this period.  The third may indeed have been an inscription on a pedestal of the scare-crow god set out to keep off thieving rooks and urchins in the poet’s own garden: 

This place, my lads, I prosper, I guard the hovel, too,
Thatched, as you see, by willows and reeds and grass that grew
In all the marsh about it; hence me, mere stump of oak,
Shaped by the farmer’s hatchet, they now as god invoke. 
They bring me gifts devoutly, the master and his boy,
Supposing me the giver of the blessings they enjoy. 
The kind old man each morning comes here to weed the ground,
He clears the shrine of thistles and burrs that grow around. 
The lad brings dainty offerings with small but ready hand: 
At dawn of spring he crowns me with a lavish daisy-strand,
From summer’s earliest harvest, while still the stalk is green,
He wreathes my brow with chaplets; he fills me baskets clean
With golden pansies, poppies, with apples ripe and gourds,
The first rich blushing clusters of grapes for me he hoards. 
And once to my great honor—­but let no god be told!—­
He brought me to my altar a lambkin from the fold. 
So though, my lads, a Scare-Crow and no true god I be,
My master and his vineyard are very dear to me. 
Keep off your filching hands, lads, and elsewhere ply your theft: 

Our neighbor is a miser, his Scare-Crow gets no gifts,
His apples are not guarded—­the path is on your left.

The quaint simplicity of the sentiment and the playful surprise at the end quickly disarm any skepticism that would deny these lines to Horace’s poet of “tender humor.”

During this period the poet seems also to have traveled.  Maecenas enjoyed the society of literary men, and we may well suppose that he took Vergil with him in his administrative tours on more than the one occasion which Horace happens to have recorded.  The poet certainly knows Italy remarkably well.  The meager and inaccurate maps and geographical works of that day could not have provided him with the insight into