The latter, addressing his patron Meliboeus and begging him to commend him to Caesar, exclaims (iv. 152):
o mihi quae tereti decurrent carmina versu tunc, Meliboee, meum si quando montibus istis (i.e. at Rome) dicar habere larem.
O how shall my songs trip in slender verse then, Meliboeus, if ever men shall say of me 'He has a house on yonder mountain'.
Is it a mere coincidence, a plagiarism, or a direct allusion? There is no certainty, but the coincidence is—to say the least—suggestive. If the identity of authorship be assumed as correct, it is probable that the eclogues are the later production. To place one's patron among the dramatis personae of an eclogue argues a nearer intimacy than the writing of a formal panegyric. That the poet is more at home as a panegyrist than as a writer of idylls does not affect the question. In such an age such a result was to be expected.
III
THE ILIAS LATINA
Latin poetry may almost be said to have begun with Livius Andronicus' translation of the Odyssey into the rude Saturnian metre. This translation had great vogue as a school book. But the Iliad remained untranslated, and it was only natural that later authors should try their hand upon it. Translations were produced in Republican times by Cn. Matius[393] and Ninnius Crassus,[394] but neither work attained to any popularity.
With the growth of the knowledge of Greek and its increasing use as a medium of instruction in the schools on the one hand, and the appearance of Vergil and the rise of the Aeneas saga on the other, the demand for a translation of the Iliad naturally became less. The Silver Age arrived with the problem unsolved. It was a period when writers abounded who would have been better employed on translation than on any attempt at original work. Further, in spite of the general knowledge of Greek, a translation of Homer would have its value in the schools both as a handbook for the subject-matter and as a 'crib '.
Three works of the kind seem to have been produced between the reigns of
Tiberius and Nero.
Attius Labeo[395] translated not only the Iliad but also the Odyssey into hexameters. But it was a poor performance. It was a baldly literal translation, paying small attention to the meaning of the original.[396] Persius pours scorn upon it, and one verse has survived to confirm our worst suspicions[397]—