[Footnote 4: Velleius Paterculus, II. 76.2; Macrobius, Sat. I. XI. 22]
[Footnote 5: A task which he performed in 39.]
With regard to Alfenus and Gallus, the scholiasts remained somewhat nearer the truth, for they had at hand a speech of Callus criticizing the former for his behavior at Mantua. By quoting the precise words of this speech Servius[6] has provided us with a solid criterion for accepting what is consistent in the statements of Vergil's earlier biographers and eliminating some conjectures. The passage reads: "When ordered to leave unoccupied a district of three miles outside the city, you included within the district eight hundred paces of water which lies about the walls." The passage, of course, shows that Alfenus was a commissioner on the colonial board, as Servius says. It does not excuse Servius' error of making Alfenus Pollio's successor as provincial governor[7] after Cisalpine Gaul had become autonomous, nor does it imply that Alfenus had in any manner been generous to Vergil or to any one else. In fact it reveals Alfenus in the act of seizing an unreasonable amount of land. Vergil,[8] of course, recognizes Alfenus' position as commissioner in his ninth Eclogue where he promises him great glory if he will show mercy to Mantua:
Vare, tuum nomen, superet modo Mantua nobis …
And Vergil's appeal to him was reasonable, since he, too, was a man of literary ambitions.[9] But there is no proof that Alfenus gave ear to his plea; at any rate the poet never mentions him again. Servius' supposition that Alfenus had been of service to the poet[10] seems to rest wholly on the mistaken idea that the sixth Eclogue was obsequiously addressed to him. As we have seen, however, Quintilius Varus has a better claim to that poem.
[Footnote 6: Servius Dan. on Ecl. IX. 10; ex oratione Cornelii in
Alfenum. Cf. Kroll, in Rhein. Museum 1909, 52.]
[Footnote 7: Servius Dan. on Ecl. VI. 6.]
[Footnote 8: Vergil, Eclogue IX, 26-29.]
[Footnote 9: See Suffenus and Alfenus, Classical Quarterly, 1920, p. 160.]
[Footnote 10: On Eclogue. VI. 6.]