The Culex

Author(s): Eduard Fraenkel

Source: The Journal of Roman Studies, Vol. 42, Parts 1 and 2 (1952), pp. 1-9
Published by: Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies
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 THE CULEX'
By EDUARD FRAENKEL
It would be a waste of our time if in this lecture we concerned ourselves solely with
the old question whether or no it was Virgil who wrote the Culex. More than enough
has been written on this subject to guide those who know an argument when they see it.
I should, of course, fail in my duty if I concealed my personal view on the problem of the
authorship, and I shall, perhaps, be able to add to the discussion a point or two of my own.
But I also want to use this queer problem to illustrate certain minor phenomena in the
literary history of the Augustan period. It is the chief value of the so-called Appendix
Vergiliana that it provides us with a variety of works of different origin and very unequal
quality. Among them some are early products of Virgil himself, some are poems written
several decades after his death ; some never had anything to do with Virgil, claimed no
relation to his works and got into this collection by mere accident, others were conceived
as deliberate fakes, i.e. pretended to be written by Virgil. Some of the poems which we
find in this miscellany are works of considerable originality (for instance Dirae and
Moretum), whereas other pieces of the collection show bungling versifiers at their worst.
This difference in standard is of considerable interest. The great Athenian poetry of the
fifth century is for us completely isolated ; we cannot, for instance, form any proper idea
of the minor tragedians censured in the Frogs. In the case of the Augustan poetry we
are luckier: here we see not only the high mountain peaks, but something of the foothills
as well, thanks, in the first place, to the preservation of the Appendix Vergiliana, and,
in a less degree, to that of the Corpus Tibullianum. The Appendix Vergiliana enables us,
among other things, to observe the enormous effect which Virgil's major works, from the
Bucolics on, had on his contemporaries, and also to trace the influence of Horace's epodes
(Catalepton xiii), of Propertius (Copa), and of Ovid (Ciris). The Culex, too, can teach
us a lesson in literary history, but before going into that it will be necessary to remember
the main features of the poem itself. You will therefore allow me to begin by condensing
the contents of the 414 lines of the Culex into a brief summary.
Let us for the moment skip the long and elaborate preface of the poem and begin our
survey at the point where the matter-of-fact phrase sed nos ad coepta feramur (1. 41) informs
us that now the preliminaries are over and the narrative proper begins. The narrative
starts, not by simply saying 'it was early in the morning', but by indulging in one of
those cumbrous circumlocutions in the hackneyed epic style which provoked Horace,
Fielding and many others to amusing parodies:
igneus aetherias iam sol penetrabat in arces
candidaque aurato quatiebat lumina curru,
crinibus et roseis tenebras Aurora fugarat.
At this early hour a goatherd drove his flock out of the fold and on to the mountainside.
There the animals roam about, straggle across the valleys, climb up the steep cliffs, and
hang precariously over the precipice ; some nibble the various herbs, shrubs and trees
(all of them well depicted), while one apart from the rest is gazing at its reflection in the
stream. This description, if not of the highest rank as poetry, is yet a lovely piece; it also
testifies to the Latin genius for translating movement into sound (48-50)
iam vallibus abdunt
corpora iamque omni celeres e parte vagantes
tondebant tenero viridantia gramina morsu.
But, alas, our pleasure soon comes to an end, for after ten lines the author interrupts himself
and plunges into moralizing praise of the blessings of pastoral life (58 ff.)
o bona pastoris (si quis non pauperis usum
mente prius docta fastidiat . .
Once on the path of edifying meditation, he finds it difficult to stop, and it is not until
1 Lecture delivered at the Joint Meeting of Greek and Roman Societies at Cambridge in August, I951.

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2 EDUARD FRAENKEL

we have been treated to forty lines of a digression packed with all sorts of far-fetched names
and learned allusions that we are at last allowed to return to the goatherd and his flock.
In the meantime Helios has been busy driving his chariot towards the zenith: it is now
nearly midday. The goatherd does what in the South any sensible person will do at that
hour: he makes preparations for his siesta. But first he has to drive his .goats to a shady
spot. Fortunately a highly suitable place is near by, a grove sacred to Diana. It consists
of the most magnificent trees, and their description, including the complicated mytho-
logical tales that cluster round them, fills forty-eight lines, with the result that the temporal
clause in which the grove is first mentioned waits in vain for its apodosis: with the trees
and their stories coming in one after another, orderly sentence structure breaks down,
and at the end of the description a fresh temporal clause has to be provided (I57 f.)
pastor ut ad fontem densa requievit in umbra,
mitem concepit proiectus membra soporem.
Now, we are glad to learn, he has actually gone to sleep,
anxius insidiis nullis, sed lentus in herbis
securo pressos somno mandaverat artus.
But, oh, what is man's happiness ! While the goatherd, peacefully stretched out in the
grass, is fast asleep, something terrible awaits him. The spot which he has chosen for his
rest happens to be near the favourite siesta-haunt of a snake which is now approaching.
And what a snake ! A gigantic creature, horrible to look at, darting flames from its eyes
and producing ghastly noises (intonat ore). When it sees the stranger barring the path to
the pond for which it is making, the monster, not unnaturally, decides to attack him.
And now we get a scene somewhat reminiscent of the beginning of the Magic Flute.
The goatherd, like Tamino, seems to be doomed to a premature death. In fact his position,
face to face with the serpent, appears far more desperate than Tamino's, for, unlike that
brisk young prince, he is asleep. But at this most critical juncture there comes to his
rescue, not a bevy of fair and sweet-voiced ladies, but a tiny creature, almost inarticulate,
a gnat, a culex, reared in the aforesaid pond. This intelligent insect, with impressive
presence of mind, chooses as its target the most sensitive spot and stings the goatherd in
the eye. Up he jumps, frantic with pain, and crushes the gnat (i88 f.)
cui dissitus omnis
spiritus et cessit sensus,
TOU 8' a(tJl AVUell IYJXT TE LE,VOS TE.

Culex dies. The goatherd catches sight of the serpent immediately in front of him, dashes
backward, still but half-conscious, tears from the nearest tree a thick branch and hits his
enemy on the head with all his might (the exact spot where he inflicts the deadly wound is
described with Homeric accuracy). Serpent dies, Goatherd sits down (quem postquam
vidit caesum languescere, sedit), and that is the end of this most exciting scene.
Next scene. The goddess Night enters the stage with epic pomp, the evening-star
dutifully leaves Mount Oeta, and the goatherd goes home and lies down to rest his weary
limbs. 'He had no sooner fallen into a sleep that soothed and enfolded him, resolving
all his cares, for his splendid limbs were exhausted ' (2o6 ff.),
?UJTETOV U1TTVOSE?pp1TTE, AUVVoLE?EX8 parTa GOUJo,
Sv\poS s-
LqplXJXeE' cXca yap i<K&E yaci8lWa yuvca,
cuius ut intravit levior per corpora somnus
languidaque effuso requierunt membra sopore,
he had no sooner fallen asleep than he was visited by the ghost of poor Patroclus ',
'AeE 8' E?Ti VUX) VCXTpOK)Os 6?1XI010 -

I beg your pardon, I seem to be mixed up with my parallels ; it was not, of course, the
ghost of Patroclus that came to the goatherd, but a hardly less moving apparition, the
ghost, or, more correctly, the ?'18ck0v, the effigies, of the deceased gnat,
effigies ad eum culicis devenit,

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 THE CULEX 3

and that diminutive ghost reproaches the sleeper. Again we are reminded of the apparition
of Patroclus, ' you are asleep ; you have forgotten me, Achilles.' Similarly the ?'I8cAov
of the gnat begins (213):
tu lentus refoves iucunda membra quiete.
Culex then lets the goatherd understand, not in so many words, for he is an extremely
tactful gnat, but by unmistakable hints, that the least he can do for him, who saved his
life, is to give him a proper burial with all the customary ritual. That is not merely a
point of honour, but a vital necessity, vital, of course, for the life after death. Admission
to Hades and its various departments is regulated by a rigid code. Culex belongs
undoubtedly to the class of the PlicloG6vcxTol,those who have met with a violent death
and have therefore not obtained the normal funeral rites required for a permanent settlement
in Hades. The farthest corner to which they are permitted to penetrate is a kind of ante-
Hades or limbo. How far the E1i8cAov of the gnat actually went is in this poem not made
sufficiently clear, owing, as it seems, to some negligence or muddle of the Latin poet
rather than of his Greek model. Anyway this much is obvious that Culex was not allowed
to join the select company of the blessed ones, but was sent back from the entrance of
their dwelling-place, the Elysian Fields, and had to return to the waters of the Styx; what
he reports about the privileged spirits beyond is, unlike the rest of his tale, not based on
autopsy.
Anyone who brings tidings from the other side of the grave can be assured of an
attentive hearing ; the reason lies in a very natural desire of the human mind, of which
story-tellers and poets from the Odyssey on were quick to take advantage. However, the
Nekyia of the Culex is rather excessive: it fills nearly half the poem. We hear of the
Furies, of the great sinners, Tityus, Tantalus, Sisyphus and the rest of them, and later of
the heroines who in Elysium receive the reward of their singular devotion to their husbands,
Alcestis, Penelope, and above all Eurydice. Tphislast lady, as far as the poem is concerned,
proves a disruptive element: to her, and to her husband Orpheus, no fewer than 28 lines
are allotted (268-96). There follow the heroes of the Trojan War (the mention of Ulysses
provokes a brief summary of several books of the Odyssey), and the rear is brought up by
the heroes of Roman history (36i ff.):
hic Fabii Deciique, hic est et Horatia virtus,
hic et fama vetus numquam moritura Camilli,
and so forth. From the admiration of those illustrious figures the little gnat tears himself
away (372 f.)
illi laude sua vigeant: ego Ditis opacos
cogor adire lacus.
I, he says, have to prepare myself to appear before judge Minos and give an account of
my life and death. Before his final exit Culex puts in one more gentle remark to remind
the goatherd of what he should do (378):
cum mihi tu sis causa mali nec conscius adsis.
Then, like the well-mannered little creature he is, he takes a ceremonious farewell (38I if.)
'digredior numquam rediturus; tu cole fontes
et viridis nemorum silvas et pascua laetus,
at mea diffusas rapiantur dicta per auras.'
dixit et extrema tristis cum voce recessit.
The goatherd, on waking, is filled with sorrow and remorse, and without delay he sets to
work to make up for his neglect. He erects beside the stream an elaborate circular tumulus
with plenty of vegetation upon it and enclosed by a marble fence: the whole thing not
unlike a diminutive replica of the Mausoleum of Augustus near the bank of the Tiber.
The learned catalogue of the various flowers, shrubs and trees which the goatherd plants

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4 EDUARD FRAENKEL

on the mound occupies twelve lines. On the front of the monument there is affixed an
epigram, that prettily rounds off the poem:
parve culex, pecudum custos tibi tale merenti
funeris officium vitae pro munere reddit.
Even from this extremely sketchy survey it must have become clear that behind the
Latin Culex there lies a Greek poem, a short epic of the type which our contemporaries
are in the unjustifiable habit of calling an epyllion. Following Leo's excellent commentary,
I have already pointed out the close relation between the apparition of the ghost of
Patroclus and the apparition of the ghost of the gnat. In this refined and witty adaptation
of an Homeric theme we clearly perceive the manner of Hellenistic poetry. Again, in the
subject and general structure of the Nekyia Greek invention is unmistakable, as it is in the
idea of concluding the poem with the succinct epigram (epitaphs on the tombs of pet
animals were favoured by Hellenistic epigrammatists). But, on the other hand, we find
in the Culex important Roman insertions, some of them of considerable length. Here I will
mention only two: the eulogy of the bona pastoris soon after the beginning of the narrative,
and the gallery of the Roman heroes in Hades.
But by now, I fear, many of my kind listeners may have become somewhat restless
and are beginning to grumble under their breath: ' that is all very well, but do come to
the point: is the Culex a work of Virgil's or is it not ? ' Well then: it is not. Our judgement
on its authenticity does not fortunately depend on what we think of its quality. I, for
one, would not greatly quarrel with Housman, who in I902 wrote: ' In the Culex and
Ciris and Aetna it is for ever to be borne in mind that they are the work of poetasters.
Many a time it is impossible to say where the badness of the author ends and the badness
of the scribe begins. And many a time, when the guilt is firmly saddled on the copyist,
there is no more to be done except sit down and sigh.' But even those who disagree with
Housman's verdict will find it very hard to maintain the Virgilian authorship of the Culex,
unless they are determined to shut their eyes firmly to a number of solid facts, which have
been ascertained in a series of careful investigations. It is, of course, possible to ignore
these facts, but they remain there all the same. I shall content myself with selecting a few
examples to illustrate the criteria which have been successfully applied to this problem.
It is well-known how hazardous it is to try on purely internal grounds to make out
the priority in cases where two passages in two works of literature have certain features
in common and where it is unlikely that these common features are to be derived from
a common model. At out last meeting in Oxford in I948, Professor Lofstedt discussed
this intricate problem with his customary learning and artistic taste and took also the Culex
into account. In the Culex the position is uncommonly favourable, for here not even the
most scrupulous critic, provided he approaches the question with an unbiased mind, will
hesitate to decide whether certain passages in Virgil's Eclogues, Georgics and the Aeneid
are prior or posterior to the corresponding passages in the Culex. In the long digression
on Eurydice and Orpheus which I have already mentioned the author, speaking first of
Eurydice, says (289 ff.):
illa quidem, nimium manes experta severos,
praeceptum signabat iter nec rettulit intus
lumina nec divae corrupit munera lingua;
sed tu crudelis, crudelis tu magis, Orpheu,
oscula cara petens rupisti iussa deorum.
Since the behaviour of Orpheus could be compared only with that of Eurydice, we are
bound to ask' why crudelis tu magis, Orpheu ' ? Why indeed ? Virgil, speaking of Medea,
says (Ecl. 8, 47-50):
saevus Amor docuit natorum sanguine matrem
commaculare manus. crudelis tu quoque, mater.
crudelis mater magis an puer improbus ille ?
improbus ille puer; crudelis tu quoque, mater

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 THE CULEX 5

When the terrible serpent is approaching the sleeping goatherd (I79),

ardet mente, furit stridoribus, intonat ore.
Is not intonat ore rather odd here ? I have not completely forgotten my Aeschylus; I do
remember that in the Seven against Thebes the Scout says of battle-thirsty Tydeus
AEUc1rpivplVaisKAc=yyaliclv COs8paKCov
PoV,
and I also know from Pindar that, when Poseidon and Apollo were building the wall of
Troy, three snakes tried to jump across it; two perished in the attempt, but the third
got safely in, v6poUC?EPoa&cas: what it shouted was, I take it, in snakes' language the
equivalent to T1rvEV\a KaQ\ivlKE. These pieces of evidence seem to show that the vocal
organs of serpents, at any rate serpents suitable for poetry, were in ancient times somewhat
different from what they are nowadays. Nevertheless, the intonat ore of the Culex snake,
coming as it does immediately after furit stridoribus, puzzles me. It likewise puzzled the
scribe of the Corsini codex, who used, it is true, a very good exemplar, but also indulged
more than once in reckless interpolation. Here he ironed the objectionable intonat down
to insonat. The uninterpolated version, intonat ore, is accounted for as soon as we remember
the Furiarum maxima, who is the sixth book of the Aeneid (607) intonat ore.
To return once more to Orpheus. His courage is praised by the poet. He felt no
fear, nec timuit, of Phlegethon or Tartarus, or the throne of Dis (275),
nec faciles Ditis sine iudice sedes.
If this means anything, it can, as Leo saw, only mean ' quae si sine iudice essent, faciles
essent'. The expression is so involved as to be completely obscure. On the other hand,
we read in Aeneid vi, where the criminal judicature of Minos is explained, the perfectly
smooth sentence (43I)
nec vero hae sine sorte datae, sine iudice sedes.
The dependence of the Culex on the Aeneid can also be shown by a modest observa-
tion, which apparently has not yet been made. In the Culex the phrase hinc atque hinc
occurs twice. From the Thesaurus we learn that no instance of hinc atque hinc exists before
the Aeneid, where it occurs eight times. There will, of course, be scholars who find it easy
to assume that Virgil in his early youth somehow hit on this phrase, then, during the
period of the Eclogues and Georgics, forgot all about it and only late in life dug it up
again. I myself would say that the author of the Culex adopted this peculiarity of the
Aeneid together with so many others.
Let us now turn to the comparison of one or two larger sections in the Culex and in
Virgil's work. In doing so we shall, perhaps, find the result less spectacular than in the
case of the details discussed before, but certainly not less instructive. Take, for instance,
the glorification of the bona pastoris, on which I have already touched
o bona pastoris (si quis non pauperis usum
mente prius docta fastidiat . ..
Here it is not only the beginning that recalls the famous passage towards the end of
Georgics II (458 ff.),
o fortunatos nimium, sua si bona norint,
agricolas,
nor several closely similar details, but the whole structure of the elaborate period: in
Virgil we are given first si non . . . nec . . . nec . . ., then the positive side at secura quies
etc. ; in the Culex first si non . . . nec . . . nec . . ., then the positive side, at pectore puro etc.
We saw that the Nekyia of the Culex, like that in the sixth book of the Aeneid,
culminates in the long series of Rome's heroes,
hic Fabii Deciique, hic est et Horatia virtus,
hic et fama vetus, numquam moritura, Camilli,
Curtius etc.

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6 EDUARD FRAENKEL

Here it is not enough to point out, as Leo did, that the list agrees to a large extent with
the list in Aeneid vi. We must go further and firmly state that this insertion of Roman
history into the Nekyia of the Culex would alone suffice to prove the poem to be later than
the Aeneid and thus to show the absurdity of the idea that it could have been written by
Virgil in his youth. The gnat is in no way concerned with the Fabii and Decii, Camillus,
the Scipios, and all the rest of them. If they nevertheless appear in this poem, their function
here is purely ornamental; they are dragged in as one more show-piece. In the sixth book
of the Aeneid, on the other hand, the mustering of Rome's great warriors is anything but
an ornament: it is, on the contrary, one of the most essential elements of the whole poem.
The flexibility of Virgil's genius made it possible for him to write an Homerizing epic and
yet to glorify in it the greatness of Rome and Italy as it manifested itself from the earliest
times down to the poet's own age. Without writing an Augusteis, he still was able, up
to a point, to fulfil the promise given at an earlier stage, in medio mihi Caesar erit. It is
three scenes, above all, that bring out this aspect of Virgil's plan: in Book I Jupiter's
prophecy to Venus, in Book vi the hero's vision in Hades of the future of his race, and
at the end of Book viii the description of the battle of Actium as represented on the shield
of Aeneas. As for the scene in Hades, it could not occur to a poet so intimately familiar
with the ideology of the early Principate to isolate the gens Iulia: this gens had to be given
its place within a gathering of the other great families of Rome, and the new regime had
to appear as the culmination of the long and glorious history of the Republic. It is clear,
then, that the introduction of the Roman heroes into the Nekyia of Book vi is part of a
most careful general plan, a plan that comprehends far more than this particular book and
is in fact fundamental to the whole Aeneid, since it serves, more than anything else, to
blend the mythological theme of the poem with the whole course of Rome's later history.
Roman heroes are not an integral element of a Nekyia as such : it is the Aeneid that
requires them. Are we really to imagine that a very young Virgil, when he was looking
for some suitable ornamental pieces whereby to embellish his Hellenistic model, hit by the
oddest of chances on that very topic which several decades later was to provide the crowning
conception of the Aeneid ? I leave the answer to my audience.

In dealing with the authorship of the Culex it seemed to me proper that we should
draw our conclusions first of all from the body of the poem itself. I have, therefore, up till
now, carefully avoided discussing the opening section. But I must not indefinitely mask
the biggest gun in my arsenal. Let us, then, consider the beginning of the poem.

Lusimus, Octavi, gracili modulante Thalia

atque ut araneoli tenuem formavimus orsum;
lusimus: haec propter culicis sint carmina docta,
omnis et historiae per ludum consonet ordo
notitiaeque ducum voces.......

posterius graviore sono tibi musa loquetur

nostra, dabunt cum securos mihi tempora fructus,
ut tibi digna tuo poliantur carmina sensu.
After the invocation of Apollo and other divine patrons the poet continues (24 if.)
et tu, cui meritis oritur fiducia chartis,
Octavi venerande, meis adlabere coeptis,
sancte
sa ct puer .....
PUe . .
. . . . . . .

hoc tibi, sancte puer; memorabilis et tibi certet

gloria, perpetuum lucens mansura per aevum,
et tibi sede pia maneat locus, et tibi sospes
debita felices memoretur vita per annos,
grata bonis lucens. sed nos ad coepta feramur.

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 THE CULEX 7

You will not have been slow to realize that this introduction gives the whole show away.
In the period with which we are concerned Octavii are not plentiful. There can therefore
be no doubt about the identity of the Octavius addressed here in such solemnity, Octavi
venerande, and sancte puer, to whom the poet wishes, and all but prophesies, everlasting
fame. The identity of the puer is but thinly disguised. Virgil dedicates the product of
his juvenile ludere, his Traiyviov, to the boy Octavius, the future Augustus, and promises
him in unmistakable terms (I am referring to 11.8-Io, from posterius graviore sono to carmina
sensu) that the Aeneid will follow in due course. The author has been kind enough to
assign to his work an approximate date: by calling the boy to whom he is addressing
himself Octavius he makes it plain that he is writing before the time when Caesar the
Dictator will decide to adopt his sister's grandson. To leave no doubt that he himself is
Virgil he makes heavy borrowings from Bucolics, Georgics and Aeneid, exactly as the
man who foisted the Epistulae ad Caesarem senem on the historian Sallust saw to it that
both phraseology and sentence structure reminded the reader over and over again of
Sallust's Historiae as well as his Bellum Catilinae and Bellum Jugurthinum.

At the beginning of this lecture I briefly mentioned the two groups of non-Virgilian
poems contained in the Appendix Vergiliana: in those of the one group no deceit was
intended, since it was by mere accident that they got into this miscellaneous collection,
whereas the poems of the other, smaller, group were from the start written with the purpose
of passing them off as minor works of Virgil. We now see that the Culex belongs to the
second group, that of deliberate fakes. Its author puts on the mask of young Virgil, he
is a Vergilius personatus.
In this case it is perhaps possible to do what so often, when dealing with forgeries, we
attempt in vain: to make out with a high degree of probability the forger's motives. In
the time of Augustus and Tiberius the craving for memoirs seems to have been as wild as
it is in our own day. Anyone who was either a public figure himself or had had some
connexion, however remote, with any such figure felt bound to lay his ' Recollections ', or
whatever the title might be, before the reading public. The range of such publications
was enormous, from serious works like the autobiography of Augustus, De vita slia, down
to the level of vulgar scandal put about by people pretending to be 'in the know'. To speak
of Virgil only, the existence of numerous memoirs concerned with him is indicated by a
quotation in Gellius introduced thus: ' amici familiaresque P. Vergilii in his quae de ingenio
moribusque eius memoriae tradiderunt'. Suetonius in his Life of Virgil gives a vivid idea
of the heterogeneous mass of information contained in those books written by the poet's
contemporaries : beside some real facts of great interest we find all sorts of anecdotes and
also a certain amount of cheap gossip. If there was at the time such a big trade in writings
of that kind, it follows that large sections of the public were very much interested in
Virgil's private life and in the different stages of his career. It is always much easier, and
to many people more satisfactory, to busy oneself with biographical details than to study
a great poet's masterpieces.
One point especially seems to have excited the curiosity of Roman readers, including
the more serious-minded among them. The earliest known works of the great poets,
Virgil and Horace, came from a comparatively late period of their lives. Virgil published
his Eclogues when he was more than thirty years old, and Horace published the first book
of his Satires at about the age of thirty. That was disappointing; for people wanted to
know something of the preliminary stages, the early life of the poet and his juvenile work,
divini elementa poetae. What was Virgil doing and what did he think of his mission as a
poet when he was a very young man ? What was in Horace's mind before he was admitted
into the circle of Maecenas ? Was he very shy or rather the opposite ? Such questions
would be asked, and there was no answer to them. Something had to be done about it.
As may be seen from Mr. Otto Kurz's admirable book Fakes (it deals only with forgeries
of works of decorative art), every age gets precisely the kind of fakes which it deserves.
Where there is an urgent demand for a particular commodity, it will be satisfied in one
way or another. The missing juvenile works of the great poets did at last turn up.

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8 EDUARD FRAENKEL

Suetonius, in his biography of Horace, after enumerating the genuine writings of the poet,
continues: ' venerunt in manus meas et elegi sub titulo eius et epistula prosa oratione
quasi commendantis se Maecenati; sed utraque falsa puto, nam elegi volgares, epistula
etiam obscura, quo vitio minime tenebatur.' What a sensation that must have been,
epistula prosa oratione quasi commendantisse Maecenati: now at last some light was thrown
on the early period of which Horace's published work revealed nothing. The situation
out of which that letter purported to have arisen shows a remarkable analogy to the situation
implied in the preface of the Culex. It would indeed be easy to imagine a Life of Virgil
containing an entry like this: ' scripsit Culicem, cuius in prooemio se commendabat
Octavio puero, ei scilicet qui Caesar Augustus futurus erat.'
A word must now be said about the presumable date of the forgery. W. R. Hardie,
in a paper printed posthumously in I920, pointed out that it is unlikely that after the
publication of the Aeneid ' anything that Virgil himself had not published would be
allowed to appear while Varius and Tucca were still in life, or while Augustus was still
living '. Hardie, like some scholars before him, assumed that the Culex was published
in the reign of Tiberius. This hypothesis can be strengthened when we consider the
relation of the Culex to Ovid. Leo saw that the poet's apostrophe perfide Demophoon,
which is clumsily dragged in at line I33, probably depends on Ovid, Rem. am. 597, where
the desperate cry of Phyllis, perfide Demophoon, is perfectly natural and simple. Birt
observed that the verb letare, used once in the Culex, does not occur until Ovid, who has
it twice in the Metamorphoses and probably coined it. But the most manifest borrowing
from the Metamorphoses was spotted by Alfred Klotz. Describing the serpent as it
approaches the sleeping goatherd, the poet says (I8i)
manant sanguineae per tractus undique guttae.
No one can understand what the dripping of blood has to do here. Commentators have
thought of the saliva coming out of the animal's mouth, but why should that be bloody ?
What happened becomes clear as soon as we compare Ovid. After the catastrophe of
Phaethon his sisters, the Heliades, are being transformed into trees. Their mother attempts
to rescue them (Met. 2, 358 ff.):
truncis avellere corpora temptat
et teneros manibus ramos abrumpit, at inde
sanguineae manant tamquam de vulnere guttae.
The writer of the Culex, fascinated by the expression sanguineae manant . .. guttae,
pilfered it and patched the rest of the line.
The Culex, then, is not prior to the reign of Tiberius. A much later date is unlikely,
both on general grounds of literary fashion and because in that case it would be very hard
to account for the authority which the poem had gained by the middle of the first century.
Unfortunately we cannot say whether the first line of the Culex depends on the first
line of the faked proem to the Aeneid,
Ille ego, qui quondam gracili modulatus avena
carmen,
or whether this proem draws on the Culex. The floruit of the grammarian Nisus, our only
authority for Ille ego qui quondam, was probably about the middle of the first century.
Thus far we have not even touched upon the one really disquieting fact in the history
of the Culex. The faked Horatian elegy and his prose letter to Maecenas met at the hands
of Suetonius, and probably of other ancient critics as well, with the fate they deserved.
Why is it then that the Culex survived, and not only survived but was at an early stage
accepted as Virgilian by men of good judgement and high rank in literature, Lucan, Statius,
Martial, and Suetonius ? There can be no doubt that the testimonies in favour of genuine-
ness are infinitely stronger in the case of the Culex than in the case of any other piece of
the Appendix Vergiliana. So long as we cling to these testimonies, we have to assume
that the Culex was written when Octavius was a boy. We cannot do that, but we should

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 THE CULEX 9

like to understand why those intelligent Roman readers were taken in. The answer is
simple: man believes what he wants to believe. The Culex satisfied a real need, and that
was enough to silence any unpleasant criticism.
If we want to grasp what happened we have only to listen to one of the principal
witnesses for the authenticity of the Culex, Statius. In the preface to the first book of
the Silvae he says: ' sed et Culicem legimus et Batrachomachiam etiam agnoscimus ; nec
quisquam est illustrium poetarum qui non aliquid operibus suis stilo remissiore praeluserit.'
This utterance of Statius shows the complete success of the forgery. ' Lusimus, Octavi ...
lusimus: haec propter culicis sint carmina docta . . . posterius graviore sono tibi musa
loquetur nostra ' etc. ' This poem here, Octavius, is the product of my ludere; later on
I will write for you a heroic epic,' or, to say it in words partly borrowed from Statius,
'Accipe hoc carmen quod remissiore stilo Aeneidi nostrae praelusimus.'
With the publication of the Aeneid there had at last appeared the long-hoped-for work
of a Homerus Romanus. Several years before it saw the light, a powerful, if often indiscreet,
poet heralded it with the words nescio quid maius nascitur Iliade. The Aeneid, when its
twelve books became known, took the place of a new Odyssey as well as a new Iliad. Many
contemporaries may have wished to extend the parallelism between the Greek and the
Roman Homer as far as possible. Educated people in Rome as in the rest of the Hellenistic
world knew their Life of Homer. There they could read that, according to some authorities,
Homer wrote not only the Iliad and the Odyssey but also the Batrachomyomachia and the
Margites, yv'uIvaGlas KciX TrclalXaS 'EVEKa,which would be in Latin sese exercendi atque
ludendi gratia. Statius, after referring to Batrachomyomachia and Culex, said that every
eminent poet wrote, as a praelusio to his major works, something in a lighter vein, stilo
remissiore. In saying this, Statius had in mind the statement in the Homer Vita that the
Batrachomyomachiawas composed yvuvvacxlas KGa TrcllcaS EVEKa. But long before
Statius it will have been felt that if Virgil was really the Roman Homer, he, too, must in
his youth have produced some Traxiyvlov. The requirement was fulfilled when the Culex
was published. The analogy to Homer was as strict as could be desired. To put it
crudely: the relation of the battle of the frogs and mice to the battles in the Iliad is the
same as the relation of the apparition of the gnat to the apparition of Patroclus. What was
presented here was not merely a diminutive epic of some sort, but an epic, like the Batra-
chomyomachia, taken from the world of small creatures. By a lucky stroke the unknown
forger hit on the Hellenistic poem about the gnat, and then managed to virgilianize it by
means of the additions some of which we have discussed. Thus he provided welcome
information on an early period in Virgil's life and at the same time demonstrated that
Virgil's career as a poet proceeded in close parallelism to the career of Homer. As far as
the Roman public was concerned, the forger's product proved most gratifying, and
consequently many good people believed in its authenticity. What a shame that some
wicked scholars should feel unable to join the happy crowd of the believers !

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