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Successor fuit hic tibi, Galle, Propertius illi.

Quartus ab his serie temporis ipse fui. Tristium iv. x. 53*.

which must be understood to mean that, as distinguished writers of elegy, they flourished in that order: and though it does not imply that Tibullus wrote nothing before the death of Gallus, or Propertius nothing before that of Tibullus-which would be false -yet it must imply that there was some interval between the death of Gallus and that of Tibullus, during which the latter was the most distinguished elegiac poet; as well as some interval between the death of Tibullus, and Ovid's becoming known in this department of poetry, during which Propertius stood alone.

In no part of the extant works of Horace is there any allusion to such a fact as the death of Virgil— whom yet he must have survived ten or eleven years, if Virgil died U.C. 735: and he must have published, as we have seen, a certain portion of his works even subsequently to that event. Nor is there any allusion to his Æneid, or even to his Georgica. When Horace published his Sermones, which, however, were the earliest of his productions, Virgil was known only as the author of some elegant Bucolics-for so I should understand his

Molle atque facetum

Virgilio annuerunt gaudentes rure Camœnæ.

Sermonum i. x. 44, 45. Cf.Epistolæ, ii. i. 245-247.

The first clear allusion to the Eneid in any contemporary writer occurs in Propertius, ii. xxxiv. 65:

Cedite Romani scriptores, cedite Graii.

Nescio quid majus nascitur Iliade. Cf. Ibid. 61–64.

And there are parts of the poems of Propertius which I have shewn elsewhere to have been written as late

* Cf. Tristium i. ii. 445–468.

as U.C. 738 or U.C. 739. This is especially true of the last elegy of all. See vol. i. p. 500. and Cf. ibid. p. 533. As to the above allusion, lines 91, 92 of the same elegy prove that it could not have been written before the death of Gallus; after which it was that Virgil undertook the composition of his Æneid.

It will be allowed that there is some weight in these considerations; sufficient perhaps to shew that the truth of the received date for the death of Virgil may reasonably be called into question. Not to dwell, then, any longer upon this subject, though more might still be said to the same effect, I shall conclude with pointing out a striking inconsistency between the account of his death, as given in his Life, and by Servius, Præfatio ad Æneid. i. The former tells us that he went to Athens, U. C. 735, with a view to spend three years in Greece and Asia, and to put the last hand to his Eneid: but that he had scarcely landed at Athens when Augustus came there on his return from the East-whom he determined to accompany back to Italy. At Megara he fell ill upon the way; and his sickness being aggravated by the passage to Brundisium, he died there, a day or two after he arrived. Servius has none of these circumstances in his account. He tells us merely, Periit.. Tarenti, in Apuliæ civitate: nam dum Metapontum cupit videre, valetudinem ex solis ardore contraxit. Nor does he say in what year he died *.

* Nor is the testimony of the Epitaph, said to have been dictated by Virgil, with his last breath, on himself, (vide Jerome in Chronico: 155, ad annum Augusti xxv.) more in unison with the supposition of his dying at Brundisium, than with that of his dying at Tarentum.

Mantua me genuit: Calabri rapuere: tenet nunc | Parthenope. cecini pascua, rura, duces. Metapontum would be in Lucania; but both Tarentum and Brundisium were cities of Messapia, or the Salentini: and Calabria originally was a name of equal extent with Messapia. The same

The other account indeed is very improbable throughout as supposing first that one who had formed the design of finishing off a poem like the Eneid within a certain time, would determine to go on his travels for that purpose; and secondly that, if he had made up his mind to spend the next three years abroad, he should so soon have resolved to turn back. It can scarcely be said that he did this out of compliment to Augustus: for he must have known that Augustus was on his return, and would shortly be in Italy again, before he determined to go abroad.

The truth of a visit of Virgil's to Attica I do not call in question. Horace, Carminum i. 3, alone proves this fact; and I think it not improbable that the first book of the Odes of Horace was published U.C. 731. The testimony of Suetonius, before cited, is no insuperable objection to the contrary.

epitaph is mentioned by the author of the Vita, and by Servius, loco citato, who yet supposes Virgil to have died in

Apulia. The fact is, he might be said to have died in Apulia or in Calabria indifferently.

VOL. IV.

H

APPENDIX.

DISSERTATION XVIII.

Chronology of the Second Jewish War, in the time of Ha

IT

drian.

Vide Dissertation xv. vol. ii. page 81, last line.

T will contribute to strengthen the probability of the conclusion, which we endeavoured to establish, respecting the duration of the first Jewish war, under Nero and Vespasian; if the same thing can be shewn, with any degree of credibility, to hold good of the second, in the time of Hadrian. Though that second war, as far as we can perceive, is not directly noticed in the prophecy of the seventy weeks, nor in our Saviour's prophecy on the mount; yet it was fully as calamitous as the first: nor could the "desolation determined," perhaps, be said to be absolutely over, until that also was past.

It is recorded by Dioa, that 580,000 Jews perished in this second contest, by the sword alone: that 50 fortified places, and 985 villages or towns, which he calls" very considerable," were laid waste, and levelled with the ground: a degree of desolation to the face of the country which the ravages of the former war, though equally destructive of human life, are not known to have produced. The horrors of the siege of Jerusalem were renewed in that of Bither. The consequences of this war, too, to the political rights and immunities of the Jewish people, were much more calamitous and permanent, than those of the former had been. With the close of this last rebellion, we must

a lxix. 12-14.

date the termination of their political existence as a nation. Neither Titus nor Vespasian, when the contest in their time was over, had carried their hostility to the extent of dispossessing the survivors of their country, and of casting them out as exiles and wanderers, upon society: but this second experience of the turbulent and refractory spirit of the Jews left the Roman government no alternative except to banish them from Judæa; and to forbid them, under penalty of death, to set foot on their native soil.

Though the history of the second war is almost entirely unknown, yet the Jewish rabbis have preserved some remarkable traditions concerning it; shewing that the most memorable of the circumstances, which distinguished the former visitation, were equally characteristic of this. Jerome affords some countenance to these traditions in his commentary on Zech. viii: where he observes: In hoc mense, (viz. the fifth in the Jewish year, answering to the Julian August,) et a Nabuchodonosor, et multa post sæcula a Tito et Vespasiano, templum Jerosolymis incensum est atque destructum: capta urbs Bethel, ad quam multa millia confugerant Judæorum: aratum Templum in ignominiam gentis oppressæ, a Tito Annio Ruffo. It would therefore be no extraordinary circumstance, if these national visitations should be found to agree in the respective periods of their duration, as well as in other remarkable instances of coincidence.

The anger of God against the cities of Judah was supposed to be still continuing, after seventy years from some beginning, in the second of Darius; and what is equally observable, the fasting and mourning for the national calamities are described to have been

b Hieronymus, Operum iii. 1752. ad calcem. Cf. Mishna, ii. 7. 382. c Zech. i. 1. 12.

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