Virgil and his household found refuge on an estate which had once belonged to his old master Siron: Catal. 10,
‘Villula, quae Sironis eras, et pauper agelle ...
Tu nunc eris illi [patri]
Mantua quod fuerat quodque Cremona prius.’
Whether he recovered his old farm is uncertain: at all events he spent most of his time in the south of Italy. Besides a house in Rome, he seems to have had a country house near Nola, and we know that the Georgics (cf. iv. 563) were written at Naples.
Donatus, ‘Habuit domum Romae Esquiliis iuxta hortos Maecenatis, quamquam secessu Campaniae Siciliaeque plurimum uteretur.’
Gell. vi. 20, 1, ‘Scriptum in quodam commentario repperi ... Vergilium petivisse a Nolanis, aquam uti duceret in propinquum rus.’
He lived a retired life, seldom visiting Rome, and devoting most of his time to poetical composition, in which he was regular and painstaking.
Tac. Dial. 13, ‘Securum et quietum Vergilii secessum, in quo tamen neque apud divum Augustum gratia caruit neque apud populum Romanum notitia: testes Augusti epistulae, testis ipse populus, qui auditis in theatro Vergilii versibus surrexit universus et forte praesentem spectantemque Vergilium veneratus est sic quasi Augustum.’
Quint. x. 3, 8, ‘Vergilium paucissimos die composuisse versus auctor est Varius.’
Cf. his own expression, quoted by Gell. xvii. 10, 2, ‘parere se versus more atque ritu ursino’ (alluding to the notion that the bear licked its young into shape).
He was already an influential member of Maecenas’ literary circle, to which, in B.C. 39, he introduced Horace. Cf. Hor. Sat. i. 6, 54,