Minor Latin poets; with introductions and English translations

INTRODUCTION TOself. On the foundation of this latter theory wasbuilt the guess that the Lmis Pisonis was the workof Calpurnius Siculus. But there is no consensus ofopinion about the identification of " Meliboeus."While some have supposed him to represent Senecaor Calpurnius Piso, others have seen in him Columella" or M. \'alerius Messala Corvinus,^ consulwith Nero in 58 a.d. : others still have dismissed allsuch identifications as sheer caprice. There is nomore certainty about the two Einsiedeln eclogues.As the conjecture that they were composed by Piso ^is countered with equal readiness to believe thatCalpurnius WTote them,^ discretion will acknowledgethat there is not enough e\'idence to prove morethan that they belong to the same literary environmentas the Calpurnian poems.The arrangement of the eclogues of Calpurniusdoes not follow the chronological order of composition.The four more strictly rural poems precededin time the three which may be called " courtly " invirtue of their praises of the emperor (i, iv, vii)some, indeed, may have been written before Nerosucceeded to the purple. There is much to be saidfor Haupt's suggested order of writing, namely,that the earliest and least finished is iii, the quarrelwith Phyllis, which Scaliger considered an unamusingpiece of clo^vTlishness ; next, vi, a singing-matchbroken off by the umpire owing to the competitors'loss of temper—a weakish imitation of Theocritus ivand V and of Virgil's third eclogue ; ii, somewhat" Chytil, Der Eklogendichter T. Calp. Siculus, Znaim, 1894.''Hubaux, op. cit." Groag, " Calp. Piso " in P. W. Rmhncycl.**Hubaux, op. cit.