[Footnote 4: Cf. Hor. Sat. i. 5.55; i. 10. 44-45 and 81; Carm. i. 24.]
[Footnote 5: Rhein. Mus., 1890, p. 172. The names of Quintilius and Varius occur twice; the rest are too fragmentary to be certain, but the space calls for names of the length of [Greek: Plo]tie] and [Greek: Ou[ergilie] and the constant companionship of these four men makes the restoration very probable.]
Of the general question of Philodemus' influence upon Varius and Vergil, Varus and Horace, the critics and poets who shaped the ideals of the Augustan literature, it is not yet time to speak. It will be difficult ever to decide how far these men drew their materials from the memories of their lecture-rooms; whether for instance Varius' de morte depended upon his teacher's [Greek: peri thanatou], as has been suggested, or to what extent Horace used the [Greek: peri orgaes] and the [Greek: peri kakion] when he wrote his first two epistles, or the [Greek: peiri kolakeias] when he instructed his young friend Lollius how to conduct himself at court, or whether it was this teacher who first called attention to Bion, Neoptolemus, and Menippus; nor does it matter greatly, since the value of these works lay rather in the art of expression and timeliness of their doctrine than in originality of view.
In the theory of poetic art there is in many respects a marked difference between the classical ideals of the Roman group and the rather luxurious verses of Philodemus, but he too recognized the value of restraint and simplicity, as some of his epigrams show. Furthermore his theories of literary art are frequently in accord with Horace's Ars Poetica on the very points of chaste diction and precise expression which this Augustan group emphasized. It would not surprise his contemporaries if Horace restated maxims of Philodemus when writing an essay to the son and grandsons of Philodemus' patron. However, after all is said, Vergil had questioned some of the Alexandrian ideals of art before he came under the influence of Philodemus, and the seventh Catalepton gives a hint that Varius thought as Vergil. It is not unlikely that Quintilius Varus, Vergil's elder friend and fellow-Transpadane, who had grown up an intimate friend of Catullus and Calvus, had in these matters a stronger influence than Philodemus.
There are, however, certain turns of sentiment in Vergil which betray a non-Roman flavor to one who comes to Vergil directly from a reading of Lucretius, Catullus, or Cicero's letters. This is especially true of the Oriental proskynesis found in the very first Eclogue and developed into complete "emperor worship" in the dedication of the Georgics. This language, here for the first time used by a Roman poet, is not to be explained as simple gratitude for great favors. It is not even satisfactorily accounted for by supposing that the young poet was somewhat slavishly following some Hellenistic model. Catullus had paraphrased the Alexandrian poets, but he could hardly have inserted a passage of this import. Nor was it mere flattery, for Vergil has shown in his frank praise of Cato, Brutus, and Pompey that he does not merely write at command. No, these passages in Vergil show the effects of the long years of association with Greeks and Orientals that had steeped his mind in expressions and sentiments which now seemed natural to him, though they must have surprised many a reader at Rome. His teachers at Naples had grown up in Syria and had furthermore carried with them the tradition of the Syrian branch of the school that had learned to adapt its language to suit the whims of the deified Seleucid monarchs. As Epicureans they also employed sacred names with little reverence. Was not Antiochus Epiphanes himself a "god," while as a member of the sect he belittled divinity?
Naples, too, was a Greek city always filled with Oriental trading folk, and these carried with them the language of subject races. It is at Pompeii that the earliest inscriptions on Italian soil have been found which recognize the imperial cult, and it is at Cumae that the best instance of a cult calendar has come to light. It is a note, one of the very few in the great poet's work, that grates upon us, but when he wrote as he did he was probably not aware that his years of residence in the "garden" had indeed accustomed his ear to some un-Roman sounds.[6] Octavian was of course not unaware of the advantage that accrued to the ruler through the Oriental theory of absolutism, and furtively accepted all such expressions. By the time Vergil wrote the Aeneid the Roman world had acquiesced, but then, to our surprise, Vergil ceases to accord divine attributes to Augustus.
[Footnote 6: Julius Caesar began as early as 45 B.C. to invite extraordinary honors for political purposes, but Roman literature seems not to have taken any cognizance of them at that time.]
Again, I would suggest that it was at Naples that Vergil may most readily have come upon the "messianic" ideas that occur in the fourth Eclogue, for despite all the objections that have been raised against using that word, conceptions are found there which were not yet naturalized in the Occident. The child in question is thought of as a Soter whose deeds the poet hopes to sing (l. 54), and furthermore lines 7 and 50 contain unmistakably the Oriental idea of naturam parturire, as Suetonius phrases it (Aug. 94). Quite apart from the likelihood that the Gadarene may have gossiped at table about the messianic hopes of the Hebrews, which of course he knew, it is not conceivable that he never betrayed any knowledge of, or interest in, the prophetic ideas with which his native country teemed. Meleager, also a Gadarene, preserved memories of the people of his birthplace in his poems, and Caecilius of Caleacte, who seems to have been in Italy at about this time, was not beyond quoting Moses in his rhetorical works.[7]
[Footnote 7: It is generally assumed that his book was the source for the quotation in Pseudo-Longinus.]
Furthermore, Naples was the natural resort of all those Greek and Oriental rhetoricians and philosophers, historians, poets, actors, and artists who drifted Romeward from the crumbling courts of Alexandria, Antioch, and Pergamum. There they could find congenial surroundings while discovering wealthy patrons in the numerous villas of the idle rich near by, and thither they withdrew at vacation time if necessity called them to Rome for more arduous tasks. Andronicus, the Syrian Epicurean, brought to Rome by Sulla, made his home at nearby Cumae; Archias, Cicero's client, also from Syria, spent much time at Naples, and the poet Agathocles lived there; Parthenius of Nicaea, to whom the early Augustans were deeply indebted, taught Vergil at Naples. Other Orientals like Alexander, who wrote the history of Syria and the Jews, and Timagenes, historian of the Diadochi, do not happen to be reported from Naples, but we may safely assume that most of them spent whatever leisure time they could there.